An unholy union of psychoanalysis and sociobiology: another Totem and Taboo

Recently, I've heard on NPR reports of tool using chimps:

Perhaps even more intriguing, it was only the females who fashioned and used the wooden spears, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University reported. ...

Pruetz noted that male chimps never used the spears. She believes the males use their greater strength and size to grab food and kill prey more easily, so the females must come up with other methods. ...

The spear-hunting occurred when the group was foraging together, again unchimplike behavior that might produce more competition between males and females, she said.

If females were using the tools because the powerful males didn't need to, then perhaps a revision of Freud's myth of the primal horde's killing of the father needs to be revised.

Recall, in Freud's account, the powerful male (let's call him a silverback) has all the females to himself. The younger men band together to kill this obscene father, who returns in death as the law. The men are now all equal to each other.

But, tool-wielding female chimps suggest another option. First, the males wouldn't have banded together--they would simply wait their turn to fight it out to be the silverback; their strength and their individualized interests would prevent them from cooperating. Second, the females are likely to get tired of not having enough food, or being dependent on nasty males for food--so they have an interest in using tools and banding together--just as we see with the chimps.

What might have happened, then? The females band together to kill the powerful male who is blocking them from food. And, in fact, any time such a male appears, they band together to kill him again. The males, meanwhile, are both happy that the big male is gone--now they get the females earlier than they expected--but they are pretty wary of the females and their tools.

Now to the myth: so, the men are eating the body of the dead silverback. And, in their myth, the women have prepared the feast. This preserves the women's connections with tools and represses their connection with murder and death (myth stories of women, fire, cooking, and food would fill this in; I'm thinking of Rebecca helping Jacob trick his father; she does so with food and by turning Jacob into a hairy man). Yet, the connection with murder remains and haunts the males such that their equality requires the suppression of the women. So, they share the food among themselves, anchoring their bond, which is now more than ever a bond of their equality in having the women, but not a bond that includes women. In fact, the strength of the bond is less a matter of the return of the father of the law than it is a shared fear of murderous women and a shared commitment to their suppression. The suppression of women appears in their fantasy of sex with a female without flesh and blood--the robot, although earlier versions would be an ice queen, goddess, or angel--even, their own mothers, since they don't worry that such women would kill them.

What about the women? Well, they aren't too thrilled with the arrangement--they aren't impressed with the little equal men. So, they fantasize a big man, a strong super man--the woman's fundamental fantasy of sex with an ape. And, they realize that they've gone from the frying pan into the fire, now that the men are united in their suppression rather than cowering before the silverback. It's more difficult for them to bond, now that their suppression is distributed among men, rather than concentrated in a man. So, again, that man becomes an object of fantasy, something to which no man can measure up--No! That's not it!  As a vessel for this questioning and rejection, combined with their greater capacity to combine and use tools, women persist as a potentially democratic, political, and violent force.

Comments

[Chris]

Well, umm... no. First, tool use of all kinds is almost exclusively passed on from mothers to young, with males ceasing to use tools in adolescence or early adulthood. There are probably reasons for this that have nothing to do with male-female competition (in fact, the explanation in the paper presenting the research doesn't fit with other tool-use research). In fact, it's more likely that they have something to do with the social dynamics among males, and resulting cognitive differences.

But more than that, the spears the females created wouldn't be enough to do anything to males. Furthermore, because dominant males only become dominant because they work within coalitions, females never have any chances of harming any but the lowest status males, no matter how many females band together. Males do challenge dominance (also, always in coalitions), of course, so I suppose that still works with the primal father myth.

P.S. Silverbacks are gorillas.

[old]

This is really fun. So it's too bad the only comment you've gotten is from a details snob who just doesn't get it.

[Chris]

A details snob? My point was simply that the research doesn't support reevaluating or revising the myth. Feel free to revise it anyway, but don't do it with a half-assed attempt to base it in science.

If you disagree with that, why don't you say why, instead of just saying that I don't get it.

[Jari]

Well, I think sketching on Freud's myths and fusing them with evolutionary science is perfectly okay in a blog without having to be necessarily labelled "half-assed" (nice word, btw).

Altough, personally I don't always understand all the efforts made in order to rationalize female sexuality to correspond to that of the male's. The strength of psychoanalytic theory on gender differencies seems to be that the sexes aren't reduced into corresponding mirror images of each other, and I am not at all convinced that the "No! That's not it!" -pattern in regards with the dominant male "ape" works exactly the same way as the mechanics for the pursuit of the Woman for the males. It seems more like the "ape" is the male fantasy reserved for the males themselves (let's not forget these things were first articulated by male thinkers), and the women couldn't do much more in that regard than try to somehow "make peace" with the symbolic by adopting that as well, since they are in essence suppressed by the order. Or rather--doing their best at trying to adopt that, which would rather constitute the same kind of a futile, yet essential approach for an idealized universal as the male search for the "robot" fantasy. Yet, in terms of the mechanics of heterosexuality it would remain completely asymmetric (which I bloody hell do still demand from my chosen bearer of my objet a). But then again, what would I know? The day I finally understand 25% of what Lacan really meant with Feminine Jouissance I am ready to graduate.

Oops, I used totally unscientific language up there.

Great blog by the way.

[TR]

I just had a conversation with Freud last night I posted as "An Exclusive Interview with Sigmund Freud" & "My Dinner with Dr. Freud". He didn't mention anything about apes, but he sure acted like one. Check it out.