The Vicissitudes of Totemism

One Hundred Years After Totem and Taboo

Gerard Lucas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367329082
• eBook ISBN: 9780429922718
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

After being the subject of many studies up until 1914, totemism seemed to disappear from the literature. The publication of Freud's work Totem and Taboo was initially greeted with silence, and subsequently with critical and hostile reactions. C. Lévi-Strauss was one of the few to devote a book to totemism but considered it as an illusion, although a number of prominent members of the English school of Social Anthropology contested this view, describing the direction adumbrated by Freud's enquiry as "highly pertinent". Totemism appears in Freud's work as a way of dealing with one of the canonical forms of human destructiveness, namely parricide. Why did eminent men find it impossible to utilise Freud's book and those studies that followed it in the interwar period? The mass murders in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, however different they may have been, both generated a profound sense of horror that made their consequences largely unrepresentable for Europeans for more than thirty years. Did this delay, and the attitudes of the following generations towards authority, result from an unconscious logic of "resistance" aimed at re-establishing refusals that did not take place at the time? The Western world seems to have forgotten the strength of the mixed family ties of tribes, casts, and religions that are in fact at work in the psychic life of a great number of men and women in the world.

Chapter One
An outline of the situation of totemism in anthropology in the years following the First World War

“Totemism” in an encyclopaedic article by E. S. Hartland

In order to trace the broad outlines of this situation, I will refer to an article by E. S. Hartland (1921) in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. From this rather voluminous and thorough study devoted to totemism in Volume VII, I will extract only a definition of totemism, and the part devoted to its origins. I have chosen it for the chronological proximity of its publication with that of the translation of Freud’s essay, and for its encyclopaedic descriptive and neutral tone, apparently free of conflicts between persons, cultures, and schools (though the Anglo-American rivalries of the epoch led Hart land to pass over in silence the “modern” American studies to which I will be giving an important place).

Totemism, as exemplified in North America and Australia, where it has been found in its fullest development, is a form of society distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) it is composed of clans or bands of men each united among themselves by kinship real or fictitious, a kinship frequently extending beyond the limits of the local tribe; (2) the clan is distinguished by the name of some species of animal or plant, or more rarely of some other natural phenomenon, such as the rain, sun, etc.; (3) the species or object which gives its name to the clan is conceived as related to the clan, and to every member of it, in some mystic way, often genetically; and in this case, every individual specimen of the object, where it is an animal or plant, is regarded as belonging to the clan; (4) such species or object is generally the subject of a religious or quasi-religious emotion, and each individual specimen of this object or animal is the subject of taboos and/or prohibitions: subject to certain limitations or ceremonies, it cannot be injured, killed or (in the case where the specimen is edible) eaten. (5) Moreover, as in every society based on kinship, the members of the clan are entitled to mutual defence, protection, and resentment of injuries. They may not marry or have sexual intercourse within the clan. These characteristics are general, but they vary to some extent, not merely from area to area, but from tribe to tribe. After detailing a few typical examples, it will be necessary to mention others where totemism seems to be decadent, and then to consider whether it has ever prevailed among peoples where it is not now to be found, and lastly to inquire into its origin. Various influences tending to modify, submerge, or destroy it will be indicated from time to time in the course of the article. (Hartland, 1921, p. 405)

Hartland thus adopts a strategy of description where the recourse to evolutionary modalities, backed up by a variety of arguments, is part of the British evolutionist tradition, which is clearly upheld here. His reservations concerning the profusion of ideas and conflicts that have long stimulated the debate on the subject serves the purpose of my introduction to some extent. In the penultimate part of this study, the author puts forward speculative discussions related to the existence of traces of totemism in non-totemic peoples. He does so on the basis of the importance and the characteristics of the depictions and narratives that give a privileged place to the links between animals and the gods in the Egyptian religion and in Greek mythology, but also in Ireland and certain Aboriginal groups in Western China. The last section, devoted to the origin of totemism, is interesting on account of its recapitulative character. I will do no more than give a summary here of its broad outlines.

