Historical Details on Freud and the Moral Order Foundations of Societies

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.