This is a book review on Freud’s Murder Mourning and Melancholia.
Freud wrote about how Australia’s aboriginals banned incest and sexual relations with people from the same totem clan. This was because members of the same clan are likely to be physically or remotely related to one another.
I have read up on America’s native peoples who have been living there even before Christopher Columbus or any other white people reached there. Native Americans were also called other names like American Indians, or North American Indians. They have names to represent their roots and ancestors. These names are like totems. The people grow into their names as they try to show qualities attributed in their names.
African tribes also have totems to represent individual clans. Although the Americas, Africa and Australia are far apart, yet their native peoples’ cultures, customs, traditions and beliefs share some similarities.
Three quarters of this book was on “Totem and Taboo”. There is a sole book on Totem and Taboo. This book merely repeated the same material here maybe to classify it under murder.
I didn’t find this book outstanding.
Reference
Freud, S. (2005). On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia. Penguin Books: UK.
Some of Freud’s original texts were ever published in different publications in 1940.
Guide to Dream Interpretation for Native Americans.
