La legge del padre. Alla ricerca del realismo politico di Sigmund Freud

This article examines Sigmund Freud’s writings on society and collective psychology, where the founder of psychoanalysis provides an ambitious vision of social and political order. According to this paper, in Freud's social theory we can identify some basic ideas of classical political realism (for example in the concept of” human nature “, or in the explanation of the relationship between leaders and the masses). At the same time, Freud provides two different versions of political realism: a first version is developed in the text Totem and Taboo, and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego; the second and more pessimistic version emerges especially in Civilization and its Discontents, where Freud developed the concept of Todestrieb.