Having established the concept of totemism, it was McLennan (1869) who first suggested that many customs and usages in various societies, ancient and modern were to be explained as remnants of a totemic age. Since then various pictures and updates of the concept of totemism have been offered, most noticeably, by Rheinach (1900) whose 12 articles, not only relegated one principle (of descent form the totemic animal and subsequent prohibition of killing or eating it) but entirely overlooked the other of the prohibition of sex with members of the same clan/totem. Freud therefore looks at the more accurate picture of totemism, offered by Frazer in Totem and Exogamy (1910). He begins by stating that the members of a totem clan call themselves by the name of their totem, and commonly believe themselves to be descended from it. Thus the nomenclature is thought to correspond to a blood bond, and thus would correspond to a prohibition of members of the same clan from marrying or having sexual intercourse with each other - exogamy. Along with Frazer's and Rheinach's, Freud looks at a few other accounts of totemism, to present the idea of differences of opinion between authorities, on totemism.
Given that totemism has been cited as a regular and universal phenomenon, Freud suggests that it is even more important to explain the ideas such as descent from the totem and the reasons for exogamy, and its relation with the totem organisation.
(a) The Origin of Totemism
Freud divides the theories on the origin of totemism into three groups:
(i) the nominalist
(ii) the sociological
(iii) the psychological.
(i) Nominalist Theories
These see totems as 'heraldic badges' by means of which individuals, families and clans sought to distinguish themselves from one another. (Keane, 1899, and Max-Muller, 1897). These theories then propose that as a result of the vagueness and unintelligibility of primitive speech, later generations interpreted these names as evidence of descent from the actual animals - i.e. totemism is a misunderstood form of ancestor worship. However how do these theories account for the importance that has become attached to this nomenclature? Lang (1903 and 1905) argued that the origin of the names had been forgotten, however the fact that amongst primitive men, a name is a man's principal component of his soul, equates to its importance as if a blood relationship, and thus automatically involves the totemic ordinances. However, despite the origin of these names having been forgotten, Lang proposes that they originated from the compulsion to differentiate groups and the fact that they borrowed animals' names, is not surprising and instances of this can still be seen today (e.g. in American football).
(ii) Sociological Theories
Rheinach and Durkheim (1912) argue that the totem is the visible representative of social religion among the races concerned, others such as Haddon (1902) propose that each clan subsisted upon one species or plant and traded with it among other clans, and thus assumed it as a name. Against this, is that feeding conditions of this kind are rarely found among primitive races, nor does it follow that this name would culminate in abstention from the favourite food. Freud looks at examples from the most primitive of tribes - of the Arunta nation - as most anthropologists have done, for evidence both for and against the theories cited thus far. However, due to controversial findings of such studies, it has been proposed that the Arunta are not, as originally thought the best representation of totemism - rather, as the most developed of Australia's tribes, they may represent the dissolution of totemism rather than its beginning.
(iii) Psychological Theories
Freud begins by looking at Frazer's first psychological theory, based on the belief of an 'external soul', however it does not bode well that Frazer himself later abandoned this theory in theory of a more sociological one as described above, as he tried to identify some simpler factor, primitive superstition behind the totem structures - for example the Arunta's remarkable story of conception (whereby the mother identifies the animal, or plant she recalls passing at the time she 'fell pregnant' and the connection between the sexual act and conception is eliminated). Again the main objections to such theories are the same as those to his second, sociological ones - that the Arunta seem to be far removed from the beginnings of totemism.
Another psychological theory of the origin of totemism has been proposed by Wilken (1884) that connects totemism with the belief in the transmigration of souls, however critics argue that it is more likely that transmigration was derived from totemism rather than vice versa.
A final psychological theory was put forward by Wundt (1912) based upon the facts that the original and most common totem is the animal, and secondly the earliest totem animals are identical with soul animals. Thus according to Wundt, totemism is directly connected with the belief in spirits, i.e. with animism.
(b) and (c) The Origin of Exogamy and its Relation to Totemism
Here Freud proposes that we face two opposing views - one which maintains that exogamy forms an inherent part of the totemic system, and the other which denies that there is any such connection, and that there convergence is a chance one.
Those that propose that exogamy is an inevitable consequence of the basic principles of totemism, are Durkheim (1898, 1902, 1905) and Andrew Lang, (1905) who argue that the prohibition against women of the same clan might operate even without any blood taboo. As regards chronological relations, Freud notes that most authorities agree that totemism is older, and that exogamy arose later.
Of those theories that propose that exogamy is independent of totemism, McLennan (1865) proposes that exogamy arose from the earlier practice of marriage by capture. Others have seen exogamy as a prevention of incest, and on considering the complications of Australian restrictions upon marriage, this opinion of Morgan (1877), Frazer (1910), Howitt (1904) and Baldwin Spencer it seems that they achieved the result they aimed at. But this theory implicates a second problem - what is the ultimate source of incest, which must be recognised as the root of exogamy?
Westermarck (1906) has explained the horror of incest on the ground that 'there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living closely together from early youth... ' However critics argue that there should not be any need to reinforce a deep human instinct by law. Furthermore, Freud's findings from psychoanalysis, that the earliest sexual excitations of youthful human beings are invariably incestuous in character, make Westermarck's ideas seem less likely. Having assessed other objections Freud concludes that whilst there is a choice between sociological, biological and psychological explanations, we are still ultimately ignorant of the origin of the horror of incest since none of the proposed solutions are satisfactory.
Freud, however then looks at Darwin's 'historical' perspective on the problem. He suggested that 'primaeval man aboriginally lived in small communities, each with as many wives as he could support and obtain, whom he would have jealously guarded against all other men.' This though, throws little light on the problem of whether totemism led to exogamy or vice versa.
