Freud proceeds from the assumption of the identity of “prehistoric” culture and the culture of “savage” peoples, based largely on the similarity of mythology. This assumption is consistent with the concept of the development of society from “primitive” to “civilized.” To do this, Freud considers the native tribes of Australia, who were isolated and, according to ethnographers, retained many archaic features. The author notes that the lack of high morality inherent in the “modern” person regarding the manifestation of sexual desires, expected from “pathetic naked cannibals”, encounters a contradiction in the fact that, at least regarding the severity of incestuous prohibitions, the “savages” went much further than you can imagine it. The entire social structure of such a society is organized around the prohibition of incest, symbolically manifested in the form of totemistic prohibitions, which later became religious. Totemism is manifested in the fact that the primitive tribe is divided into clans not related by blood, and each of them has its own living totem a creature or element that is perceived by the tribe as the progenitor of the clan, whose name it bears. In addition, the totem functions as an assistant, an oracle, and is often a threat to members of other clans, but treats its descendants favorably. The totem is often transmitted matrilineally, in any case, this type of transmission is the most archaic. Members of the clan do not consume the totemic animal as food, except for ritual consumption, and often liken their body and behavior to it. Members of clans do not usually live together, and intra-clan sexual relations are strictly prohibited. They are immediately punished, usually by death, by the entire tribe, even if the persons who entered into the relationship belong to different tribes. That is, the prohibitions force one to observe clan exogamy. Freud notes that the taboos on intra-clan sexual relations are in no way derived from the system of totemism, and are similar to the incestuous taboos of modern man, although very exaggerated. Such an overgrown, expanded taboo on incest refers primarily to prohibitions on the expression of a boy’s sexual feelings towards his mother, and will apply not only to the mother and sisters, but to all women of the clan, regardless of kinship. Thus, hereditary, consanguineous kinship among the Australian aborigines it is replaced by totemic prohibitions, and modern incestuous prohibitions look in this light as a special case of totemic “kinship.” “We must admit that these savages are even more sensitive to incest than we are. They probably have more temptations and therefore need more extensive protective measures against it.” “... the dangerous magical power of “Mana” corresponds to two real abilities: the ability to remind a person of his forbidden desires and the seemingly more significant ability to tempt him to violate the prohibition in favor of these desires. Both faculties merge, however, into one if we assume that it would be in the spirit of primitive mental life if the awakening of the memory of a forbidden action was associated with the awakening of a tendency to perform it. In this case, memory and temptation coincide again.” A taboo is a series of prohibitions and restrictions that initially have no religious basis. This is a ban for the sake of a ban. Many taboos were “rewritten” in the Foucauldian sense, again brought under a religious and even scientific basis. But some of them never found a home in one or another conceptual scheme. In Azerbaijan, for example, for a man, regardless of age, to smoke in front of his father, or any other paternal figure (aksakal), is considered a gross act of disrespect, while drinking alcohol with the same persons is considered commonplace. The concept of “taboo” itself has an ambivalent meaning, at least for a modern, adult subject, these meanings are more or less separated. Holy, sacred - unclean, creepy, dangerous. The concept of "sacred"awe,” according to Freud, coincides with the meaning of this word. Perhaps the word “filthy” also has a certain relationship to “taboo”, if we understand it not only as something pagan, but actually something that is not very pleasant to “touch” for unobvious reasons. “Whoever breaks the taboo, thanks to this has become a taboo.” A taboo is a kind of “infection” or “charge” that is caused by the magical energy of Mana. This energy is the cause of sanctification and desecration, two opposing archaic concepts that still exist today. This energy is characteristic of all states of transition, for the state of society and individuals, which V. Turner calls Limenality. In his work “Symbol and Ritual” he explores an alternative to “structure” - the phenomenon of “communitas”, characteristic of certain social and age groups, for rites of passage. Persons in a state of limenality are taboo. In “communitas” - a fraternal society, where everyone is equal, where there is no elder (or rather, he is killed and eaten), a complete ban is usually imposed on sexual relations; the removal of all (almost all) taboos is less common, as for example, in hippie colonies. The original, non-verbalizable source of taboo is demonic power, fear of demons; liberation from this otherworldly force, the removal of the demonic core makes the taboo a self-referential social phenomenon. Taboo is part of the system of morality, religion, traditions, and laws. In the earliest manifestations of taboo - holy reverence and