Totem/Totemization: A construction that can have either abstract or physical presence that is the embodiment of an investment (particularly of a group) in a symbol that comes to represent for that group a pillar of shared identity. Totems can be ideas and beliefs or objects. In premodern tribes, we might see physical totems like statues and icons that the tribe invests with symbolic meaning and perhaps also spiritual or magical power or "mana" (as Jung liked to say). Tribal rituals that celebrate, confirm, or heal identity may center around these totems, which are often treated with reverence (or feared). But along with that reverence, there is almost always also a taboo that signifies and enforces the inaccessibility or impenetrability of the totem/symbol. That is, a member of the tribe cannot say, "But this is just a piece of stone that Fred carved out of that boulder over there. It is not a god or spirit. We only pretend it is." Tribe members who violate the taboos attached to totems are often treated very harshly as heretical, or they are exiled, or killed. The taboo doesn't usually need to be articulated. It is subconsciously understood. One does not "penetrate" or see through tribal totems.
Why? Because that threatens to bring down the whole facade of tribal identity construction. And that's dangerous both individually and collectively. My understanding of totem is, I think, compatible with more conventional anthropological understandings, but it has (and emphasizes) a very psychological dimension. For me, totemization is an inevitability predisposed by our mental, physiological, evolved architecture. It is not an irrational logic error or misstep of thought. It's a piece of the universal human condition, an omnipresent aspect and structural element of human identity construction. No one is "immune" to totemization. It is one of the essential vehicles of the creation and function of selfhood.
More typically in modern society totems are ideas, beliefs, or attitudes . . . and this is where we often stumble psychologically in trying to understand them. A belief or idea might have a mechanical function . . . like an algorithm. It might solve a problem. It might have its own logic. And it is common for moderns to imagine that their ideas are somehow autonomously valid and interchangeable in almost any context. So when we compare and debate our most precious ideas, we invest in them something our our identity. If our ideas are not well received or they are seemingly disproved, it is not just an obstacle to our logic, it is potentially crushing to our sense of self . . . because our totems are being attacked or degraded. But because of the instinctive taboo protecting identity totems, we struggle mightily to recognize just how and why we are invested in our ideas, beliefs, and attitudes in the ways we are. We more easily fall into the habit of treating ideas as if they had their own inner truths and meanings . . . like they are not arbitrary or contextually relative.
These totems have to be defended because the selfhood they are invested with has to be preserved. When our selfhood dissolves, we fall apart and become non-functional. Depression, crisis, breakdown, disease. These are all psychological terms for systems of identity that are not functioning in an adaptive and self-sustaining way. There is no such thing as functionality without identity for our species. The identity needs to function (mediating the outer world) for the organism to function.
In Jungianism, there are a number of totemized ideas and attitudes that define and/or symbolize much of Jungian identity. "Soul" is a big one (which I'll try to address below). "The unconscious" is another. "Individuation" has been one, but it has been decaying because no one has demonstrated that it actually works. "Archetype" can be one, and it is also decaying under criticism and a seeming lack of scientific (as well as ideological) support . . . largely because it has a strong biological or genetic foundation, and Jungianism doesn't like biology.
Such totems often have varying degrees of "sacredness". The more sacred they are, the stronger the taboos that protect them. As identity totems decay (which happens as if they were anticipated "gods" that did not actually show up to protect the tribe when they were most needed), tribal identity suffers, becomes imbalanced or diseased. The primary mechanism for maintaining tribal identity totems is fortification, defense, denial, collective forgetting, repression . . . but sometimes these mechanisms are not powerful enough to deal with a particular assault on a totem. As they grow ill or break down, tribe members don't know how to "be" as they once seemed to. When denial and repression of the decay can't be maintained any longer, other reactions (equally unconscious) might occur. A general loss of faith in the tribe might make members more susceptible to outside influences that seem to promise more robust and secure identity totems.
There was, I believe, one mechanism that was classically used to deal with the decay of identity totems in premodern tribes: shamanism. To have an identity totem decay is experienced like a "loss of soul" or loss of functional connection to the Self system's dynamic organizing principles. To not know how to "be" is a disease of identity. Although rites and rituals in tribal society might function to treat and "recharge" totems externally, there needs to be a corresponding internal treatment in the individual. Every individual of the tribe has a role in maintaining tribal identity totems. Shamanic rituals that addressed the individual were meant, I feel, to help reconstitute the narrative connection the individual has to the totem. As a result, the practice of shamanism was characteristically narrative, i.e., it involved some kind of "restorying" that sought to tie the individual to the tribal "soul" and shared identity totems. One of the most typical narrative forms is the "soul retrieval", where the shaman "flies" into the other world to discover and rescue the lost soul, bringing it back to the outer world and reuniting it with the body.
What that provides is a renewed narrative of connection to tribal identity totems for the suffering individual. And it can actually work, as long as there is a context of shared beliefs and values. In other words, much of psychic health is a matter of faith in the shared narratives and identity totems of the tribe. The scientific validity of the means of treatment and the objective "truth" of the narrative are of little importance. It is largely "faith" that heals wounds like "loss of soul". One can be a rationalistic, materialistic atheist and go to a psychotherapist. The psychotherapist might have some good ways of languaging the problems of the patient and some logical recommendations for how to address those problems. But what matters most to the "healing" of the patient is how much faith s/he has in those narratives . . . not how objectively "true" they are.