(3) Freud then looks at psychoanalysis to throw more light on this problem. He notes that there is a great deal of resemblance between the relations of children and of primitive men towards animals. Despite children's uninhibited view of animals, frequently they develop a sudden animal phobia. From Freud's analysis of several cases of these phobias, he concludes that several features of totemism reappear in them, but reversed into their negative (except one instance of positive totemism in a child, reported by Ferenczi). Thus in applying psychoanalysis to the problem of totemism, he finds that if the totem animal substitutes the father, then the two prohibitions - not to kill the totem, nor to have sexual relations with a woman of the same totem - coincide with the two crimes of Oedipus. Assuming this equation is not mere chance, Freud proposes that this relation of totemism to the Oedipus complex, could present more information on the origin(s) of totemism and exogamy.
(4) Freud follows this with a look at the findings of William Robertson Smith (d.1894) who amongst other things, proposed the 'totem meal' and sacrificial ceremonies and their significance in totemism. The ethical force of the public sacrificial meal rested upon ancient ideas of the significance of eating and drinking together - as a symbol of fellowship, and kinship. Furthermore, Robertson Smith, proposed that 'the sacrificing community, the god and the sacrificial animal were of the same blood and members of one clan.' From this analysis, Robertson Smith (with Freud's support) concludes that the periodic killing and eating of the totem in times before the worship of anthropomorphic deities was an important element in totemic religion.
(5) When the ceremonial cruel slaughter and devouring of the blood, flesh and bones of the totem animal, is done, the slaughtered animal is lamented and bewailed - this is obligatory, imposed by a dread of threatened retribution, since the main purpose of the group occasion of the slaughter, is to disclaim the responsibility for the crime from an individual. A festival is a permitted, even obligatory breach of a prohibition. However why rejoice and mourn over the killing of the totem? Freud explains this in terms of the theory that the totem animal is a substitute for the father; as such the ambivalent emotional attitude reflects that of the father complex in modern life.
Freud then compares these two taboos of totemism, and finds that they are not on a par psychologically - protection of the totem animal (father) is founded on emotional motives, whereas the prohibition of incest has practical motives as well. Freud analyses and compares these prohibitions further, to conclude that psychoanalysis, contrary to more recent views of the totemic system, but in agreement with earlier ones, requires us to assume that totemism and exogamy are connected and had a simultaneous origin.
(6) Freud then looks at the theme of the totemic sacrifice and the relation of the son to the father, in the development of religions from totemism to their condition today. He highlights the known relations between the god and the sacrificed animal - (1) each god usually has an animal (or several) sacred to him (2) the victim is often the precise animal sacred to the god (3) the god was often worshipped in the form of the animal and (4) in myths the god often transforms himself into the animal that is sacred to him. Therefore it seems plausible that the god himself was the totem animal, and that he developed out of it at a later religious feeling.
Freud discusses Frazer's great work - The Golden Bough - where kings of tribes were foreigners and executed as a god at a particular festival and looks at the transition from the original human sacrifice (of the father) to an animal substitution, and then back to the original human form. Thus in their relation to sacrificial ceremonies, it can be seen that religions such as Christianity, use communion as an essentially fresh elimination of the father - a repetition of the guilty deed. Furthermore Freud points out the way in which Christianity, with the characteristic ambivalence, sees the son's greatest possible atonement of his father, brought at the same time the attainment of his wishes against his father - he himself became god, in place of, the father.
(7) Freud then looks at this theme of the hero's suffering, which can be found in many religions and myths. Why has the hero of the tragedy got to suffer? In brief, Freud proposes that it is because, he, the hero, is the primal father, and therefore the tragic guilt that he had to take on himself, relieved the 'chorus' of theirs.
Therefore, Freud concludes that such outcomes as these show that the beginnings of religion, morals, society, and art converge in the Oedipus Complex. This ties in the psychoanalytic findings of the father complex, and emotional ambivalence. Freud discusses our ignorance of the origin of this ambivalence, suggesting a few possible areas for future research.
Having established these relations, between the Oedipus Complex, exogamy and totemism with other aspects of life, Freud then mentions the assumptions upon which his conclusions are based. Namely that he depends on the assumption of the existence of the collective mind, in which mental processes occur as they do in the individual - without which assumption social psychology in general cannot exist. Secondly he has supposed that the sense of guilt for an action has persisted for many thousands of years and has remained operative in a generation which can have had no knowledge of that action. If this assumption is to be held, it prompts further questions:
(i) how much can we attribute to psychical continuity in the sequence of generations?
(ii) what are the ways and means employed by one generation to hand on its mental states to the next one?
Another difficulty that Freud looks at is that from psychoanalytic areas, of neurotics, whose sense of guilt is based upon psychical realities, and never factual ones. Could this be the same in primitive men (as discussed in the second essay) that they narcissistically overvalue their psychical acts to become real (as discussed in the third essay). If so, then the impulse or instinct to kill the father would be enough to produce the moral reaction that created totem and taboo.
Freud concludes by returning to the comparison of primitive people with neurotics, which led him into the present discussions. Whilst he has found striking similarities, he also notes that the analogy between them must not influence thought too far. There are distinctions too, which must be borne in mind. Whilst the difference that we make between thinking and doing, appears to be absent in both of them, neurotics are above all, inhibited in their actions, with them the thought is a complete substitute for the deed. Primitive men, on the other hand, are uninhibited, thought passes directly into action - with them it is rather the deed that is a substitute for the thought. Similarly, with the relationship he has identified between taboo and the Oedipus complex, not only their similarities but also their differences must be borne in mind.