Civilization and Its Discontents

As a behavioral psychologist, I found this book interesting from an historical perspective. Although there is little hard research in what was discussed, the fact that the problems of love and aggression still plague us is undeniable. For this historical discussion, this book is most valuable.

I absolutely loved this book. I purchased this book for my humanities class and initially I had planned on not ruining it so I could return it after I was done reading it. However I found myself engaged in the book and making annotations in it. It is definitely worth reading. Although the language is a bit confusing and difficult to comprehend at times.

I return to another look into Sigmund Freud's mind. After being away from his inner thought process after 9 years in other words when I was 12 years old and read Interpretation of Dreams.

I must say I loved reading his all over the place thought process in this one. Unlike my previous experience of his work.

Sigmund Freud begins by relating the discontents most people have that actually spring forth out of our search for happiness all superimposed with a vast level of complexity. In this there are several paths open to people and whether they succeed in gaining happiness or a lowering of pain in their life in the end depends on them and their natural constitution.

Next Sigmund Freud goes into great detail on how civilization developed. He makes it aware that to get to where we are there were likely many sacrifices for man and in turn there are still many. Many of these cause mental and emotional disturbances for us and are seemingly stoked thanks in part to too many restrictions by society. One of the main ones that Sigmund Freud brings up is civilized sexual morality. Which in opinion, while it does have some truth I also think this is only but one of several factors in that discussion.

Amongst his heavy use of harsh realistic truths he still invariably comes off as impartial. Something I couldn't help but sense. And I wonder if I was the only one? The thing that worried me was whether this impartiality came from a pure sense of wanting to be like that or if he had perhaps given up on humanity. I seriously hope it was the former rather than the latter.

Even so, I heavily enjoyed further reading from Sigmund Freud. A lot of what he touched upon gives clearer insight into the ways of life for us now and not to mention his predictions are spot-on, but most important of all a lot of it was full of logic.

Freud uses a very scientific approach to make theories on human nature. Even if you don't believe all of Freud's theories, they are certainly worth consideration. Throughout this entire book, I stumbled upon observations that I have personally made, but never developed or been able to put into words. This book is a must read for anyone interested in why we do what we do.

Mr. Freud describes well, the reason civilizations fail. The good sacrifice for the bad; the bad multiply and demand more sacrifice. Eventually the bad rule. The good simply lose self value and dissolve.

This edition is absolute smut! It should be illegal to call something as dreadful as this, a book! Joan Riviere seems to be no wiser than the common schmuck, for at least the common schmuck has some form of background in proper grammar and punctuation! If you are going to translate Freud, at least do so in a coherent manner! This book is riddled with misspellings, sentence fragments, and awkward paragraph breaks! I tried my very best to look past the errors and make sense of the content, but my efforts were met with no avail! This book should be given to middle school children as a proof reading exercise, for that is the only purpose that I can see fit for this dreadful, dreadful piece. I plan to purchase a different copy immediately and hopefully I can be reimbursed for this awful book!

Edit: Thank you so much, the store! I didn't even have to send this back because you gave me a full refund on the house! Now... off to the nearest Goodwill so I can pawn this nightmare of a book off on them! Even though there may be some duds along the way, the store and its staff always keep this site up to snuff! Keep it up, the store! :D

I decided to re-read this after reading Adam Phillips' Becoming Freud (a frustrating, but very interesting book/lecture). I wanted to hear Freud's own "voice" on the problems of the individual in society, since earlier I had lectured and written on such matters as a political scientist. This re-reading showed me some of the limitations of reading profound work when you are young; reading this at the age of 83 was fascinating in a way that it could not have been earlier, at least for me. Two matters impressed me in particular. First, the symbiotic relationship between formation of the individual and the social/civilizational setting in which this formation takes place. When younger, I had emphasized the notion that individuality was often achieved in spite of that setting. Second, Freud (writing on the eve of Nazi power) emphasizes the possibility of society having the same struggles that persons have in terms of id, ego, and superego. In short, societies/civilizations can become neurotic and behave in insane ways. The book is thus useful for our own time, which is undergoing the sorts of changes that produce intense societal stress.

