Totem and Taboo

THE essays treated here appeared under the su­btitle of this book in the first numbers of the peri­odical Imago edited by me. They represent my first efforts to apply view-points and results of psychoa­nalysis to unexplained problems of racial psycho­logy. In method this book contrasts with that of W. Wundt and the works of the Zurich Psychoanaly­tic School. The former tries to accomplish the same object through assumptions and procedures from non-analytic psychology, while the latter follow the opposite course and strive to settle problems of in­dividual psychology by referring to material of racial psychology. I am pleased to say that the first stimu­lus for my own works came from these two sources.