In 1913 Sigmund Freud published “Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker“ (Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics), which applied his psychoanalytic ideas to the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and the study of religion. Inspired by the early work of his protégé Carl Jung, the book consisted of four essays first published in Freud’s journal Imago ( "The Horror of Incest," "Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence," "Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts,"and "The Return of Totemism in Childhood"). The book remained one of his personal favorites, and he thought "The Return of Totemism in Childhood" was his best-written work. One of the early dissidents against Freud’s radical ideas about psychology, Carl Furtmüller, complained that the author relied on “the free play of fantasy" instead of logic and misused the concepts of Charles Darwin. Most anthropologists were always critical; Alfred L. Kroeber called Freud a "gallant and stimulating adventurer into ethnology" but rejected the notion that his theories could explain social origins and evolutionary phases; Franz Boas regarded the psychoanalytic method as too one-sided to advance the understanding of cultural development; Robert Ranulph Marett called the book a "just-so story,” like the popular children’s tales by Rudyard Kipling; later, Marvin Harris criticized "the grandiosity of its compass, the flimsiness of its evidence, ... the generality of its conclusions," and its "anachronistic framework." But Róheim Géza, the first psychoanalytically trained anthropologist to do field research, regarded the book as the initiator of psychoanalytic anthropology even though he eventually abandoned its assumptions. Nobel laureate Thomas Mann wrote that “Totem and Taboo” had made a stronger impression on him than any of Freud's other works and that it had the greatest artistic merit.
In 1913 Sigmund Freud published “Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker“ (Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics), which applied his psychoanalytic ideas to the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and the study of religion. Inspired by the early work of his protégé Carl Jung, the book consisted of four essays first published in Freud’s journal Imago ( "The Horror of Incest," "Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence," "Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts,"and "The Return of Totemism in Childhood"). The book remained one of his personal favorites, and he thought "The Return of Totemism in Childhood" was his best-written work. One of the early dissidents against Freud’s radical ideas about psychology, Carl Furtmüller, complained that the author relied on “the free play of fantasy" instead of logic and misused the concepts of Charles Darwin. Most anthropologists were always critical; Alfred L. Kroeber called Freud a "gallant and stimulating adventurer into ethnology" but rejected the notion that his theories could explain social origins and evolutionary phases; Franz Boas regarded the psychoanalytic method as too one-sided to advance the understanding of cultural development; Robert Ranulph Marett called the book a "just-so story,” like the popular children’s tales by Rudyard Kipling; later, Marvin Harris criticized "the grandiosity of its compass, the flimsiness of its evidence, ... the generality of its conclusions," and its "anachronistic framework." But Róheim Géza, the first psychoanalytically trained anthropologist to do field research, regarded the book as the initiator of psychoanalytic anthropology even though he eventually abandoned its assumptions. Nobel laureate Thomas Mann wrote that “Totem and Taboo” had made a stronger impression on him than any of Freud's other works and that it had the greatest artistic merit.
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