Civilization and Its Discontents is considered one of the most important books written in the last century. It was first published in German in 1930. While Dr. Sigmund Freud has some interesting ideas about civilization and the unconscious this book does have its share of flaws. It can be very insightful and thought-provoking. Freud says, "Evil is often far from being harmful to the ego." He talks about some age-old problems of humankind such as sex and aggression. Freud sees civilization as a solution to repress instinctual drives that are natural to humans (despite the obvious problems it creates in its place). So the collective is favored over the individual (such is the price of order). That pessimistic outlook doesn't sit well with me but I can't say I disagree. We all have to learn how to live with each other but we haven't been too successful when individuals have been left to their own devices nor has civilization done much to improve the human nervous system, mind or relations between us.

Some have noted some of Freud's true opinions were kept from all but his closest associates. Jung and Reich have mentioned that Freud caved into societal expectations when writing and speaking publicly. He didn't want to place the individual at the center but seemingly prefers to place government there instead. I can appreciate that a self-centered society has its limitations but so do our governments, corporations and leaders. Freud seems to blame organized religion for society's ills when individuals are at the root of all good and evil (especially those in positions of power). Freud seems to reduce the impact of religion by arguing about the feelings it generates instead of exploring natural human interpretation mechanisms and our lifelong search for meaning. I believe Freud did not truly see the plight of the individual as fixed or hopeless (as he implies in the text). While many argue Freud is all about sex he was an extraordinary thinker who knew much more than he wrote about. The book proper is only 100 pages or so surrounded by a biography on Freud. So it is a fairly quick read but not an easy read. It is obvious at the outset that Freud does not write with the flourish of a natural author so many passages could have been clearer or stated better. Freud makes his points in a round-about way and fails to provide a way out of the dilemma civilization has created for us. Few thinkers have been so bold as to state the real problem: How do individuals live in a repressive society that seeks to limit their natural expression (try reading a biography on Diogenes of Sinope for info on that). While the book was no doubt shocking and groundbreaking at its time the field of psychology and human relations have mostly absorbed his ideas at this point in history so it doesn't have the same impact on modern audiences despite remaining a classic.

Sigmund Freud lived from 1856 to 1939. Civilization and Its Discontents was published in 1929. The edition used in this review is the translation by Joan Riviere printed in volume 54 of the Britannica Great Books set, original edition, first published in 1952. Page references are to this volume. Notation is *section number: page number*.

Is the "oceanic feeling", the sense of oneness with the world, a validation of religion? Freud starts his discussion of civilization and its discontents by explaining his view on the source of this sense of oneness. It is a reversion to a primary ego state during which no distinction is made between the self and the external world. In the history of an individual, this is the earliest experiential state of the infant during which it doesn't distinguish the breast from itself: the drive and that which satisfies the drive are experienced as a union. The drives and their satisfaction, and the aversion from what is displeasing, constitute the pleasure principle. The infant learns to distinguish itself from the breast when the drive (the appetite) and its gratification are not in union. This leads to the reality principle.

Happiness and unhappiness motivate the ego. Whenever it can, it accepts one and rejects the other. Not all displeasure is experienced only from the external world (from without). Some displeasure is experienced from the ego itself (from within). The pleasure principle induces repulsion (aversion) from displeasure along with attraction to pleasure. Because the ego is repulsed from the experience of displeasure, it not only seeks to avoid displeasure from the external world, it is repulsed (averted) from the apprehension (awareness) of the displeasure present within itself.

It is impossible to avoid displeasure, and it was the experience of displeasure which led to the reality principle. Yet, because the ego is motivated by the pleasure principle, it rejects displeasure however it can.

