Freud applies psychoanalysis to anthropology and the origins of society. Using reports on the customs of Indigenous peoples, as then understood, he compares taboos and rituals with the symptoms of neurotic patients. He then offers a bold, much-criticised theory about the beginnings of religion, morality and the family. Modern anthropologists reject much of its evidence, but the book shows his ambition to explain culture as well as the individual mind, and it has influenced debate for over a century.