The Primal Horde Myth

The work I've been doing undermines the primal father myth in a few ways.

I've tried to show that the relation to the 'horde' or group is at the anal level and the father imago there is omniscient or omnipotent. I've also tried to show that the difference between the generations concerns the egoistic phallic drive to do 'something' better than others in reputation, and that the horde doesn't describe both the language and tool use that would already be going on at the phallic level. We can already see a glimmer of this in Chimpanzee groups. They use tools and chimps form alliances with others to take down another chimp and display conscience in some way.

At the phallic level the knowledge of the father's role in procreation isn't known in archaic cultures. Freud, Jones, Roheim, and others show that the are 'Oedipal' symbols and myths but, as I've tried to show, the Oedipus complex in its clinical manifestation (the castration complex) involves the phallic mother. The phallic mother denigrates the father imago qua procreator/head of the family/group leader/elder with more skill... after it is transferred onto the biological father. Her disappointment in her love relationship with him leads to her denigrating his status as procreator but previously, when power/head of family/elder with more skill... was located in the maternal uncle or the procreator deity (totem animal) the mother's disappointment in love wouldn't affect the father imago.

This means that a reversal needs to happen. The primal father qua procreator isn't the template for the procreator deity who is responsible for the creation of the tribe, but instead the procreator deity is the prototype for the biological father's role in procreation.

The procreator deity arises, as I've said in previous posts, as a negation of the mother. The child needs to escape from the power of the mother and creates the father as the not-mother in order to have a transitional space.

The totem animal as an example of the procreator deity illustrates the relation of the difference between the generations in that as an animal it has skills or "understanding" that the tribesmen want to possess. Even if it is just magic or some fantasy power the elders that must exist in every culture will be treated with respect so that the younger generation can be taught their skills and learn their 'magic'. The procreator deity provides the initial ego ideal that draws people to love their work in relation to being a group under the tutelage of the procreator who gave them life (rescued them from the passionate relation to the mother that would result in either her death of theirs).

I'll have to post a little more about the 'guilt' that both Nietzsche and Freud find at the beginning of culture to the procreator. As I've also tried to point out, the following father-complex of trito-phallic stage has an important relation to guilt and more needs to be said about the connection between the two.