"Life as we find it is too hard for us; it entails too much pain, too many disappointments, impossible tasks. We cannot do without palliative remedies. We cannot dispense with auxiliary constructions, as Theodor Fontane said. There are perhaps three of these means: powerful diversions of interest, which lead us to care little about our misery; substitutive gratification, which lessen it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensitive to it. Something of this kind is indispensable." (II: 771)

"Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger signals; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men." (II: 772) This last is described later as "the inadequacy of our methods of regulating human relations in the family, the community, and the state." (III: 776)

"[T]he word `culture' describes the sum of the achievements and institutions which differentiate our lives from those of our animal forbears and serve two purposes, namely, that of protecting humanity against nature and of regulating the relations of human beings among themselves." (III: 778)

"Human life in communities only becomes possible when a number of men unite together in strength superior to any single individual and remain united against all single individuals." (III: 780) This is a restriction of gratification, not only of the individual but of the community. "This implies nothing about the ethical value of any such law." (III: 780)

"The liberty of the individual is not a benefit of culture." (III: 780) Culture constrains liberty. The cry for freedom is then "directed either against particular forms or demands of culture or against culture itself." (III: 780)

So "civilization is built up on renunciation of instinctual gratifications". (III: 781) "This cultural privation dominates the whole field of social relations between human beings; we know already that it is the cause of the antagonism against which all civilization has to fight. [...] It is not easy to understand how it can be possible to withhold satisfaction from an instinct. Nor is it by any means without risk to do so; if the deprivation is not made good economically, one may be certain of producing serious disorders." (III: 781)

The "evolution of culture" is then a process "comparable to the normal growth of an individual to maturity". (III: 781) Freud returns to this in the final section VIII. Civilization can itself be viewed as a collection of instincts seeking gratification. It would seem, then, that just as an individual can become pathological, so too can a culture.

This is the gist of sections I through III. In sections IV through VIII, Freud discusses the rise of the family and, from that, of civilization, and the psychological consequences of culture's demand for renunciation of the unconstrained gratification of sexuality and aggression. The drive for gratification and the inhibiting constraints upon that drive evoke changes in the individual. A fundamental and far reaching change is the sense of guilt and thus of the moral conscience, which then often reflects aggression back upon the self rather than outward as would otherwise occur.

In understanding Freud, it must be understood that the instincts (drives) are always pushing for gratification. They are not eradicated or eliminated by constraints imposed from outside or within the individual. They are instead shunted from one object of gratification (one "natural" to it) to another, and sometimes blended with another drive during the process. This is how Freud explains sadism and masochism: they are blends of sexuality and aggression, one directed outward, the other inward. (See Instincts and Their Vicissitudes [1915] for an earlier discussion of sadism and masochism which doesn't mention the force of civilization upon the instincts. This article is included in the Great Books edition of Freud.)

Freud sees civilization as pushed into formation, and held and developed, by an instinctual drive (in essence, sexual) to coalesce, and as pulled and riven by the aggressive instinct to eliminate what is not the self. Recall that the primeval experience, the primary ego state before the advent of the reality principle, is a sense of oneness, a union of appetite and satisfaction. It is the frustration of that unity of self that evokes aggression. Civilization seeks to engulf the individual into a larger unity at the cost of renunciation of the "natural" gratifications of the instinctual drives of the individual, and so these drives, none of which are ever eradicated, are shunted and blended and typically then misdirected inward towards the self and outward towards civilization. Aggression, active because of the constraints upon the ever-pushing instincts, is prolific, seeking gratification however it can, directing its force both inward and outward. From this aggression arises guilt.

