Sartre replaced Freud’s father totem with a mother totem in his final interviews

Evidence

Sartre himself told Jean Daniel a little later: “Th e itinerary of my thought eludes them all, including Simone de Beauvoir.” Sartre’s psychoanalytic and feminist interpretation of the mother in Hope Now, his replacement of Freud’s “father as totem” with the “mother as totem,” daringly reverses the mother’s place as the one who, in the Oedipus complex, is interdicted, through the castration of the child (or the neurotic adult), to that of the one who interdicts, in a strong but gentle manner. Th is new mother is neither dominated/ controlled, nor dominating/controlling. She does not attempt to master everyone, yet she is strong. She is not driven by action in the world, yet she is fully present in it— exactly what Sartre would have liked a “father-mother” to be. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 154

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the ‘mother as totem’ concept developed in Hope Now as a reversal of Freud’s father-as-totem.
• XREF: Connects to feminist reinterpretations of Freud and the Oedipus complex. — connects to: Sartre’s final interviews showed him apologizing for earlier political stances — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 973; Sartre proposed an existentialist psychoanalysis rejecting Freud’s layered unconscious — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 710

Broader Connections

• Sartre proposed an existentialist psychoanalysis rejecting Freud’s layered unconscious #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 710