title: Travelling the path from fantasy to history: the struggle for original history within Freud's early circle, 1908-1913.
abstract: Between 1908 and 1913, Freud and his disciples debated different theories of the origins of mankind, which Freud analysed in the context of his theory of neuroses. Wittels was the first of this group to present, in 1908, what Freud labelled a "fantasy" on the subject. Wittels contemplated various prehistoric scenarios (such as a murder of the father by his children) which he postulated as potential explanations for the origin of man's conception of religion, law and state. Freud (1913) eventually conceived his own human prehistory which differed significantly from the ideas of Wittels and his other disciples (Jung, Tausk) and allowed him to claim he now held a "historical" point of view that his disciples were missing.
authors.affiliation: Univ. of Paris.
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cotti
mesh_terms: D005201:Fantasy; D005619:Freudian Theory / Q000266:history; D049673:History, 20th Century; D007179:Incest / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D007603:Jurisprudence / Q000266:history; D010802:Phylogeny; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D013609:Taboo / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology