ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic liberation of memory explodes the rationality of the repressed individual. Sigmund Freud’s reconciliation of Eros and Thanatos in Beyond the Pleasure Principle operates at the mythical interface of philosophy and science. The metamorphoses and sexual transgressions characteristic of the heroic myth are only intelligible in terms of its retrospective exaggeration of the heteraic period of sexuality outside of marriage and matriarchy that is in turn remembered wildly once matriarchy has moved under patriarchy. The broad picture of matriarchy may be derived from the comparative analysis of historical and mythological texts that were already puzzling to the patriarchal mind and might be dismissed out of hand as mere myth or legend by modern minds. The discursive revision of gender and kin relationship has once again turned toward the myths and metaphors of ancient cosmology and sexology.
