Totem and Taboo in Retrospect

Abstract

Freud's explanations of cultural origins waver between being historic and being psychological in character. As history they remain wholly unfounded, but they may prove to contain elements contributing to understanding of the generic human psychology underlying the history of human culture, especially its recurrent or repetitive feature. Psychoanalytic intransigeance as to historic interpretation is due partly to an "overdetermination" in Freud's own thinking and partly to rigidity in his followers, as exemplified by Jones and Roheim. Psychoanalysis has maintained an all-or-none attitude toward general science. Science has profited by definite absorptions from psychoanalysis.

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