The application to politics is evident. Certainly, Freud had read Hobbes, for whom all animal motion is driven by "appetite and aversion", who refers to unspoken "secret thoughts", and for whom men in a natural condition without civilization would be in a state of war with "every man against every man". (Leviathan chapters 6, 8, and 13)

"[M]en are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but [...] a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment. The result is that their neighbor is to them not only a possible helper or sexual object, but also a temptation to them to gratify their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without recompense, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and kill him. Homo homini lupus (Man is to man a wolf); who has the courage to dispute it in the face of all the evidence in his own life and in history?" (V: 787)

"Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another." (V: 787)

"Civilization expects to prevent the worst atrocities of brutal violence by taking upon itself the right to employ violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hands on the more discreet and subtle forms in which human aggressions are expressed." (V: 787)

See also Freud's article Thoughts for the Times on War and Death [1915], where he remarks: "In reality, there is no such thing as eradicating evil tendencies." In fact, "the inmost essence of human nature consists of elemental instincts, which are common to all men and aim at the satisfaction of certain primal needs. These instincts in themselves are neither good nor evil. We but classify them and their manifestations in that fashion, according as they meet the needs and demands of the human community." (Great Books vol. 54, page 758)

Hobbes, too, held that outside civilization and its imposition of law there is no right or wrong. "To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place." (Leviathan, chapter 13)

I decided to re-read this after reading Adam Phillips' Becoming Freud (a frustrating, but very interesting book/lecture). I wanted to hear Freud's own "voice" on the problems of the individual in society, since earlier I had lectured and written on such matters as a political scientist. This re-reading showed me some of the limitations of reading profound work when you are young; reading this at the age of 83 was fascinating in a way that it could not have been earlier, at least for me. Two matters impressed me in particular. First, the symbiotic relationship between formation of the individual and the social/civilizational setting in which this formation takes place. When younger, I had emphasized the notion that individuality was often achieved in spite of that setting. Second, Freud (writing on the eve of Nazi power) emphasizes the possibility of society having the same struggles that persons have in terms of id, ego, and superego. In short, societies/civilizations can become neurotic and behave in insane ways. The book is thus useful for our own time, which is undergoing the sorts of changes that produce intense societal stress.

Civilization and Its Discontents is considered one of the most important books written in the last century. It was first published in German in 1930. While Dr. Sigmund Freud has some interesting ideas about civilization and the unconscious this book does have its share of flaws. It can be very insightful and thought-provoking. Freud says, "Evil is often far from being harmful to the ego." He talks about some age-old problems of humankind such as sex and aggression. Freud sees civilization as a solution to repress instinctual drives that are natural to humans (despite the obvious problems it creates in its place). So the collective is favored over the individual (such is the price of order). That pessimistic outlook doesn't sit well with me but I can't say I disagree. We all have to learn how to live with each other but we haven't been too successful when individuals have been left to their own devices nor has civilization done much to improve the human nervous system, mind or relations between us.

Some have noted some of Freud's true opinions were kept from all but his closest associates. Jung and Reich have mentioned that Freud caved into societal expectations when writing and speaking publicly. He didn't want to place the individual at the center but seemingly prefers to place government there instead. I can appreciate that a self-centered society has its limitations but so do our governments, corporations and leaders. Freud seems to blame organized religion for society's ills when individuals are at the root of all good and evil (especially those in positions of power). Freud seems to reduce the impact of religion by arguing about the feelings it generates instead of exploring natural human interpretation mechanisms and our lifelong search for meaning. I believe Freud did not truly see the plight of the individual as fixed or hopeless (as he implies in the text). While many argue Freud is all about sex he was an extraordinary thinker who knew much more than he wrote about. The book proper is only 100 pages or so surrounded by a biography on Freud. So it is a fairly quick read but not an easy read. It is obvious at the outset that Freud does not write with the flourish of a natural author so many passages could have been clearer or stated better. Freud makes his points in a round-about way and fails to provide a way out of the dilemma civilization has created for us. Few thinkers have been so bold as to state the real problem: How do individuals live in a repressive society that seeks to limit their natural expression (try reading a biography on Diogenes of Sinope for info on that). While the book was no doubt shocking and groundbreaking at its time the field of psychology and human relations have mostly absorbed his ideas at this point in history so it doesn't have the same impact on modern audiences despite remaining a classic.

