A Note on Freud's Primal Horde Theory

The fate of Freud's Totem and Taboo at the hands of anthropologists has long been part of the history of science. The speculative excursion of psychoanalysis into all fields of human behavior has, in fact, rarely met such a resounding setback. Kroeber's two short, trenchant essays (3), written at an interval of twenty years (1920 and 1939), marshaled a solid wall of anthropological fact; they were 'iron curtains' drawn before speculative trespassers and squanderers of hard-won data on preliterate man.

Freud's idea was that both totemism and primitive taboo have their origin in Darwin's 'primal horde'. In this hominid group, the strongest tyrannical male dominated the females, and as his young approached maturity they were driven off by him. His offspring, dispossessed, one day united, killed and ate the father, and liberated the women whom they took for themselves. At this point, as guilt and remorse led the brothers to renounce the ill-gained females as well as any future partaking of a father-displacing totem animal, both taboo and totem were said to have arisen. Thus, the almost homogeneously universal incest taboos and the widespread primitive idea of totemism were given ready explanation. There is no point in recapitulating Freud's ingenious scheme in more detail; it is familiar to all serious students of man. Nor is it necessary to re-examine Kroeber's impeccable refutation of what is—as all anthropologists learn from their dedicated instructors—an almost wholly untenable fabrication. It is well known that Freud stated that his ideas comprised, in his words, a 'just-so' story. And Kroeber, in his later essay, showed himself more amenable to speculative