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"[[Murder ]] of the [[father]]" is a reference to the murder of the legendary king of Thebes by [[Oedipus]], the Greek hero in [[Sophocles]]' play Oedipus Tyrannus (King Oedipus). According to [[Freud]], we were all, as young [[children]], gripped by the "[[compulsion]]" embodied in the Greek legend: we were all, "once, in germ and in [[phantasy]], just such an Oedipus" (1950a [1892-1899], p. 265). [[Analysts ]] [[speak ]] of "parricide" when the [[fantasy ]] is acted out, when the murder of the father is no longer merely an imagined infraction of one of the two [[oedipal ]] injunctions.The term refers both to a willful act of murder of the father (or, more generally, of a [[male]] progenitor) and to the murderer. Freud introduced the hypothesis of parricide in the fourth chapter of [[Totem]] and [[Taboo]] (1912-1913a). The [[word]] "Vatermord" (murder of the father) conveys an element of intent in the crime committed by the son. In the [[case]] of a premeditated murder by the [[primitive]] [[horde]], the homicide in question might be considered a [[form]] of assassination. According to the [[Freudian]] [[myth]], "one day, the brothers who had been driven out came together, killed and devoured their father and so made an end of the patriarchal horde" (1912-1913a, p. 141). In a single [[sentence]] Freud thus summed up the "memorable and criminal deed" (p. 142) that served as the foundation and chief precondition of [[psychoanalytic]] [[thought]] and "the main source of the [[sense]] of [[guilt]]" (1928b [1927], p. 183). When Freud first used the term "Oedipus [[complex]]," he spoke of the [[moment]] when the boy "begins to [[desire]] his [[mother]] . . . and to [[hate]] his father anew as a rival who stands in the way of this [[wish]]" (1910h, p. 171). The hostile impulses that the [[child]] develops toward his father are the [[mental]] correlate of fundamental [[biological]] facts, namely the "prolonged period of [humanity's] [[dependence]] in [[childhood]]" (1940a [1938], p. 185), which inevitably leads to a [[conflict]]-ridden [[relationship]] with the [[parents]]. In Totem and Taboo (1912-1913a), Freud noted the adventitious [[content]] of the two oedipal crimes—the two prohibitions forming the core of totemism—and the child's two [[primal]] wishes. The institution of a [[prohibition]] hid the fact that those who punished transgression harbor the same desire as the transgressor. This, for Freud, was "one of the foundations of the [[human]] penal [[system]]" (p. 72). In 1927, in his introduction to a [[German]] book on Dostoevsky, specifically on The Brothers Karamazov, Freud observed that this novel was one of "[[three]] masterpieces of the [[literature]] of all [[time]]" to deal with the manslaughter of the father (Vatertötung). His [[choice]] of the term "Vatertötung," which implies no criminal intent on the part of the son, enabled Freud to assert that in the Greek drama, "the hero commits the deed unintentionally" (1928b [1927], p. 188). In contrast, in the Russian novel, as in [[Shakespeare]]'s [[Hamlet]], someone else commits the murder. Two years later, in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930a [1929]), Freud again insisted that it is [[impossible]] to get "away from the assumption that man's [[sense of guilt]] springs from the Oedipus complex and was acquired at the killing of the father by the brothers banded together" (p. 131). However, to account for the [[action]] of the [[death]] [[instinct]], discovered in the interim, Freud now stressed the inevitability of the [[feeling]] of guilt as an "expression of the conflict due to [[ambivalence]], of the eternal [[struggle]] between [[Eros]] and the instinct of [[destruction]] or death" (p. 132). It follows that whether or not the father is actually killed is of no great consequence. In "Some [[Character]]-Types Met with in [[Psycho]]-[[Analytic]] [[Work]]" (1916d), Freud had argued that many criminals suffer from a sense of guilt. Such guilt may predate the crime, which is in fact perpetrated as a way of seeking [[punishment]]. This [[claim]] was clinically demonstrated and developed by [[other]] authors during the last decades of the twentieth century. Referring to the important [[notion]] of guilt, [[Jean Laplanche]] defined the oedipal crime as "the first crime committed out of a feeling of guilt" (1992). Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor, who thinks that the fantasy of murder enables the child to accept the [[idea]] of death, [[defends]] the hypothesis that murder is part of a "[[sexual]] [[theory]] of childhood" (1996). [[Paul]]-Laurent Assoun has pointed out the resonance between the primal criminal act of patricide and a [[particular]] criminal [[metaphor]] of the [[unconscious]]: the work of [[repression]], he writes, is simply an "effort to erase the traces of a primal crime" (1997). The risks stemming from the unconscious and associated with crime—notably with the murder of the father—raise the issue of the relations between law and [[psychoanalysis]]. For Freud, myth indicates the path every child will have to travel as an [[individual]]. Certainly, the legend of Oedipus provided him with an opportunity to " 'fictionalize' a mental [[truth]]" (Assoun, 1997). The myth of the murder of the father of the horde arguably constitutes a kind of distillation of the Yahweh myth, which Freud called the "[[Christian]] myth" (1912-1913a) and [[Lacan]] called the "myth of the apple." The hypothesis that the murder of the father is criminal is in fact well suited to accounting for the primal fault (Freud incorrectly referred to it as "original sin"), which can be [[understood]] as a [[tragic]] [[split]] between humanity and God the Father resulting from the human wish to usurp God's [[place]]. The discovery of correspondences between the mental [[life]] of savages and that of the early [[Jews]] makes it possible to [[identify]] the hidden origins of the oedipal myth in the stories of Genesis. But above all, this Freudian myth serves to confirm the relevance and [[universal]] [[nature]] of the finding that Freud summed up in the axiom that where there is prohibition, there is a wish. Original guilt implicates the [[subject]] not in the primal fault but in desire itself. ==See Also==* [[Anti-Semitism]]* [[Castration complex]]* [[Civilization and Its Discontents]]* [[Civilization]]* [[Cultural transmission]]* [[Dostoyevsky and Parricide]]* [[Ethics]]* [[Father complex]]* [[Father-hood]]* [[Hamlet and Oedipus]]* [[Id]]* [[Law]]* [[Moses and Monotheism]]* [[Myth of origins]]* [[Oedipus complex]]* [[Organic repression]]* [[Phylogenesis]]* [[Primitive horde]]* [[Racism]]* [[Superego]]* [[Totem and Taboo]]* [[Transgression]] ==References==<references/># [[Assoun, Paul-Laurent]]. (1997). [[Psychanalyse]]. [[Paris]]: Presses Universitaires de [[France]].# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1910h). A special type of choice of [[object]] made by men. SE, 11: 163-175.# ——. (1912-1913a). Totem and taboo. SE, 13: 1-161.# ——. (1916d). Some character-types met with in psychoanalytic work. SE, 14: 309-333.# ——. (1928b [1927]). Dostoevsky and parricide. SE, 21: 173-196.# ——. (1930a [1929]). Civilization and its discontents. SE, 21: 57-145.# ——. (1940a [1938]). An [[outline]] of psycho-[[analysis]]. SE, 23: 139-207.# ——. (1950a [1887-1902]). Extracts from the Flies papers. SE, 1: 173-280.# Laplanche, Jean. (1992). La révolution Copernicienne inachevée. Paris: Abider. [[Category:New]]