TITLE:
Historical Details on Freud and the Moral Order Foundations of Societies
AUTHORS:
Gabriel Mithá Ribeiro, Luca Bussotti
KEYWORDS:
Africa, Colonization, Independence, Freud, National Identity, Victimization
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Historical Studies,
Vol.3 No.5,
December
23,
2014
ABSTRACT: Freud considered that, in the beginning, the idea of society resulted from the moral order imposed
by a totemic ideal generated by feelings of guilt and remorse motivated by the parricide of the
founder of the community. Since the substance of the process has persisted in reinventions of social
identities throughout history, from this assumption the article interprets the foundations of
the moral order in postcolonial African societies, whose origins date back to pre-colonial African
heritage, European colonial legacies and reactive historical phenomena of independence. While
Freud’s ideal type focuses on the sense of collective guilt, the authors’ empirical approach highlights
the historical relevance of the ideal of victimization in the twentieth century.