Sigmund Freud lived from 1856 to 1939. Civilization and Its Discontents was published in 1929. The edition used in this review is the translation by Joan Riviere printed in volume 54 of the Britannica Great Books set, original edition, first published in 1952. Page references are to this volume. Notation is *section number: page number*.

Is the "oceanic feeling", the sense of oneness with the world, a validation of religion? Freud starts his discussion of civilization and its discontents by explaining his view on the source of this sense of oneness. It is a reversion to a primary ego state during which no distinction is made between the self and the external world. In the history of an individual, this is the earliest experiential state of the infant during which it doesn't distinguish the breast from itself: the drive and that which satisfies the drive are experienced as a union. The drives and their satisfaction, and the aversion from what is displeasing, constitute the pleasure principle. The infant learns to distinguish itself from the breast when the drive (the appetite) and its gratification are not in union. This leads to the reality principle.

Happiness and unhappiness motivate the ego. Whenever it can, it accepts one and rejects the other. Not all displeasure is experienced only from the external world (from without). Some displeasure is experienced from the ego itself (from within). The pleasure principle induces repulsion (aversion) from displeasure along with attraction to pleasure. Because the ego is repulsed from the experience of displeasure, it not only seeks to avoid displeasure from the external world, it is repulsed (averted) from the apprehension (awareness) of the displeasure present within itself.

It is impossible to avoid displeasure, and it was the experience of displeasure which led to the reality principle. Yet, because the ego is motivated by the pleasure principle, it rejects displeasure however it can.

"Life as we find it is too hard for us; it entails too much pain, too many disappointments, impossible tasks. We cannot do without palliative remedies. We cannot dispense with auxiliary constructions, as Theodor Fontane said. There are perhaps three of these means: powerful diversions of interest, which lead us to care little about our misery; substitutive gratification, which lessen it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensitive to it. Something of this kind is indispensable." (II: 771)

"Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger signals; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men." (II: 772) This last is described later as "the inadequacy of our methods of regulating human relations in the family, the community, and the state." (III: 776)

"[T]he word `culture' describes the sum of the achievements and institutions which differentiate our lives from those of our animal forbears and serve two purposes, namely, that of protecting humanity against nature and of regulating the relations of human beings among themselves." (III: 778)

"Human life in communities only becomes possible when a number of men unite together in strength superior to any single individual and remain united against all single individuals." (III: 780) This is a restriction of gratification, not only of the individual but of the community. "This implies nothing about the ethical value of any such law." (III: 780)

"The liberty of the individual is not a benefit of culture." (III: 780) Culture constrains liberty. The cry for freedom is then "directed either against particular forms or demands of culture or against culture itself." (III: 780)

So "civilization is built up on renunciation of instinctual gratifications". (III: 781) "This cultural privation dominates the whole field of social relations between human beings; we know already that it is the cause of the antagonism against which all civilization has to fight. [...] It is not easy to understand how it can be possible to withhold satisfaction from an instinct. Nor is it by any means without risk to do so; if the deprivation is not made good economically, one may be certain of producing serious disorders." (III: 781)

The "evolution of culture" is then a process "comparable to the normal growth of an individual to maturity". (III: 781) Freud returns to this in the final section VIII. Civilization can itself be viewed as a collection of instincts seeking gratification. It would seem, then, that just as an individual can become pathological, so too can a culture.

This is the gist of sections I through III. In sections IV through VIII, Freud discusses the rise of the family and, from that, of civilization, and the psychological consequences of culture's demand for renunciation of the unconstrained gratification of sexuality and aggression. The drive for gratification and the inhibiting constraints upon that drive evoke changes in the individual. A fundamental and far reaching change is the sense of guilt and thus of the moral conscience, which then often reflects aggression back upon the self rather than outward as would otherwise occur.

