Introduction

The theme of the killing of the father permeates Freud’s writings. He oscillated between different types of interpretations, on the one hand viewing it as a real event that took place in the distant past and was then repressed, on the other regarding the “event” as a myth (Godelier, 1996). A paradox is thus presented: the killing of the father is, in Freud’s view, a requirement for the creation of the social order that, from then on, prohibits all killings. The father, however, has only to be killed metaphorically: the actual exclusion of the father lies at the origin of so many psychopathologies, ranging from violence to the psychoses and perversions.

The primordial father, according to Lacan, is the father before the incest taboo, before the appearance of the law, of social structures and of culture (Lacan, 2005). In the psychoanalytic literature, many concepts have been found to designate this primordial father. Rosolato (1969), for instance, suggests the term the narcissistic or idealized father to designate the mythical, pre-historic father who is all powerful, possesses all the women and rules through violence. It is this violent and incestuous father who is killed in the founding myth. Already in 1897, Freud had written in a letter to Fliess about his surprise that in all his cases, the father (including his own) should be accused of perversion (Freud, 1897b). Through the analysis of his own dreams, however, Freud identified the unconscious nature of the universal, forbidden desires contained in his and his patients’ accounts. Later he suggested that, in the unconscious, ontogenesis repeats phylogenesis. The story of the murder of the father would be transmitted in the unconscious life of each individual. It lies at the basis of the oedipal situation.