Chapter 22—Totemism and the Primitive Mind

1 Duff-Cooper, 1994, p. xv.

Needham, 1963/1975, p. xxxix.

Although Needham discussed Arnold van Gennep in that volume, he mentioned neither Victor Turner nor Edmund Leach, whose works were directly relevant.

Reversal is another form of anti-structure, for instance, giving greater privilege to women than men, or paupers over kings.

Frazer’s output was massive; a hundred-page bibliography of his works was compiled by Theodore Besterman (A Bibliography of Sir James George Frazer, 1934). As a matter of historical interest, during the time he prepared that bibliography, Besterman was also serving as the librarian and investigations officer of the Society for Psychical Research. Besterman went on to become an eminent bibliographer. For more on Besterman, see The Age of The Enlightenment: Studies Presented to Theodore Besterman, Edited by W. H. Barber, J. H. Brumfitt, R. A. Leigh, R. Shackleton, and S. S. B. Taylor, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967. See especially the final chapter by Sir Frank Francis, director and principal librarian of the British Museum. See also Theodore Besterman, Bibliographer And Editor: A Selection of Representative Texts edited by Fransesco Cordasco, The Scarecrow Press, 1992.

Anthropology and the Humanities by Ruth Benedict, American Anthropologist, Vol. 50, 1948, p. 587. Frazer’s remark needs to be understood in light of his personality. He was quite solitary, and normal social relations were difficult for him. He worked in his library 12 hours a day, seven days a week, did only limited lecturing and played almost no active role in professional societies. His individualistic rationalism seems suited for someone so isolated from usual human contact. Bronislaw Malinowski knew Frazer for over 30 years and described some of his peculiarities in the chapter “The Paradox of Frazer’s Personality and Work” in A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays, 1944, see especially pp. 181-183.

Edmund Leach’s essay, “Golden Bough or Gilded Twig?” (1961), provides an assessment of Frazer’s contributions. Leach noted that when the available sources were insufficient for Frazer, he would invent facts to insure a pleasing literary effect.

8 For a historical perspective on these debates see Robert Fraser’s The Making of the Golden Bough (1990).

Alan Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research, 1968.

10 Presidential Address by E. Clodd, Folk-Lore, Vol. 6, 1895, pp. 54-81. See pp. 78-81. For follow-up see Protest of a Psycho-Folklorist by Andrew Lang, FolkLore, Vol. 6, 1895, pp. 236-248, and Clodd’s immediate reply on pp. 248-258.

Not all members of the RPA were antagonistic, a few were psychical researchers. 12

Frazer is invoked in Paul Kurtz’s The Transcendental Temptation (1986) and Richard Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

Bronislaw Malinowski reported that Lang’s criticism of Frazer’s The Golden Bough “so deeply upset and irritated Frazer that, as he told me, he had to interrupt his work on the subject for several months. After that experience Frazer

never read adverse criticisms or reviews of his books” (Malinowski, 1944, p. 183).

Lang was not the only anthropologist and psychical researcher involved in the debates on totemism; another was Northcote W. Thomas. See the bibliography of Andrew Duff-Cooper’s Andrew Lang on Totemism (1994) for a listing of some of Thomas’s works. Psychologist William McDougall also wrote on totem-ism (e.g., “The Relations Between Men and Animals in Sarawak” by Charles Hose and W. McDougall, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 31, 1901, pp. 173-213. McDougall later served as president of the SPR and mentor to J. B. Rhine.

Needham was instrumental in the publication of Duff-Cooper’s work on

Lang.

“Andrew Lang: Folklorist and Critic” (in French), Folklore, Vol. 23, 1912, pp. 366-369. See also Rodney Needham’s 1967 Introduction to van Gennep’s The Semi-Scholars, p. xiii.

17 Durkheim, 1912/1965, p. 170. Durkheim in American Sociology, by Roscoe C. Hinkle, Jr., (1960/1964,

p. 269).

Main Currents in Sociological Thought: Volume II: Durkheim, Pareto, Weber

by Raymond Aron (1967/1970, p. 64).

For some discussion of this idea, see Emile Durkheim and C. G. Jung:

Structuring a Transpersonal Sociology of Religion by Susan F. Greenwood, 1990.

William McDougall’s The Group Mind (1920, New York: Putnam’s) was poorly received. For a more recent comment on the idea group minds, see Mary Douglas’ How Institutions Think (1987). Freud’s concept of the superego is by no means identical with these ideas, but it is related. Similarly, it gets little note today. A number of commentators have discussed its decline (e.g., Alexander Mitscher-lich’s Society Without the Father: A Contribution to Social Psychology, Translated by Eric Mosbacher, New York: Schocken Books, 1970 (Originally published in 1963), and Allen Wheelis’ The Quest for Identity, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1958).

