2 - Totem and Taboo

Summary

Freud was invested in translating abstract, experience-distant “metaphysics” into the more existentially accessible, experience-near dimensions of human experience. Psychoanalysis did this by providing a “function” (projection) tied to a “developmental infrastructure” (the interplay between id, ego, and super-ego as they are determined by the stages of childhood development) to any metaphysical abstraction. In other words, as noted in the introductory chapter, religion is not from the hand of the divine but the very human projection of complex developmental issues and unconscious wishes. One can subsume all of Freud’s varied analyses of the expressions of religion (be they myths, symbols, scripture, faith, conversion, mysticism, etc.) under this general methodological umbrella.