In this brilliant exploratory attempt (originally written in 1912-1913) to extend the analysis for the individual psyche to the analysis for the individual psyche to society and culture, Freud laid the lines for much of his later thought. Basing his investigations on the findings of anthropologists, Freud found that primitive societies and the individual mutually illuminate each other. Freud came to the conclusion that totemism and its accompanying restriction of exogamy derive from a primitive dread of incest, and that taboo customs parallel closely the symptoms of compulsion and neurosis. Authorized translation with an Introduction by A.A. Brill.