Magic is the technique associated with an animist conception of the world. It seeks to impose on objects in the external world laws that are part of mental life and, more generally, to subject natural phenomena to human will. The magical practices of primitive peoples are compared by Freud to children's play, art, and neurosis.

In chapter three of Totem and Taboo (1912-1913a), Freud develops his ideas about magic and a modality of thought—"magical thought"—that he compares to the omnipotence of ideas. His remarks are taken directly from his reading of sociologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss, Salomon Reinach, Sir Edward Tylor, and Sir James Frazer. They reflect not only the utility of such ideas for psychoanalysis and psychopathology (obsessional neurosis, paranoia) but also the modifications that the psychoanalytic approach can provide to our understanding of the concept of magic. Returning to an idea already...