The origin of totemism has been the subject of many debates among anthropologists. James Frazer had initally adopted a theory according to which the aim of a totemic society was to practise magic ceremonies for the multiplication of the totem animal or vegetable, and to ensure a continuance of provision of food and prosperity for the community, but he was finally led to relinquish that hypothesis. Instead, he was now inclined to the opinion, suggested by observations on the part of Spencer and Gillen of the peoples of central Australia, that totemism originated in a primitive explanation of conception and childbirth. They believed they were born as a result of the impregnation of the mother’s womb by spirit animals or spirit fruits. Hence, they possessed the characteristics of the animal or fruit in question and refused to eat them.

Frazer (1922) initially suggested that totemism might be linked to a theory “of the external soul”, that is, “in the belief that living people may deposit their souls for safe keeping outside of themselves in some secure place”.

Andrew Lang (1903), for his part, was led to emphasise the social aspect of totemism in a theory similar to that of Herbert Spencer, according to which the origin of totemism is to be found in names. Groups of men, having been given names, either as a way of distinguishing them, or as nicknames, accepted these names and came to fancy that they themselves had a mystical connection with them. Then the normal course of social organisation led gradually to certain rules, such as preferring the wives of another band, and subsequently to an absolute prohibition against marrying a woman of the same band, in other words, to clan exogamy. The influence of names and the inveterate tendency to regard a name as proof of a strong connection with the person or thing signified by it were practically universal in primitive cultures, but why these names were appropriated by the various bands is left unexplained. Lang and Frazer agree that the institution of exogamy is distinct from totemism and that totemism, as a matter of fact, preceded exogamy. Exogamy, however, often, indeed almost always, accompanies totemism.

For A. C. Haddon (1902), there was a very personal connection between a certain group of people and some animal or plant. It is obvious that the men who persistently collected or hunted a particular group of animals would understand the habits of those animals better than other people, and a personal regard for these animals would naturally arise. Once the name and the animal (or object, little matter) had been adopted, a real mystical connection was established between the object and the group members, which might have resulted in the object being subject to a taboo rather than continuing to have its common or practical use.

Emile Durkheim (1912), chiefly based on Australian evidence, considers totemism as a religious institution. According to him, it is the religion of a sort of anonymous and impersonal force manifested in various animals, men, and emblems, but it is an impersonal god without name or history, immanent in the world, and represented in the form of different animals and objects.

The totem is really only the material form in which this energy is represented to the imagination. It is the symbol, not only of the totemic god, but also of the clan. It is the standard, the emblem by virtue of which each clan distinguishes itself from the others, the visible sign of its personality, the mark borne by each member of the clan, whether human, animal, or anything else. All are sacred in varying degrees, but most sacred of all is its emblematic character for the clan. The totem is the source of the moral life of the clan, and all are morally bound together, with definite duties towards one another of help, vengeance, and so forth. The totem is, therefore, very much bound up with the organisation of society. It is considered as practically the earliest form of religion and of society. Durkheim’s theory remains a brilliant and very interesting conjecture, but, for the moment, nothing more than that, for the assumption of primitive universality of totemism has not been proved.

This theory was developed shortly after the publication of an essay in 1908 by E. Reuterskiöld, who emphasised how, for primitive man, the individual is nothing while the group is everything. Man did not picture himself as lord of creation; he was only part of a great community. He felt himself closely united with an animal living in his neigh-bourhood. These religious, magical, and social aspects of totem ism were originally undistinguished from one another. In his endeavour to explain the attitude towards nature of the tribes of Central Brazil, von den Steinen (1894) deems that they draw no strict line of demarcation between man and beast. There is, thus, no impediment to their associating themselves to animals. Indeed, the Bororo declare that they are red araras, not that they will become araras after death, nor that they were araras in a previous existence, but that they are araras here and now. We can understand, therefore, how, in their legends and stories, humans are associated with the most simple forms of animals, and it is often impossible to say whether the actors are human or animal. Totemism is founded on something deeper than names. It assumes a community of nature between men and other creatures.

The word totemism does not signify a religion. The respect of the clan for its totem arises out of the attitude of mind just explained. The relation of the clan to its totem is mystical and generates an intense feeling of kinship. This is frequently expressed in the belief that they are descended from the totem. Although regarded with reverence and looked to for help, the totem is never, at least in regions where totemism is not in decline, identified with a god or with an all-powerful or supernatural being.

