primal scene

English

WOTD – 18 April 2011

Etymology

Calque of German Urszene. Coined by Sigmund Freud in 1914.

Pronunciation

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Noun

primal scene (plural primal scenes)

1. (psychoanalysis) In Freudian theory, the first time a child witnesses (and understands) its parents copulating.
   • 1983, William J. Kerrigan, The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 164,

     The primal scene is the site at which the issues of ego differentiation become translated into the issues of the oedipus complex.

   • 1989, Andrew Samuels, The Plural Psyche:: Personality, Morality, and the Father, Routledge, →ISBN, page 123,

     The father's presence and image, together with those of the mother, form the raw material of the primal scene.

   • 1995, Joel Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia: a study in psychoanalysis and critical theory, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 51,

     She argues that perverse sexual activity constitutes an attempt to restage the primal scene in such a way as to eliminate its traumatic aspects.

   • 1997, David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch keeps his head”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Kindle edition, Little, Brown Book Group:

     Jeffrey Beaumont’s interslat voyeurism may be a sick parody of the Primal Scene, but neither he (a “college boy”) nor anybody else in the movie ever shows any inclination to say anything like “Gee, this is sort of like a sick parody of the good old Primal Scene” or even betrays any awareness that a lot of what’s going on is—both symbolically and psychoanalytically—heavy as hell.

Translations

in Freudian theory, the first time a child witnesses (and understands) its parents copulating

• Danish: primalscene m
• Finnish: kantanäky
• German: Urszene f
• Norwegian: primalscene m
• Russian: перви́чный грех (pervíčnyj grex)
• Swedish: primalscene m
• Turkish: birincil sahne, primer sahne

Further reading

• primal scene on Wikipedia.Wikipedia