TL;DR

  • Freud does posit an intermediate mother-right (matrilineal) phase—but not as the beginning. Sequence: primal father-horde → parricide → brother-clan + totem/exogamy (mother-right, maternal cults) → restored patriarchy Freud 1913, ch. 4; Freud 1921, ch. 10.
  • Key lines: the Darwinian horde has “a violent, jealous father”; early observed orgs are “associations of men … founded on matriarchy”; parricide is the “germ of … mother right”; “maternal deities … preceded paternal ones” Freud 1913, ch. 4.
  • Freud’s horde premise leans on Darwin’s Descent of Man: small communities with a dominant male who “jealously guarded” several wives Darwin 1871.
  • “Mother-right” ≠ matriarchy tout court. It’s primarily descent/kinship through mothers (matriliny), not necessarily women ruling men.1
  • Empirically thin: Freud admits the primal horde was “nowhere … observed” (his words). Later anthropology is mostly unconvinced by universal matriarchies or a single evolutionary pathway Eller 2000. Still, as intellectual archaeology of 19th-c sources (Darwin, Atkinson, Robertson Smith, Frazer, Bachofen), it’s a coherent mythogram.

“The most probable view is that [man] aboriginally lived in small communities, each with a single wife, or, if powerful, with several, whom he jealously guarded.”
— Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871)

What Freud’s model actually says (not what people tweet)#

Freud’s scaffolding in Totem and Taboo (1913) works like this. Start with Darwin’s conjecture: early humans lived in small groups with a dominant male monopolizing females Darwin 1871. Fold in Atkinson’s Primal Law (1903) to explain how expelled sons would be forced into exogamy and replicate the pattern elsewhere Atkinson 1903. Add Robertson Smith on sacrificial communion and Frazer on totemic rites Smith 1894; Frazer 1894/1922.

On that frame, Freud inserts his big psychoanalytic move: a fraternal parricide inaugurates the brother-clan; incest prohibitions and totemic law stabilize it. Here he explicitly ties Bachofen’s “mother-right” into the sequence:

  • Darwinian horde: “a violent, jealous father” who expels sons Freud 1913, ch. 4.
  • Earliest observed orgs: “associations of men … founded on matriarchy, or descent through the mother” Freud 1913, ch. 4.
  • The parricide “formed the germ of … mother right discovered by Bachofen,” later “abrogated” by a patriarchal family Freud 1913, ch. 4.
  • In cult: “maternal deities … preceded the paternal deities”; with paternal gods, the “fatherless society” “gradually changed into a patriarchal one” Freud 1913, ch. 4.

Freud is not coy about the speculative status: the primal horde “has nowhere been observed”; the sequence is a retroductive synthesis, not fieldwork Freud 1913, ch. 4.

Translation note#

Freud’s term is Mutterrecht (“mother-right”), the same word Bachofen used in Das Mutterrecht (1861) to denote gynaecomorph religious-juridical orders and matrilineal descent, not necessarily matriarchal governance in the modern sense Bachofen 1861 → Eng. sel. (OA excerpts and biblio at https://archive.org/details/englishtranslati0000bach).

Where the matriarchy sits—and what work it does#

Freud’s placement of “mother‑right” is between two father regimes:

  1. Patriarchal origin (Darwinian horde). The chief hoards women; young males are expelled Darwin 1871.

  2. Fraternal revolution. Expelled brothers return, commit parricide, and bind themselves by totem/exogamy; descent through mothers mitigates paternity ambiguity and polices incest. Freud: the totem feast repeats the crime as a sacrament of guilt and solidarity Freud 1913; Smith 1894.

  3. Religious and familial re‑paternalization. Maternal cults are eclipsed by paternal deities; the family “reconstructs” the horde “and also restored a great part of … rights to the fathers” Freud 1913, ch. 4. In Group Psychology (1921), the crowd is “a revival of the primal horde,” and its leader reprises the dreaded father Freud 1921, ch. 10.

The result is not a kumbaya matriarchy at the dawn of time; it’s a matrilineal interregnum that metabolizes guilt, institutes law, and then gets overwritten by renewed patriarchy.

