By publishing Totem and Taboo, Freud was putting forward a methodological model for inter-disciplinary research? The interest that psychoanalysis holds for other domains of knowledge could only be understood by exploring the resources offered in the recourse to analogy and the method of concordance, which lie at the heart of Totem and Taboo. We show how the psychoanalyst’s shift in interest for other disciplines’ methods takes root in difficulties of psychical treatment that object to psychoanalytical theory. This article leads to the hypothesis that Freud implemented a politics of the act, to which his writing bears witness.