Following the reference in Totem and taboo to the similarities between the spiritual life of primitive man and that of infans and of the neurotic man, one can see the debates among anthropologists, prehistorians and art historians over the interpretation of cave paintings as making evident the premises of the psychic work done at the heart of the activity of representation. The relations between shamanism, animism and representative expression suggest that mechanisms such as latency, après-coup and endopsychic perception anchor the development of a representational life in belief.