This article explores the intersection between law and psychoanalysis. We argue that psychoanalysis provides a method of reading the law in a novel, nuanced and subversive way. Paying attention to repetitions and repressions in the text of the law, one can discern, what has been named, ‘the legal unconscious’. In particular, the essay explores the engagement of Hans Kelsen and Peter Fitzpatrick with Sigmund Freud's classic text, TOTEM & TABOO. The essay seeks to introduce law students to some of the foundational ideas of psychoanalysis and illustrate the possibilities of alternative legal imaginations that this method opens up.