Johnston, Adrian. Time driven : metapsychology and the splitting of the drive. Stoney Brook Press: New York. 2000
In Totem and Taboo, Freud tells the story of an archaic human order in which a single alpha male (the “primal father”) tyrannically rules over the social group (the “primal horde”). This powerful, ferocious paternal figure monopolizes all the women of the horde, preventing the other males, this “band of brothers,” from indulging themselves in their sexual urges.
The subjugated male members of the group finally rise up in rebellion against the feared Urvater, slaughtering him and subsequently devouring his corpse. On the one hand, the brothers hated the father because he hindered the exercise of their desires — and this hatred eventually be-came intense enough to drive the group to murder. On the other hand, insofar as the father was envied because he occupied the very position desired by each of the brothers, this paternal figure represents a point of identification for the other males—and the cannibalistic consumption of the dead father’s body is, in Freud’s mind, indicative of this identificatory rapport. Freud describes this oscillation between hatred and identification as “ambivalence.”
Like Oedipus, the brothers of the primal horde accomplish in act what most subjects merely entertain in (unconscious) fantasies. But, in Freud’s tale as opposed to Sophocles’ tragedy, the actors know full well what they are doing the entire time. The brothers deliberately cooperate with each other in murdering the primal father; no ignorance clouds their awareness of this forceful assertion of their drives.
However, just as Oedipus is incapable of embracing the actualization of his repressed desires, so is the primal horde profoundly disturbed by its deed. (The story of Electra resembles the Freudian myth of the horde to the extent that, although throughout the course of the play Electra wants nothing more than to avenge her dead father by killing her adulterous mother, she is nonetheless traumatized by her own murderous act once she commits it.)
What is the ultimate result of the elimination of the living primal father? Instead of the brothers finally savoring their newly-won freedom from the oppressive regime of the selfish paternal dictator (as one might reasonably expect them to do), they are so distressed by what they have accomplished that they subsequently establish laws prohibiting anyone from ever acting again as they did. The vanquished father’s ghost returns to haunt them in the form of a restrictive body of laws; just as the living father inhibits aggression and the free circulation of women, so too do the laws established between the band of brothers after-the-fact of their violent acts of revolt condemn these same acts.
Libidinal liberation, as the lifting of supposedly external impediments to Trieb, isn’t so easy to achieve. Whether as the traumatizing deferred comprehension of Oedipus or the spectral paternal remainder haunting the fraternal band, something more than just externally imposed repression (father, society, and so on) prevents subjects from experiencing pleasure in the release of their formerly stifled tendencies. In fact, the myth of the primal horde represents Freud’s displaced realization of the painful truth of the analytically appropriated myth of Oedipus, a truth with which he repeatedly fails to fully come to terms.
A hitch, obstacle, or impediment beyond the recognizable avatars of the Freudian reality principle interferes with the enjoyment of the libidinal economy. The foundational myths of psychoanalysis reveal more than just the existence of certain common desires dwelling within the unconscious lives of each and every individual. These tales of transgression, in which the actors realize the primordial versions of the drives in the field of concrete reality, demonstrate that the allure of such transgressions is sustained strictly insofar as these actions have yet to be accomplished.
Once committed, that is, once drive is transformed from repressed fantasy to actualized fact, the attractiveness of what ostensibly is desired by the unconscious is suddenly transubstantiated into something horrific and disgusting. If Oedipus Rex is indeed timelessly tragic, this is due to his representation of the foundational dilemma of the drives — a dilemma in which Trieb paradoxically “enjoys” what it desires exclusively to the extent that it never accomplishes the fulfillment of its desire.
The drives are not repressed simply because they are at odds with the reality of a socio-legal Umwelt. Even if every external impediment were eliminated, the drives would spontaneously fabricate their own repression in order to preserve their fantasmatic forms of jouissance. Obtaining this jouissance would be the ultimate trauma for Trieb.