Citation

Heim R. Psyche (E Klett) 1993; 47(4): 344-377.

Vernacular Title

Vatermord und Dialektik der Aufklarung. Die "vaterlose Gesellschaft" als Modell

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, Ernst Klett Verlag)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8502759

Abstract

Proceeding from Alexander Mitscherlich's socio-psychological diagnosis of the fatherless society (1963), the author goes back from there to Freud's "Totem and Taboo" (1912/13) and its treatment of the myth of the origins of culture. Heim reflects on the recurrent failure of culture, its constant relapse into murder and barbarism and sees this in connection with the dialectic nature of enlightenment, the patently intrinsic ambiguity of all progress achieved by homo sapiens. On the one hand, patricide and the advent of a fatherless society promise emancipation from mythic forces; on the other, latent feelings of guilt ensure that those forces remain operative and periodically explode into murderous activity. The fatherless society could only lose the terrors of ambivalence if it were possible to bring to an end the symbolism of the murdered father in the secularized equivalents of the totem, and to resolve the culturally seminal Oedipus complex of the primeval age in the conciliatory figures of post-Oedipal super-ego and ego-ideal.

Language: de