The Myth of the Seal Ancestor

In “Totem and Taboo,” Freud describes Darwin's theory of the primal horde in which the father possesses all the females and fights off his sons until they finally defeat him and themselves possess the females, and comments, “A process like the removal of the primal father by the band of brothers must have left ineradicable traces in the history of mankind and must have expressed itself the more frequently in numerous substitutive formations the less it itself was to be remembered.”

In western Ireland, Scotland and in Iceland, there is a myth that certain families have a seal in their ancestry on the mother's side. The surname Macnamara means literally son of the sea hound, or seal. The similarity between man and the seal has often been commented on by naturalists as well as by fishermen. The baby seal's voice is almost indistinguishable from the human voice. “Their eyes are so expressive of anger or fear that a hardened Orkney fisherman once told me that he could not kill a seal at close quarters without feeling that he had committed a murder,” says one writer. Fraser Darling remarks, “The seal's fingers are distinct and the hand is prehensile and very like our own in use. Watch also the way of the hand when it is that of a mother scratching or playing with her baby. The great seals are the people of the sea and it is not to be wondered at that Graeldom should have invested them with a half veiled but occasionally eruptive humanity.”

On the rocky shores of western Ireland and Scotland, the seals breed in a manner which is similar to the primal horde of Darwin. The young bulls sport athletically in the sea until they are big and strong enough to challenge the father who sits guard over his “harem.” The struggle which ensues is often bloody in the extreme. This scene is one which must be familiar to the peoples of these areas.

It is not surprising that the guilt of the unconscious Oedipus complex should be relieved by projecting it onto one's neighbor by contending that