The Courtship of Law and Psychology

Abstract

In the beginning there was psychology, primitive yet powerful. So it appeared to the anthropologist, Sir James George Frazer, in his epic, The Golden Bough (1963, p. 52). In that work, Frazer takes us back to a time of savage societies, before communities and cultures evolved, when out of the undifferentiated group emerged the first profession. They came to be known as magicians, sorcerers, shamans, and wizards, and, as individuals, rose to “a position of much influence and repute,” oftentimes acquiring “the rank and authority of a chief or King.”