Freud, Smith and Feuerbach on sacrifice

This paper concerns the origins, significance and social context of the theory of sacrifice embraced by Freud in Totem and Taboo. Freud attributed the theory to William Robertson Smith (1927 [1889]) but Ludwig Feuerbach, whose works Freud had intensively studied as a student, had outlined the major points of «Smith's» theory in 1862. Had Freud read Feuerbach's essay and if so, what was the significance of his «forgetting» it? We compare the …