In understanding Freud, it must be understood that the instincts (drives) are always pushing for gratification. They are not eradicated or eliminated by constraints imposed from outside or within the individual. They are instead shunted from one object of gratification (one "natural" to it) to another, and sometimes blended with another drive during the process. This is how Freud explains sadism and masochism: they are blends of sexuality and aggression, one directed outward, the other inward. (See Instincts and Their Vicissitudes [1915] for an earlier discussion of sadism and masochism which doesn't mention the force of civilization upon the instincts. This article is included in the Great Books edition of Freud.)

Freud sees civilization as pushed into formation, and held and developed, by an instinctual drive (in essence, sexual) to coalesce, and as pulled and riven by the aggressive instinct to eliminate what is not the self. Recall that the primeval experience, the primary ego state before the advent of the reality principle, is a sense of oneness, a union of appetite and satisfaction. It is the frustration of that unity of self that evokes aggression. Civilization seeks to engulf the individual into a larger unity at the cost of renunciation of the "natural" gratifications of the instinctual drives of the individual, and so these drives, none of which are ever eradicated, are shunted and blended and typically then misdirected inward towards the self and outward towards civilization. Aggression, active because of the constraints upon the ever-pushing instincts, is prolific, seeking gratification however it can, directing its force both inward and outward. From this aggression arises guilt.

The application to politics is evident. Certainly, Freud had read Hobbes, for whom all animal motion is driven by "appetite and aversion", who refers to unspoken "secret thoughts", and for whom men in a natural condition without civilization would be in a state of war with "every man against every man". (Leviathan chapters 6, 8, and 13)

"[M]en are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but [...] a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment. The result is that their neighbor is to them not only a possible helper or sexual object, but also a temptation to them to gratify their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without recompense, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and kill him. Homo homini lupus (Man is to man a wolf); who has the courage to dispute it in the face of all the evidence in his own life and in history?" (V: 787)

"Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another." (V: 787)

"Civilization expects to prevent the worst atrocities of brutal violence by taking upon itself the right to employ violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hands on the more discreet and subtle forms in which human aggressions are expressed." (V: 787)

See also Freud's article Thoughts for the Times on War and Death [1915], where he remarks: "In reality, there is no such thing as eradicating evil tendencies." In fact, "the inmost essence of human nature consists of elemental instincts, which are common to all men and aim at the satisfaction of certain primal needs. These instincts in themselves are neither good nor evil. We but classify them and their manifestations in that fashion, according as they meet the needs and demands of the human community." (Great Books vol. 54, page 758)

Hobbes, too, held that outside civilization and its imposition of law there is no right or wrong. "To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place." (Leviathan, chapter 13)

In "Civilization and its Discontents" Freud concerns himself with the inevitable conflict between civilization and what he believes to have elucidated about human nature in his psychoanalytic writings (here "civilization designates the sum total of those achievements and institutions that distinguish our life from that of our animal ancestors"). Freud views human nature through a "pleasure principle" of attempting to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. However, Freud asserts that pleasure is "quite incapable of being realized; all the institutions of the universe are opposed to it", leaving most humans to act in such a way as to minimize pain and "displace the aims of the drives in such a way that they cannot be frustrated by the external world." Freud thus traces a number of ways humans may choose to live in accord with this pleasure principle ("As a last technique for living... he may take refuge in neurotic illness").

Freud's view of human nature leads to the conclusion that "communal life becomes possible only when a majority comes together that is stronger than any individual and presents a united front against every individual." This creates the conflict between civilization and the individual. "Individual liberty is not an asset of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though admittedly even then it was largely worthless, because the individual was hardly in a position to defend it. With the development of civilization it underwent restrictions, and justice requires that no one shall be spared these restrictions." These restrictions are prominently placed on sexuality and aggression, the libidinal drive and death drive, Eros and Thanatos: "the sexual life of civilized man has been seriously damaged", while "aggression is an original, autonomous disposition in man, and I return to my earlier contention that it represents the greatest obstacle to civilization."