unclean - disgust are fused together, and here we can draw an analogy with the child’s attitude towards feces, as a prototype of everything unclean and at the same time super valuable. The rigidity and intrusiveness of the taboo demand can be compared to the interference of a demand. Another, the anal phase of the subject bursting into the world and forcing him to question desire. “Touch marks the beginning of all possession, of any attempt to subjugate a person or object.” The most superficial explanation of this demonic force lies, it seems to me, in the properties of the object of anal desire. Hence the ambivalence of feelings associated with the aggressiveness of the anal object, which consists in an increased ability to get dirty when touched, leave a smell, that is, to violate the subject, introduce indignation into it, spoil it with your touch. Moreover, it must be taken into account that the “pure” subject never existed in reality, since defecation existed much earlier than the subject. Feces mark the subject, maybe this touch is the primary mark that, in the dimension of synchrony, differentiates the subject into a “clean” one who has not defecated and a “dirty” one who is rejected (Ugh! Move away, you pooped!), that is, taboo. And so far the child will not be washed, his diaper will not be changed, that is, until a ceremony of ritual ablution is performed over him, he will remain under a temporary taboo, untouchable, marked, limenal, having an uncertain status. An adult acquires this status in our “civilized” post-Soviet society forever, for example, by developing schizophrenia or breaking homosexual taboos. The distinction between clean and unclean is most clearly visible in places of confinement. The caste of the “lowered” - those who violated the taboo (not necessarily homosexual) is itself under a taboo. You can get into this caste by sitting at the table with the “lowered ones,” drinking tea with them, touching them with your hand (you can’t even hit them with your hands), or taking something from them. Such violators are called “finished” (the word “contact” speaks for itself), “shackled”, and it does not matter whether they knew about the taboo status of the one with whom they were communicating or not. You can also get into this caste if, due to some kind of violation, the culprit is doused with urine, smeared with sperm, feces, or touched with genitals. That is, the offense itself does not lead to automatic transition to the untouchable caste; for this, a ritual of desecration is required - “zashkvar”, the opposite of the ritual of purification. Obsession neurosis, following Freud, can be called “taboo” neurosis, or fear of touch.Touch is a metaphor for any contact, and, as is known, the process of repression is associated with the fact that the idea is deprived of contact with its verbal part. Signification is the only “touch” given to the subject. A suppressed idea is treated in the same way as someone who is “grimmed”, “polluted” - that is, they do not communicate with him, they do not contact him, they do not talk to him, they do not name him. This pattern can be traced from “You stink!” I’m not talking to you,” children, to boycotts and economic sanctions at the political level. By the way, in Russian prisons it is not customary to call untouchables “roosters”; this word is taboo and replaced with the word “offended”; in Azerbaijani, the swear word that denotes those belonging to the “offended” caste is replaced with the word “üzdən iraq”, which literally translates as “away from faces.” The “offended” person cannot speak first if he is not addressed. He cannot speak, he is not named, he is “repressed.” The “resentment” also extends to all his property; it also becomes a source of mystical “infection.” I remember the words from a nursery rhyme: “You are no longer my friend. You are no longer my friend. Take your toys and don’t pee in my potty.” Thus, the analogy between basic intrapsychic processes and social relationships becomes obvious. Repression repeats social stigmatization, and according to Freud, in an obsessional neurotic, the counteraction of the conscious system is most pronounced, it makes the first repression, and through it the repressed idea subsequently returns. In this neurosis, the mechanism of reactive formation predominates, which, as it were, overcompensates for a suppressed, devoid of language (verbal expression) representation. “.. among savages, the name is a significant part and an important property of the personality, that they attribute to the word the full meaning of a thing.” At the same time, “savage “, that is, the subject hyper-compensatory becomes super-pure, and cannot calm down on this, becoming more and more purified in order to cope with the anxiety caused by the libidinal load of the repressed idea. Further onslaughts of the repressed force the prohibitions to spread over an ever-increasing territory, and an ever-increasing number of signifiers are involved. At the same time, the obsessions themselves and the methods of dealing with them begin to bear a striking resemblance to religious ceremonies, mystical rituals, which are also not motivated by anything other than traditions. A prohibition implies pleasure from a prohibited object, while a strict prohibition implies strong pleasure; note that it only implies, but does not guarantee in any way. The essence of the neurotic structure allows us to conclude that a neurotic person will not receive the