Resumo

SAVI, Bruno Stamato. Totem and taboo: two archaic symbolic systems in a contemporary point of view of capitalism. Estud. psicanal. [online]. 2021, n.55, pp.57-77. ISSN 0100-3437.

The objective of this work is to present a psychoanalytic vision that is not restricted to a clinical perspective, moving towards a more social one. Freud's work ‘Totem and Taboo' (1912-1913) was used as an axis, in which the author compared primitive peoples with neurotics and the intense relationship between individual ceremonies and collective ceremonies. Recognizing Freud's attempt to explain not only the origin of religion, but where the sacred totemic symbols and interdicts originated - those archaic prohibitions placed as taboos -, this work is limited to a more current view of the totemic myth associated with capitalism. Capitalism has a symbolic system similar to the totemism of tribal society, by elaborating a classification system that organizes differences and similarities between subjects and objects to be consumed in contemporary culture. If this requirement of capitalism, that is, the duty to consume, is not respected, the fear of not consuming and the feeling of exclusion from society, can direct the subject to a more extreme form of consumption: an impulse to consume too much, without desire and without knowing consciously why you do it. The acceleration of chronological time nowadays also puts the subject's psychic time into consumption. As the Ego is split, it is directed to the reality of living by immediacy, consuming time/money/body with objects and things directed beyond the principle of pleasure, going towards a great conflict between life drive and death drive.

Palavras-chave : Totem and taboo; Capitalism; Compulsion; Splitting of the ego; Acting out.

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