Moving parts, mapped

Freud’s sequence at a glance#

StageSocial formReligious formKinship ruleFreud’s own phrasing (≤25w per source)Primary source
0. PremiseDominant-male horde——“small communities … jealously guarded” wivesDarwin, Descent ch. 20 — Wikisource — ch. XX
1. Primal fatherHorde under “a violent, jealous father”——“a violent, jealous father”Freud, Totem ch. 4 — Wikisource — Chapter IV
2. ParricideBrother-clanTotem + guilt riteIncest taboo“germ of … mother right (Bachofen)”Freud, Totem — Project Gutenberg
3. InterregnumAssociations of menMaternal deities prominentMatrilineal descent“associations of men … founded on matriarchy”Freud, Totem — Wikisource — Chapter IV
4. RestorationPatriarchal familyPaternal deitiesPatriliny ascendant“maternal deities … preceded paternal … society … changed into a patriarchal one”Freud, Totem — Project Gutenberg
5. RecurrenceMass under leaderCivil cults—“group … revival of the primal horde; leader = father”Freud, Group Psychology — Wikisource page

Provenance and influences (who’s Freud cribbing, and how?)#

Topic/ClaimFreud’s uptakeSource Freud leaned onLink
Dominant-male hordeAccepts the conjecture as starting pointCharles Darwin, Descent of Man (1871), ch. 20Wikisource — ch. XX
Expulsion → exogamyMechanism for incest lawJ. J. Atkinson, Primal Law (1903)https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45724
Sacrifice as communionTotem feast as brother-bondW. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites (1894)https://archive.org/details/lecturesonreli00smit
Totemism as earliest religionRites/myths repertoireJ. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (1894/1922)https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3623/3623-h/3623-h.htm
“Mother-right”Name + historical exemplaJ. J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht (1861)Princeton sel.: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691017973/myth-religion-and-mother-right; biblio OA: https://archive.org/details/englishtranslati0000bach

What survives post‑anthropology?#

Freud himself flags the data problem: the horde “has nowhere been observed” and the whole edifice is a reconstruction Freud 1913, ch. 4. Later ethnology lands several body blows:

  • Universal matriarchy? Evidence is thin; the idea functions more as 19th‑c mythography than archaeology (see Cynthia Eller’s demolition job) — The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory (2000): Internet Archive.
  • Totemism as “the” first religion? Heavily contested after Durkheim and especially Lévi‑Strauss; “totemism” looks like a scholar’s basket rather than a single evolutionary stage (quick entrée: Durkheim 1912 English, OA at Project Gutenberg; critique overview at Vienna PDF).
  • Darwin’s role. It’s accurate that Darwin posited jealous male control in small groups, but there’s a literature arguing Freud over‑systematized Darwin’s scattered remarks into a mythic “primal horde” architecture (for the debate see: Allen 2016, History of Human Sciences, doi:10.1086/688885 — UChicago DOI).

What does endure is the structural gesture: a story in which violence against the Father births law, guilt, and culture, with mother‑right as the liminal mechanism that converts chaos into rule before the Father returns—first as god, then as leader. Call it meta‑anthropology; as literal prehistory it’s shaky, but as a myth of social contract under repression, it still punches.

FAQ#

Q1. Did Freud think humanity began in matriarchy? A. No. His starting point is patriarchal: a dominant male hoarding females (Darwin). “Mother-right” is an intermediate solution after parricide and before restored patriarchy (Darwin 1871; Freud 1913).

Q2. Is Freud’s “mother-right” about women ruling men? A. Primarily matrilineal descent and associated cults, not guaranteed female political supremacy; that’s Bachofen’s terrain, and even there it’s complex (Bachofen, Princeton sel.).

Q3. Where does religion enter? A. In totem feasts (Robertson Smith/Frazer) and the shift from maternal to paternal deities; Freud says maternal cults likely preceded paternal ones, then the family re-patriarchalizes (Freud 1913).

Q4. How does this connect to mass politics? A. Freud’s 1921 book makes the crowd a revived primal horde; the leader reprises the father, which is why crowds seek authoritarian love/obedience (Freud 1921).

Q5. Is any of this historically true? A. Parts are plausible, none are settled. Freud’s own caveat (“nowhere … observed”) stands. Modern anthropology broadly rejects a single universal matriarchy or a unilinear totemic stage (Eller 2000; Durkheim 1912).

Footnotes#

Sources#

  1. In 19th‑c usage, Mutterrecht often means matriliny (descent through the mother), not necessarily gynecocracy. Bachofen’s system toggles among religious symbolism, descent rules, and mythic “stages,” which Freud mines selectively. ↩︎