Totem And Taboo Quotes
"The taboo is first of all the tribal ancestor of the clan, as well as its tutelary spirit and protector."
"The totem is hereditary either through the maternal or the paternal line."
"The two principal themes, totem and taboo, which give the name to this small book are not treated alike here."
"The problem of taboo is presented more exhaustively."
"The investigation of totemism may be modestly expressed as: 'This is all that psychoanalytic study can contribute at present to the elucidation of the problem of totemism.'"
"The close connection between totem and taboo indicates the further paths to the hypothesis maintained here."
"An unsolved situation, a psychic fixation, had thus been created."
"The oldest and most important taboo prohibitions are the two basic laws of totemism."
"Taboo is a very primitive prohibition imposed from without and directed against the strongest desires of man."
"The desire to violate it continues in the unconscious."
"There is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted and of which they are intimately conscious."
"The service, accompanied by the recitation of certain prescribed spells, was repeated not merely morning, noon, and night, but whenever a storm was raging or heavy rain had set in."
"The psychic processes in the unconscious are not entirely identical with those known to us from our conscious psychic life, but have the benefit of certain notable liberties."
"The child, which finds itself under analogous psychic conditions, without being as yet capable of motor activity, satisfies its wishes by means of hallucinations."
"Primitive races fear a punishment for the violation of a taboo, usually a serious disease or death."
"If primitive man reacted to the phenomena that stimulated his reflection with the formation of conceptions of the soul, his attitude will be judged to be quite natural."
"Animism is a system of thought, it gives not only the explanation of a single phenomenon but makes it possible to comprehend the totality of the world from one point, as a continuity."
"The cannibalism of primitive races derives its more sublime motivation in a similar manner."
"Magic must serve the most varied purposes. It must subject the processes of nature to the will of man, protect the individual against enemies and dangers."
"The principle which controls magic, and the technique of the animistic method of thought, is 'Omnipotence of Thought'."
"The totem is called ancestor and primal father."
"The first sacrifice was nothing else than an act of social fellowship between the deity and his worshipper."
"Primitive man looked upon wine as the 'blood of the grape'."
"The sacrificial feast was an occasion for joyously transcending one's own interests and emphasizing social community and community with god."
"The sacrificial animal was treated like one of kin; the sacrificing community, its god, and the sacrificial animal were of the same blood."
"Originally all animals were holy, their meat was forbidden and might be eaten only on solemn occasions."
"The holy mystery of the sacrificial death was justified in that only in this way could the holy bond be established which united the participants with each other and with their god."
"The sacrificial animal itself was one of the kin. In reality, it was the old totem animal, the primitive god himself."
"The religion of totemism included not only manifestations of remorse and attempts at reconciliation but also serves to commemorate the triumph over the father."
"A holiday is permitted, or rather a prescribed excess, a solemn violation of a prohibition."
"The sense of guilt was formed which coincided here with the remorse generally felt."
"Society is now based on complicity in the common crime, religion on the sense of guilt and the consequent remorse, while morality is based partly on the necessities of society and partly on the expiation which this sense of guilt demands."
"The beginnings of religion, ethics, society, and art meet in the Oedipus complex."
"Ambivalence, originally foreign to our emotional life was acquired by mankind from the father complex."
"As a system of religion it embraces the mystic union of the savage with his totem."
"I have changed my views repeatedly, and I am resolved to change them again with every change of the evidence."
"Nowhere do we see absolutely primitive man, and a totemic system in the making."
"The totemic clan is a totally different social organism from the exogamous class."
"It is unlikely that a community of savages should deliberately parcel out the realm of nature."
"Murder and incest, or offences of like kind against the sacred law of blood are in primitive society the only crimes."
"To their thinking gods and men were akin, for many families traced their descent from a divinity."
"The mourning is not a spontaneous expression of sympathy with the divine tragedy, but obligatory and enforced by fear of supernatural anger."
"The fear of castration plays an extraordinarily big rôle in disturbing the relations to the father."
"The seemingly monstrous assumption that the tyrannical father was overcome and slain by a combination of the expelled sons has also been accepted as a direct result of the conditions of the Darwinian primal horde."