Religion of the Semites, second edition, 1894, p. 454 et seq.
History of Marriage, pp. 66-70, 150-156, etc.
Golden Bough, third edition, part ii, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul. Frazer has discussed taboo generally. For a shorter account of taboo, see art. "Taboo" by Northcote Thomas in Encyclopædia Britannica, eleventh edition, 1911. Freud has lately (Imago, 1912) made an attempt to explain the origin of taboo psychologically by comparing it to neurotic obsessions. Taboo, Freud believes, has its origin in a forbidden act to perform which there is a strong unconscious tendency; an ambivalent attitude, that is, combining the opposite tendencies, is thus established. In this way Freud would account for the fact that tabooed persons and things are both sacred and unclean.