One of the means by which civilization limits the drives of individuals is religion: "by forcibly fixing human beings in a state of psychical infantilism and drawing them into a mass delusion, religion succeeds in saving many of them from individual neurosis." Society's prohibitions on conduct are then internalized as the "super-ego", "only now can one properly speak of conscience and a sense of guilt... nothing, not even one's thoughts can be hidden from the super-ego". Indeed, in the concluding chapter Freud states that the intention of the book is "to present the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization and to show how the price we pay for cultural progress is a loss of happiness, arising from a heightened sense of guilt".

There are many ways to criticize Freud - for instance, I have not even mentioned the specific ideas of Oedipal complexes, the primal father, and oral-anal-genital development, all of which make brief appearances in this later work. But it is when Freud asserts that the hallmark of progress is the subordination of individual desires to that of civilization, that the poverty of Freud's views are most evident. For instance Freud repeatedly straw-mans socialism, and issues apologisms for vast inequality ("nature, by her highly unequal endowment of individuals with physical attributes and mental abilities, has introduced injustices that cannot be remedied"). Besides a brief aside, Freud does not seriously consider the role that social formation can have in mitigating or encouraging his "death drive". Nor does he ever take seriously the idea that humans are adaptive creatures whose 'nature' is to a great degree affected by their environment.

Nevertheless, "Civilization and its Discontents" is an excellent introduction to many of Freud's ideas which have been so influential, and contains some of the literary genius that contributed to his fame. In particular, the first chapter of 'Discontents' contains a wonderful passage on human development and the emergent self, as well as memorable metaphor between the persistence of memory and the ruins of Rome. Thus, despite my strong disagreements with Freud, I can nevertheless recommend this book as a valuable read.

I found this really interesting, Freud takes his theories about the psyche and stretches them as far as they can go, asking what, if anything is the mental state of civilization. What its components are, how they interact with each other and what happens when they clash with one another. A lot of these observations seem really obvious, but he approaches them in a way which shows how so much of how we live our day to day lives is based on this weird sense of dissatisfaction with the world that we might ultimately need in order to really function as people. And, as with Moses and Monotheism, he's got enough humility and appreciation for how huge his tasks here are to admit that he might not have it all figured out. It's a really great sociological book to read if you don't care for sociology per se

In this great book “Civilization and Its Discontents” (1929), Freud says everything he writes about is “self-evident” and he is just “bringing into sharper focus a turn of thought arrived at long ago” (75). He is simply restating that which we all already know, using different terms, terms with certain associations attached to them, and others divested of. And the operation of shearing and molding terms is subtle and genius. So in his genius, why did Freud harp on aggressiveness, and the instinct for destruction, and never get to the real point, that of jealousy? People want something destroyed, or they want to possess something, so that others don’t have it. The having is not the desire or the final great pleasure, it is the knowledge that the others don’t have it, or can’t or didn’t have it. I think Freud was suppressing his inner self too much to admit the operations of jealousy were more important than the instincts for pleasure or aggressiveness.
Nevertheless this is a book to read so that one understands who it is whose language and ways of phrasing our reality dictate so much of modern discourse: Sigmund Freud.

Sigmund Freud is considered one of the great minds of Western Civilization. Critic Harold Bloom claimed there is simply before Freud and after. For Freud, everything is about sex. Todd Dufresne, a critic of Freud calls him a romantic. Freud seems to believe the only way we can transcend our own selfishness, and feel we are one with another person (perhaps returning to an infant-like state) is through romantic love. Freud praises the family and it's efforts at rearing children but he believes romantic love, where two individuals feel complete in and of themselves, takes away from or is harmful toward civilization. What's good for one individual is bad for society at large. For Freud, repressing free sexual expression (turning libidinal {or sexual energy} outward into industry and relationships with the larger world), is at the heart of civilization. And too much repression (or for those who cannot sublimate this urge correctly) is at the heart of mental illness.

