Freud s myth of the rebellion of the sons against the<br >father in the primal， prehistoric horde is not a historical<br >explanation of origins， but a supra-historical archetype;<br >eternally recurrent; a myth; an old， old story.<br > Freud seems to proiect into prehistoric times the<br >constitutional crisis of seventeenth-century England. The<br >primal father is absolute monarch of the horde; the fe-<br >males are his property. The sons form a conspiracy to<br >overthrow the despot， and in the end substitute a social<br >contract with equal rights for all. This anachronistic his-<br >tory directs us to look for the recurrence of the archetype<br >in the seventeenth century.<br >Cf. Freud， Moses and Monotheism， 13o-133， 188.<br > J<br >