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The Search for the Lost Father-Figure in Spanish American History: A Freudian View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Marvin Goldwert
Marvin Goldwert*
Affiliation:
New York Institute of Technology, New York, New York
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Extract

Sigmund Freud was more than the father of psychoanalysis; he was also one of the great classical philosophers of history. In Freud's historical thought, we have the framework for an analysis of the past which parallels the formation of neuroses in the life history of the individual. Like psychological man, historical man is the victim of events (trauma) from the past. Etched on the brain of historical man, are memories which endure through time, become part of the “archaic heritage,” and are transmitted from one generation to another. Then, like the “return of the repressed” in neurotic individuals, societies feel the afflictions of the past, which return to haunt them. That Freud stressed the killing of the primeval father by his jealous sons, an event of dubious historical veracity, should not obscure the value of his historical framework. In Freudian thought, the psychic stages of the individual unfold in the collective societies of history.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , April 1978 , pp. 532 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1978 

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References

1 See Mazlish, Bruce, The Riddle of History: The Great Speculators from Vico to Freud (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), Chapter XI.Google Scholar

2 Rieff, Philip, “The Meaning of History and Religion in Freud’s Thought,” in Mazlish, Bruce, ed., Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1971), pp. 23–44.Google Scholar

3 See Freud, Sigmund, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), pp. 101–117.Google Scholar

4 Graham, Richard, Independence in Latin America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

5 Blanksten, George I., Ecuador: Constitutions and Caudillos (New York: Russell and Russell, Inc., 1964), p. 34.Google Scholar

6 Schurz, William L., This New World (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964), p. 325.Google Scholar

7 Ibid.