Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud

Author:Sigmund Freud
Language: ita
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Harmakis Edizioni
Published: 2016-11-23T12:00:12+00:00

4 Application

Early trauma Defence Latency Outbreak of the Neurosis Partial return of the repressed material: this was the formula we drew up for the development of a neurosis. Now I will invite the reader to take a step forward and assume that in the history of the human species something happened similar to the events in the life of the individual. That is to say, mankind as a whole also passed through conflicts of a sexual -aggressive nature, which left permanent traces but which were for the most part warded off and forgotten; later, after a long period of latency, they came to life again and created phenomena similar in structure and tendency to neurotic symptoms. I have, I believe, divined these processes and wish to show that their consequences, which bear a strong resemblance to neurotic symptoms, are the phenomena of religion.

Since it can no longer be doubted after the discovery of evolution that mankind had a pre-history, and since this history is unknown (that is to say, forgotten), such a conclusion has almost the significance of an axiom. If we should learn that the effective and forgotten traumata relate, here as well as there, to life in the human family, we should greet this information as a highly welcome and unforeseen gift which could not have been anticipated from the foregoing discussion. I have already upheld this thesis a quarter of a century ago, in my book Totem and Taboo (1912), and need only repeat what I said there. The argument started from some remarks by Charles Darwin and embraced a suggestion of Atkinson’s. It says that in primaeval times men lived in small hordes, each under the domination of a strong male. When this was is not known; no point of contact with geological data has been established. It is likely that mankind was not very far advanced in the art of speech.

An essential part of the argument is that all primaeval men, including, therefore, all our ancestors, underwent the fate I shall now describe. The story is told in a very condensed way, as if what in reality took centuries to achieve, and during that long time was repeated innumerably, had only happened once. The strong male was the master and father of the whole horde: unlimited in his power, which he used brutally. All females were his property, the wives and daughters in his own horde as well as perhaps also those robbed from other hordes. The fate of the sons was a hard one; if they excited the father’s jealousy they were killed or castrated or driven out. They were forced to live in small communities and to provide themselves with wives by robbing them from others. Then one or the other son might succeed in attaining a situation similar to that of the father in the original horde. One favoured position came about in a natural way: it was that of the youngest son who, protected by his mother’s love, could profit by his father’s advancing years and replace him after his death.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.