Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/94

 86 COLLECTIVE REVIEWS

parison religious and neurotic ceremonial. The appearance of this article ^'Obsessive behaviour and religious usages" was of immense importance in opening the way to the analytic understanding of social religious phenomena.

In "Totem and Taboo" (16) Freud took as his starting point the objective facts of the social and religious life of savages and the early ancient peoples and was thereby enabled to present a sketch in main outline of the origin and development of religion as its deepest assumptions and ultimate aims. PVeud begins with the savage taboo prohibitions and injunctions, which in analysis reveal themselves as expressions of a psychic tension brought about by ambivalence. From the most ancient and mo.st strictly observed of the taboo-prcjhibitions of primitive races, viz. that of refraining from taking the life of the totem, Freud pursues totemism as the first stage in religion and communal organisation down to its be- ginnings. This is not the place to follow out the course of Freud's investigation, in which is compressed an account of many centuries of culture development: all we can say is that it brings out clearly that the origin of development of religion is the reaction against the crime of parricide which bulks so largely in primitive life, that it explains the animal sacrifice as arising from totemism and shows the wakings of conscience, tender feeling and remorse as directed towards the father to be factors in the building up of religion. This was for the first time achieved by the aid of psycho- analysis in the direction of the causes of the great social institutions, and a comprehension of their genesis, the changes and develop- ments they undergo in consecjucnce of the working of psychic forces. The significance of the Freudian conception for the science of reUgion— let us admit this openly — is not yet fully within our survey: the future only can and will show how deeply it penetrates the subject, and to the achievement of what results it may stimu- late the course of research.

In this theory of the origin of development of religion Freud has. laid the foundations of a structure which can only be completed by the work of generations of investigators. Among the finst who equipped themselves for the task of execution and filling in of detail were Abraham and the writer of this review. Abraliam in his remarkable work which mainly sets out to provide the expla- nation of certain limitations and transformations of the desire to look, finds surprising analogies for the neurotic symptoms of his