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Charles [[Darwin ]] and evolutionist sociologists of the nineteenth century used a term of Tartar origin, "[[primitive ]] [[horde]]," to refer to the simplest possible [[form ]] of [[social ]] [[formation ]] in [[existence ]] during prehistoric [[times]]. The horde was a link between the [[state ]] of [[nature]], ultimately unknowable, and the state of [[culture]]. The [[word ]] has also been used by some ethnologists to characterize groups that engage in hunting and gathering in a given territory.

The [[notion ]] of the [[primitive horde ]] was described in Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871). [[Freud]], in [[Totem ]] and [[Taboo ]] (1912-1913a), wrote "Darwin deduced from the habits of the higher apes that men, too, originally lived in comparatively small groups or hordes within which the [[jealousy ]] of the oldest and strongest [[male ]] prevented [[sexual ]] promiscuity." [[James ]] Jasper Atkinson returned to this hypothesis in [[Primal ]] Law (1903). He referred to the horde as a "cyclopean [[family]]." Andrew Lang, in The [[Secret ]] of the Totem (1905), also acknowledged Darwin's [[theory]]: "The first [[practice ]] was that of the jealous [[Father]]: 'no male can touch the females in my camp,' which was accompanied by the [[expulsion ]] of the adolescent sons."

It was Freud, in [[Totem and Taboo]], who provided greater insight and scope for Darwin's theory. In spite of the criticisms that appeared when the book was published, he maintained this [[idea ]] and returned to it again in Group [[Psychology ]] and the [[Analysis ]] of the Ego (1921c), The [[Future ]] of an [[Illusion ]] (1927c), and [[Civilization ]] and Its Discontents (1930a [1929]), and especially in his last book, [[Moses ]] and [[Monotheism ]] (1939a). The importance he assigned to this is reflected by a [[communication ]] he had with Abram Kardiner in which he wrote, "Don't take this too seriously. It's something I dreamed up one rainy Sunday afternoon."

Freud's principal contribution was the idea of the [[murder ]] of the Father of the primitive horde: "One day, the brothers who had been driven out, came together, killed and devoured their father and so made an end to the patriarchal horde. United, they had the courage to do and succeeded in doing what would have been [[impossible ]] for [[them ]] individually." The collective crime is correlative with the [[birth ]] of a group and, later, the birth of humanity.

"One day" man was [[living ]] in a primordial age. To leave it a foundational act was needed, one that was irreversible. Certainly, it is possible that, before this, one of the [[children ]] in a horde may have succeeded in killing the father. He would then have taken his [[place ]] and the group would have gone on as before. But it was the unanimous decision of murder ("the brothers came together") that enabled mankind to enter [[history]]. For the sons only became brothers when they were able to overcome their powerlessness—which could have (and should have) heightened [[rivalry ]] among them—and achieve a [[sense ]] of [[solidarity]]. This was a relation in which each recognized the [[other ]] as an equal, which enabled them to escape the deadly [[fascination ]] they experienced, that is, the admiration and [[fear ]] they experienced before the omnipotent father.

Atkinson had already assumed that the "young troop of brothers" had finally acquired strength and had "taken from the paternal tyrant his wife and his [[life]]." But he did not see this as a new beginning. Moreover, he failed to make use of [[another ]] theory that was crucial as far as Freud was concerned, that of William Robertson Smith. Smith, in his The [[Religions ]] of the Semites (1894), had used the totemic meal, during which a sacrificial [[victim ]] is put to [[death]], as a central element in the [[ritual ]] reestablishment of the clan, a celebration at which the clan experiences the solemn [[transgression ]] of a [[prohibition]], a transgression that can only be justified "if the entire clan shares in the [[responsibility]]." For Freud the totemic meal, "which is perhaps mankind's earliest festival, would thus be a [[repetition ]] and a commemoration of the memorable and criminal deed, which was the beginning of so many things—of social organization, of [[moral ]] restrictions and of [[religion]]." The conspiracy, prepared long in advance, promoted group [[cohesion]]. The murder followed by the meal in common made brothers of the sons, a brotherhood of equals, united by the same blood, [[identifying ]] with the father, and each appropriating, through the act of cannibalism, part of his strength.

