ADDENDUM

Fr e u d ’s reconstruction of prehistory rests on the assumption that today’s unconscious phantasies represent memories of actual (conscious) behaviour in primeval times, e.g. the present individualand mass-psychological Oedipus phantasies were once ‘ acted out’ in overt crimes of patricide and incest. I followed Freud’s example in my hypothesis of a primeval crisis in which now unconscious modes of perception would have dominated surface perception (pp. 8 1 2 2 0 , 260). Yet it may be doubted whether what today is unconscious must have been conscious at some earlier time and only later underwent repression. It was surmised at first that the adult’s unconscious mind perpetuated the child’s conscious experiences (pp. 31, 67). Recent investigations, however, suggest that the child, like the adult, possesses a rich phantasy life part of which need not have ever become conscious at any time (see Susan Isaacs, ‘The Nature and Function of Phantasy’, in Melanie Klein and others, Developments in Psycho-analysis (London, 1953)). The difference between infantile and adult phantasy life may only be quantitative in so far as in infancy the unconscious phantasies would lie nearer to the surface and influence overt behaviour more strongly. This alternative interpretation might have to be applied to the mass-psychological phantasies underlying cultural growth and to the reconstruction of cultural prehistory. Less dramatically, the primeval era of crimes and undifferentiated libido might have merely strengthened unconscious aggressive and self-destructive phantasies; their influence on overt behaviour could have caused a serious enough crisis of the libidinous life to be spoken of as a ‘crisis’ of sexuality. My speculations about the interaction between Eros and Thanatos as the root of all cultural growth remain unaffected by either reading.