promised pleasure, even by violating the prohibition. . And the neurotic knows this very well (of course, he knows with the knowledge that he does not know himself, but still), and therefore he is afraid of breaking the taboo, so he strictly, meticulously, obsessively follows all the instructions. I had a patient who was so afraid of undressing in front of the men around her and having sex with them that she forced all family members to write down all her actions up to the minute, and, in addition, to dissuade her if she had any doubts about this. During the dissuading procedure, which alone could reduce her anxiety, family members (especially her mother) explained in detail and with all the piquant details the reasons why this could not happen. I am convinced that if she had entered into real sexual relations, she would not have received even an insignificant share of the sadistic, exhibitionistic, homosexual and incestuous pleasure that she had with her mother several times a day. In Azerbaijan, among people of an overly “highly moral” class, it is customary to apologize if you have to tell your interlocutor that the speaker was in the shower or took a bath. This, on the one hand, emphasizes the high morality of a person, on the other hand, the fact that the moralist was in the bathroom naked, andno other way. As a result, the scopic attraction of both the speaker and the listening subject is satisfied, while external decency is completely preserved. The treatment of killed enemies in “primitive” tribes has a very strange character for a “civilized” person. It is as if a person acquires some kind of mystical power after death, and the requirements of the taboo are aimed at coping with this power: for this, the killer needs to reconcile with the murdered person, he must “punish” himself with restrictions, repent, cleanse himself, and perform an atonement rite. The lack of mourning for those killed in modern wars can lead to the development of various symptoms in the killer. In general, we must admit that Bert Hellinger was somewhat right when he suggested that the murderer bow his head to the murdered man, even if the murdered man was an enemy. Regarding the attitude of primitive peoples to leaders, Freud emphasizes two principles: the savage must fear and protect those in power, according to the dictates of the taboo. The amount of Mana energy in these individuals is so high that they can both kill and heal with their touches. Freud explains the increased concern for rulers with the same fear of their own hostility towards them, that is, excessive love for the leader has a reactive origin, as with obsessional neuroses. On the other hand, an overvalued attitude towards leaders is similar to the attitude towards a persecutor in a paranoid system. In other works, Freud points out the connection between homosexuality and paranoia, but here, in Totem and Taboo, this aspect is touched upon in the context of the myth of the father of the primitive horde. The sons who killed their father “thus saved an organization that made them strong and was based on homosexual feelings and manifestations that could develop in them during the exile.” All expectations and accompanying disappointments are projected onto the leader. The ruler becomes the “scapegoat” of the entire tribe, as described by Frazer in The Golden Bough. The rulers occupy an absolute privileged position, they are allowed everything that is prohibited to ordinary members of society, while the most ordinary, familiar actions (for example, freedom of movement) are for them often not possible. In this ambivalence, the pitiful and unenviable position of the ruler, Freud sees a parallel with obsessive neurosis, in the symptoms of which “the suppressed desire and its suppressing force merge in simultaneous and general satisfaction.” The dead man in primitive tribes combines power and hostility. It is still endowed with such magical, dark power among modern peoples. Almost all nations consider a cemetery to be a place both holy and cursed at the same time. You cannot take anything home from the cemetery, cemetery soil has the ability to cause illness and death (it is often used for witchcraft), Muslims say a special prayer at the entrance to the cemetery in which they welcome the dead, after visiting burial places or after touching a corpse, a ritual of ablution "ghusul". The dead become dangerous and hostile to their closest relatives; in our country, for example, when they talk about how the deceased loved someone, they always add “so that he doesn’t fall in love now.” Zoroastrians were especially wary of corpses, since all elements were considered holy and were not allowed to be desecrated by a human corpse. It could not be buried (to desecrate the earth), left just like that (air), drowned or burned was also impossible for appropriate reasons (burning a corpse was punishable by death). All that remained was to throw the dead man to the mercy of predators. A good half of the Avesta is devoted to cleansing from corpse defilement and a program of actions to be taken when encountering a corpse, and the actions differ depending on the degree of decomposition of the body. The rest of the book is devoted to the praise of Ahura Mazda, the curse of the devas, the condemnation of male homosexuality and killer dogs. Zoroastrians wearing masks during worship. Masks are needed in order to protect the sacred fire from desecration by breathing. By right, Zoroastrianism can be called.