7 - Speculative Works

Summary

Freud wrote some admittedly far-fetched speculative works addressing what he considered to be fundaments of the human psyche. Chapter 7 considers two of his most speculative pieces, “The return of totemism in childhood,” the fourth essay of his Totem and Taboo (1913), and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920).

Both writings, despite their fantastical nature, contain a coherence and completeness The Interpretation of Dreams lacks. Throughout the Totem and Taboo excerpt, Freud examines his suppositions and, in the end, offers an enlightening, if hypothetical, account of totemism, the evolution of religion, and a prehistoric piece of modern mentality. The steps, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, through which he reaches his improbable anchoring of mental life in dueling life and death instincts are clear, if avowedly extreme at the time.