Totem and Taboo
Sigmund FreudQuotes
We can easily guess that magic is the earlier and the more important part of animistic technique, for among the means with which spirits are to be treated there are also found the magic kind, and magic is also applied where spiritualization of nature has not yet, as it seems to us, been accomplished.
Worshipped as a god one day, he is killed as a criminal the next.
Genetically the asocial nature of the neurosis springs from its original tendency to flee from a dissatisfying reality to a more pleasurable world of phantasy.
Anything which for any reason arouses dread or is mysterious, becomes subject to taboo.
The estrangement from reality is at the same time a withdrawal from human companionship.
Sounds good huh?
The prohibition derived from this attribute is also designated as taboo, and lastly taboo, in the literal sense, includes everything that is sacred, above the ordinary, and at the same time dangerous, unclean and mysterious.
The most remarkable and also the most important result of the formation of a group is the ‘exaltation or intensification of emotion’ produced in every member of it.