However, it is important to [[remember ]] that due to the [[ambivalence ]] of [[feeling]], the brothers loved their father as much as they feared him. Moreover, the brothers felt [[guilty ]] for having killed the father. They then decided to reject the [[object ]] of [[desire ]] for which they had banded together: ("what had up to then been prevented by his actual existence was thenceforward prohibited by the sons themselves, in accordance with the [[psychological ]] procedure so familiar to us in [[psychoanalysis ]] under the [[name ]] of 'deferred obedience."') They idealized and mythified the father they had established as totem, experienced as the founder of the group and the bearer of [[symbolic ]] law. The [[world ]] of relations of force gives way to the emergence of a world of alliances and solidarity. In [[Moses and Monotheism ]] Freud returns to this idea. But he insists on the monopolization of [[speech ]] by the Father of the horde. By killing him, the sons appropriate nascent [[language ]] (see P. Kaufmann [1979]). As a result of the act, great importance is given to the "omnipotence of [[ideas ]] that will bring [[about ]] such extraordinary [[progress ]] in [[intellectual ]] [[activity]]" and the [[development ]] of spirituality.

Totem and Taboo was strongly criticized by anthropologists. [[Paul ]] Radin (1929) felt it was a "deplorable performance," Alfred Louis Kroeber, in 1920, rejected Freud's hypothesis, which he denounced as a "conviction without substance." In 1939 he returned to the book and criticized the use of history to cloak a "psychological intuition." In contrast, Géza Róheim, an anthropologist and [[psychoanalyst]], used Freud's grid in his [[work ]] while focusing on the analysis of the "actual carriers" of culture and [[forgetting ]] the "bewitching phylogenesis." Claude Lévi-[[Strauss ]] (1949) took the hypothesis of the murder of the father seriously, not as a historical [[event ]] but as a "durable and ancient [[dream]]" that has even more importance "since the [[acts ]] it evokes have never been committed because culture has always and everywhere opposed them." It was a writer, René Girard, a man opposed to psychoanalysis, who in [[1968 ]] praised Totem and Taboo in the clearest [[terms]], even though he contested its reasoning. Eugène Enriquez (1967) had already adopted the hypothesis of [[parricide ]] to explore the notion of [[power]]; Serge Moscovici (1981) used Freud's book to [[understand ]] the [[role ]] of the charismatic [[leader]].

It is worth pondering why Freud invented this [[narrative]]. The [[unconscious ]] desire for murder and [[fantasy ]] would have been sufficient. Didn't Freud himself say that the only currency used by psychoanalysis was fantasy? Yet, in spite of the [[clinical ]] data (Sándor Ferenczi's little man-rooster and Freud's "Little [[Hans]]"), Freud wanted to tie the [[Oedipus ]] [[complex ]] to an event. He had always been sensitive to the "act." ("In the beginning was the act," as [[Goethe ]] wrote.) He always believed that ontogenesis reproduced phylogenesis. For Freud it was necessary to inscribe the history of each [[subject ]] within that of social organization. The work of Ernst Haeckel seemed to provide the best way of doing this. And, by linking this to the origin of religion, he knew that he risked a break with Carl Gustav Jung—a not altogether disagreeable possibility for Freud.

See also: ; Civilization (Kultur); Darwin, [[Darwinism]], and psychoanalysis; Family; Fantasy; [[Father complex]]; Heredity of acquired characters; [[Myth ]] of origins; [[Oedipus complex]]; Ontogenesis; Phylogenesis; Phylogenetic Fantasy, A: [[Overview ]] of the [[Transference ]] [[Neuroses]]; Primitive; [[Sociology ]] and psychoanalysis/sociopsycho-analysis; Totem and Taboo.[[Bibliography]]

Further [[Reading]]