ABSTRACT
Prehistoric humans were fascinated with animals and reliant on them, dressed in their skins, wearing their horns and claws, and enacting their mannerisms. Transcendental human values have also frequently been portrayed through the form of an animal with appropriate attributed traits. Sigmund Freud recognized that religious rituals protected the Wolf Man from the fearful consequences of his animal phobias which represented his primitive oedipal conflicts. The theme of killing the parental figure in animal form and linking the event to nurturance and eating rituals is common to these and many other spiritual ceremonies performed in many other cultures around the world. Anthropological field studies attempted to link the socialization practices of primary household institutions in a culture to the development of a "basic" personality. Applied psychoanalytic studies also investigated the social institutions which fulfilled and gave expression to certain aspects of the cultural personality.
