Bachofen, Johann Jakob

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Comment by fvg on November 28th, 2010 at 9:44 am

mutterrecht is misspelled. (two ‘rr’)

The Freke/Gandy is ‘off topic’. Why not this reference, which was particularly influential for the post-1945 debate about Freud:

Erich Fromm (1934): “Die sozialpsychologische Bedeutung der Mutterrechtstheorie”. Reprinted in: Erich Fromm, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 1, Analytische Sozialpsychologie.

best,
fvg

Comment by Jennifer Tanabe on December 1st, 2010 at 12:52 pm

Thank you for your feedback. The misspelling will be corrected and I will check on the references. Thank you again for helping to make NWE an increasingly valuable resource.

Comment by Katherine on January 12th, 2011 at 11:44 am

“As society has advanced our understanding of the family structure, it has also come to recognize the need for both parents, father and mother, working in harmony as essential in providing the most effective, satisfying environment for raising children. Single parent families, whether with father or mother alone, inevitably experience stress and are unable to provide all that children need. In the same way it is neither the ancient matriarchal society that Bachofen described, nor the patriarchal society that he experienced, that can fulfill human needs, but rather men and women working together as societal “parents.””

The previous paragraph reflects only the bias of the writer and the organization he/she works for–(the Unification Church?)–and should not be included. It has nothing to do with Johann Jakob Bachofen and indeed, one might suspect that Bachofen is being used only to get the ‘anonymous’ writer’s opinions across. (Isn’t anonymity nice?)

Oh, and by the way, there exist a great many wonderful single parents.

Here’s to the feminine in all of us.

Stop spam.
Read books.

Comment by Jennifer Tanabe on January 14th, 2011 at 11:22 am

Thank you for your comment. The paragraph you quoted may appear to you to be unrelated to Bachofen, yet it is the case that he described a matriarchal society and experienced a patriarchal one, and found neither to be ideal.

And, indeed, there are many wonderful single parents. Yet, it is also the case that they experience stress and difficulty in raising their children to a greater extent than families with two loving, harmonious parents. In re-reading the text, though, I have modified the sentence to say “find it difficult” instead of “are unable” based on your feedback. Thank you again for helping to make New World Encyclopedia a valuable resource.

Comment by Katherine on January 18th, 2011 at 6:44 pm

Jennifer, it may well be that Bachofen “described a matriarchal society and experienced a patriarchal one, and found neither to be ideal” but I find only your personal opinion on this and not Bachofen’s. Indeed, he may be revising his thesis as we speak, but I have read and re-read this article and see no mention of his finding a matriarchal society as being less than ideal.