ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud himself was ambivalent about the scientific status of his reconstruction of primeval events in Totem and Taboo. Like the libido theory, Freud's myth of the primal horde presents a story of body politics. Intertwining sexuality and power, it depicts a primeval society governed by the primal father's bodily strength, whose absolutist rule was driven by his sexual desire. Freud's myth differs from conventional social contract theories in that it presents not an original State of Nature without government, but a primal stage of human development in which political processes still are physical. In Freud's myth, civilization started with the transition from an original state of body politics, in which obedience was imposed externally by physical coercion, to a new form of obedience, which was based on the internalization of rules. This transition was made possible by a social contract concluded by the sons.
