Abstract
This article reflects on the anthropological notion of animatism, a pre-animist stage of humanity, to which Freud resorted in Totem and Taboo. With it he broadened his aim of revealing the origin of religion and morality, extending it to the origin and destiny of humanity. An objective that he also pursued in dialogue with the psychiatric theories of heredity and degeneration of the 18th and 19th centuries. Theories conceived by Tissot, Pinel, Lucas, Morel, Esquirol, Magnan, Legrain, Charcot, among others, are briefly presented in this article. Finally, this article also presents and discusses some works by Freud, in which the theories of heredity and degeneration were resignified under those of fixation and regression, expanding the foundations of what would be his declinist psychoanalytic philosophy of history, revealing a new meaning and direction for both the origin and the destiny of humanity.
Keywords:
Freud; psychoanalysis; philosophy of history; heredity-degeneration; fixation-regression