Concept
Primal horde
Freud's hypothesis, taken in part from Darwin and Atkinson and set out in Totem und Tabu (1913), that humans first lived in hordes ruled by a violent father who kept all the women for himself. The sons banded together, killed and ate him, and then, out of remorse and the ambivalence of their feelings, forbade the killing of the totem animal that stood for him and renounced the women of the clan. Freud saw in this deed the origin of the incest taboo, of morality and of religion, and returned to it in Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (1921) and Der Mann Moses (1939).
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 2
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1913 Taking Darwin's hypothesis of a primal horde ruled by a jealous father, Freud built on it in the fourth essay of Totem und Tabu the myth of the brothers who kill and eat the father, then out of guilt raise the totem and the incest taboo. In 1921 he read the group as a revival of the primal horde.