Thus, Freud showed how psychoanalysis could explain these phenomena and could be applied or implied in cultural formations as identification and defensive mechanisms.Īlthough hardly avoiding intense criticism by anthropologists such as Boas and Malinowski, Freud’s theories did, however, have a profound impact upon anthropology, receiving an enthusiastic reception among Culture and Personality theorists during the middle decades of the 20th century. Yet, what Freud suggested was a parallelism between individual and asocial forms of neurosis (as a subjective status) and certain “cultural products” such as taboos, animism and totemic beliefs. The subtitle intrigued many anthropologists: Some points of agreement between the mental lives of savages and neurotics.
Published in 1913, Totem and Taboo reflected Freud’s incursions into anthropological knowledge, presenting arguments that were inspired by evolutionist proposals, such as Frazer’s writings on the notion of the totem and about taboo beliefs and practices. In fact, anthropology’s influence on Freud’s theories is clearly acknowledged in one of his most provoking works, Totem and Taboo.
This statement reveals the long-lasting dialogue between anthropology and psychoanalysis, drawing our attention to the development of suchrelationship over the last one hundred years. Conversely, no other social or behavioral science so affected Freud’s thinking over the course of his long career” (1984:444). In the book review on Edwin Wallace’s Freud and Anthropology, Joan Mark argued that no “scientific discipline outside his own gave Sigmund Freud’s ideas such long-sustained and critical attention as did anthropology.
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