Taboo Personal and Collective Representations

<p><em>Taboo Personal and Collective Representations</em> examines the symbolic nature of taboo asking what is the purpose of a taboo and how does it vary cross-culturally? The book focuses on the concept of taboo as an in-between organizing principle which separates and differentiates stages through a ritual process of separation of <i>order</i> as clean/blessed from <i>disorder </i>as polluted/disassociated. </p><p></p><p>This book uses an interdisciplinary approach which compares the anthropological ethnological sociological and depth psychological perspectives of renowned scholars in their examination of taboos. Unconscious/conscious taboos influence how we perceive transitional indeterminate states across margins in the maturation and individuation processes. The book argues that a taboo embodies the perilous symbolic meaning of such a rite of passage and that its emotional value and intensity in the form of symptomology varies across cultures.</p><p></p><p><em>Taboo Personal and Collective Representations</em> will be of great interest to researchers academics and post-graduate students in the fields of anthropology ethnology origins of religion race gender and depth psychology.</p>