Freud, 1913/1961, p. 26.

See Doty, 1986; Evans-Pritchard, 1965/1972. Despite Freud’s flawed explanation, he did recognize an important conjunction of features that many others did not wish to acknowledge. More recently Rene Girard has addressed some of these fundamental issues of violence, sexuality, and authority in terms of mimesis. For an attempted revival of some of Freud’s ideas, see Robin Fox’s The Red Lamp

of Incest (1980), New York: E. P. Dutton.

The trickster is particularly relevant to psychoanalytic theories because he violates incest prohibitions. Further, the African trickster god Eshu-Elegba is at

times associated with long hair, a symbol of magical and sexual power.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung, 1962/1963, p. 150. For more on this exchange, see C. G. Jung’s Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity by Robert Aziz, 1990, pp. 93-110.

26 Levy-Bruhl, 1910/1985, p. 306.

Ibid. p. 302.

28 Ibid. p. 127.

Ibid. p. 109.

30 Ibid. p. 109.

31 Ibid. p. 38.

Ibid. p. 361.

Littleton has an understanding of liminality and the primitive mind, but his openness to them seems to have been accompanied by some dubious judgement. He was friendly with Carlos Castaneda and endorsed his work (“An Emic Account of Sorcery: Carlos Castaneda and the Rise of a New Anthropology” by C. Scott Littleton, 1976). Even in his 1985 introduction to How Natives Think Littleton did not seem convinced that Castaneda’s work was a hoax and only noted that it “has been called into serious question” (p. xlvii). More recently Litttl-ton suggested that Castaneda may have been abducted by extraterrestrial aliens and that Don Juan Matus was perhaps an ET alien. Littleton cited the work of John Mack, David Jacobs, and Budd Hopkins in support of the idea (Letter, The Excluded Middle, No. 7, 1997, p. 6). Littleton’s deficient judgement is compelling evidence of the dangers of the liminal that face academics. Contact with liminality can make it difficult for one to distinguish fantasy from reality, making one an easy victim of hoaxes.

Translator’s Preface To The Second Edition by John W. Harvey (1949), see Otto, 1917/1975, p. xvi.

Otto, 1917/1975, p. 100.

36 Ibid. pp. 14-15.

Freud, 1913/1961, p. 26.

Ibid. pp. 26-27.

Durkheim, 1912/1965, pp. 359-360.

Ibid. p. 360.

Ibid. p. 358.

Ibid. p. 358.

Otto, 1917/1975, p. 4.

44 Ibid. p. 64.

The date for Weber’s Economy and Society is for the original manuscript. See Ephraim Fischoff s appendix in Weber’s The Sociology of Religion, Boston:

Beacon Press, 1964, p. 277. (Original work published 1922, after Weber’s death).

For a discussion of some of the interpretive controversies, see Structure and Infrastructure in Primitive Society: Levi-Strauss and Radcliffe-Brown by Neville Dyson-Hudson in Macksey and Donato, 1970/1972, pp. 218-246.

Macksey & Donato, 1970/1972.

Howard Gardner, 1973/1981, p. 135.

Totemism, p. 98.

50 Some of the very same issues are addressed in mystical theology. See for instance Ewert Cousins’ Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites (1978).

51 Gardner, 1973/1981, p. 113.

Ashley, 1988, p. 105.

Leach, The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, 1967, p. xvii.

In his discussion of bricolage in The Savage Mind (1962/1966, p. 17), Levi-Strauss gave four brief examples, one involved Georges Melies and another Charles Dickens. Both were magic performers, a fact probably unknown to Levi-Strauss.

Leach, Claude Levi-Strauss, 1970, p. 28.

56 One cannot divorce the ideas from the man, and Levi-Strauss’ comments on his own personality give insight into his theories. He admitted that “I never had, and still do not have, the perception of feeling my personal identity. I appear to myself as the place where something is going on, but there is no ‘I’, no ‘me.’” (1978/1979, p. 3-4). He also acknowledged that “I don’t have the feeling that I write my books. I have the feeling that my books get written through me” (1978/1979, p. 3). These statements are a bit reminiscent of mediumship. His comparisons and metaphors often require reflection but are frequently fruitful. The opening sentence of his book Totemism is intriguing: “Totemism is like hysteria …”

Comparing the ideas of the two men is a difficult task, Ron Messer (1986), who has written on the trickster, has made an attempt to do so, with perhaps only limited success.

58 James Boon, in an appendix appropriately entitled Trickstering in his book Other Tribes, Other Scribes (1982), remarks on these three anthropologists’ interest in marginality and the supernatural.