On the other hand its connection with the social organisation is very intimate. Beginning with recognition of kinship, it develops the clan feeling and the clan organisation, and clan exogamy binds the whole tribe together. We are not certain whether exogamy actually precedes totemism in point of time or not, but the interaction of the two undoubtedly strengthens the notion of totemism. When, in the course of the evolution of civilisation, totemism began to decay, exogamy often continued to exist independently. Numerous cases exist where the clan system and exogamy have coexisted without the presence of any other element of totemism. The forms of totemism are so varied that it has survived in many regions.

In Hartland’s article published in 1921, there is not the slightest allusion to Freud’s essay, translated into English in 1918. Indeed, it was not until several years later, as we shall see, that it would be taken into consideration.

Totem and Taboo: the publication

Although he began to write Totem and Taboo in the middle of the year 1911, Freud’s work of documentation and writing continued during the years 1912 and 1913, and the last part entitled, “The return of totemism in childhood” was completed in June 1913. The volume itself, after having been published in the periodical Imago, chapter by chapter, would be translated into English in New York only after the First World War, in 1918.

While he was working on this book, Freud was subject to changing states of mood, which have been commented on wisely by Gan theret (1993). In the course of writing, he consulted Jones, Abra ham, and Ferenczi, being particularly concerned to have their opinion and their suggestions; however, as soon as he had finished writing it, he entered a period of doubt and discouragement about the quality of his work as well as the reception that it would be given.

Although we lack information that would help us appreciate the reactions that the reading of these few articles provoked in Germany, except for the support received from his three pupils and friends, we are quite well informed about some of the reactions to its publication in English.

They were neither numerous nor abundant, in contrast with the mass of interest, energy, and creativity present in anthropological circles during this period in relation to totemism, a period that Rosa (2003) has baptised as “the heyday of totemism”.

For him, the late character of the reactions of anthropological circles to Freud’s essay, to which they only accorded interest in the early 1920s, was linked to the fact that Freud’s principal references belonged to “the oldest ranks of the debate, at the limits of the obsolete” (Rosa, 2003, p. 108, translated for this edition). Without doubt, as Rosa writes, the accounts of the principal anthropological journals of the post-war period in the USA, particularly following the First World War, criticised systematically the conjectural sources from which Freud derived his information (he forgets to mention, however, the notable presence of W. H. Rivers).

It is difficult, however, to share completely his point of view, for, alongside James Frazer, William Robertson Smith, and James Atkinson, we can find in the bibliography of Totem and Taboo more than sixty anthropological references. They show that Freud was well aware of the questions raised by the discovery of the Arunta nation and the reorganisations that it brought about in anthropological theories.

It is striking, moreover, that he even indicated in his essay the relatively new orientation at that time of contemporary American anthropologists on this subject, while clearly distancing himself from them. An extract from Freud’s essay will throw light on the difficulties of the exchanges between the two professional groups:

The more incontestable became the conclusion that totemism constitutes a regular phase in all cultures, the more urgent became the need for arriving at an understanding of it and for throwing light upon the puzzle of its essential nature. Everything connected with totemism seems to be puzzling: the decisive problems concern the origin of the idea of descent from the totem and the reasons for exogamy (or rather for the taboo upon incest of which exogamy is the expression), as well as the relation between these two institutions, totemic organization and prohibition of incest. Any satisfactory explanation should be at once a historical and a psychological one. It should tell us under what conditions this particular institution developed and to what psychical needs in men it has given expression.

My readers will, I am sure, be astonished to hear of the variety of angles from which attempts have been made to answer thes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE An outline of the situation of totemism in anthropology in the years following the First World War
• CHAPTER TWO From the 1920s to the Second World War
• CHAPTER THREE Returning to the circumstances of the publication and translation of Totem and Taboo
• CHAPTER FOUR Totemism and anthropology after the Second World War
• CHAPTER FIVE Psychoanalytic interpretation: with and without the patient
• CHAPTER SIX The misfortunes of ambition
• CHAPTER SEVEN The evolution of practices
• CHAPTER EIGHT Beyond nature and culture
• CHAPTER NINE The new possibility of discussions on the principal axes of Freud’s thought in Totem and Taboo
• CHAPTER TEN Totem and Taboo, politics, and law
• CHAPTER ELEVEN Totemic systems and totalitarianisms: the point of view of Totem and Taboo
• CHAPTER TWELVE The price of murderous consent?
• APPENDIX
• NOTES
• REFERENCES
• INDEX