Freud suggests that repressing sexuality is dysgenic. In the following quote, from the end, in the next to last paragraph in the book, Freud may possibly be making sexual allusions. What is he trying to bring to mind? "the tendencies to a restriction of sexual life or to the institution of a humanitarian ideal at the expense of natural selection were developmental trends which cannot be averted or turned aside and to which it is best for us to yield as though they were necessities of nature. I know, too, the objection that can be made against this, to the effect that in the history of mankind, trends such as these, which were considered unsurmountable, have often been thrown aside and replaced by other trends. Thus I have not the courage to rise up before my fellow-men as a prophet, and I bow to their reproach that I can offer them no consolation: for at bottom that is what they are all demanding - the wildest revolutionaries no less passionately than the most virtuous believers." While this paragraph is unclear, most of the writing here is not. It's almost as if, throughout Civilization and Its Discontents, for Freud, talking about sex proves his open-mindedness or perhaps it highlights his progressive nature or perhaps even proves his objectivity - for Freud, anyway.

Freud claims that love and hate are the same thing. An old girlfriend of mine once made that claim. . . Freud softens his view on this later by adding that love and hate are very similar or are very close to one another.

This seems a recap of many of the other ideas he's written about in the past. He pays quite a lot of attention to examining religion, and debunking it, something he did in 'The Future of an Illusion' (one of two other books by Freud I've previously read). He called religion 'the opiate of the masses' in that earlier work. Writing about it in a way one might almost think religion a necessity. Here he says, human beings (and perhaps he means those of lower socio-economic status) will either turn to alcohol or religion. It might be a good reason to take up religion. And indeed, even today, most '12 step' programs feature religion as a central tenet. We're expecting secrets of the mind in 'Civilization and it's Discontents' and instead we're subjected to for the most part out-of-place discussions of religion. I was thinking perhaps he takes this unpopular position in order to convince the reader of his honesty in the rest of the book but perhaps Freud is trying to make it safer for the educated to proclaim their atheism? He writes several paragraphs about the commandment that you should love your neighbor as yourself. While reading these passages one can sense obeying would make a better world but Freud notes this is unfair to those one has a close relationship with. Personally, I once owned a dog who was disappointed to hear the beloved words 'hi' and 'hello' given out to strangers. Freud grew close to dogs in his old age. It's at least conceivable this is where the notion comes to Freud. Where did 'Freud' come up with his ideas?

In Civilization and its Discontents Freud introduces an alternate theory (one that he first hints at in Beyond the Pleasure Principle?) that of the 'death drive'. That humans have not only a sexual urge but also an inborn need to seek power, dominate and even commit violence. This 'everyone is out for themselves' philosophy, it could be called - it's more familiar to us in this day and age - more familiar than Freud's original theories about all human motivation being the impulse or instinct of love? Freud is very speculative and tentative about this new theory he is introducing, saying that evidence along these lines will most likely be evaluated by researchers coming after him. The final words of the book are about these two forces he observes, "And now it is to be expected that the other of the two 'Heavenly Powers', eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary. But who can foresee with what success and with what result"?

On page 59 and 60 Freud uses the idea of a death instinct as a means to make an argument against Marxism. Freud writes, "In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest; be we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times, when property was very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nursery almost before property was given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people (with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother's relationship to her male child)". Perhaps the problem is that we must work, and that this is the beginning of repression, being shuffled around against one's will as an infant to meet time schedules and agendas? The work place, too, as an adult, forces things upon us contrary to our desires. If you are religious, everything that isn't work is a sin. From a practical standpoint, is there anything one can do to make the world a better place, other than working?

Although the death instinct might seem to be the focus of the book, for me, the climax seemed to be around page 65 to 75 where Freud discusses the 'conscience' and it's formation by civilization or repressive forces. Freud claims treating people or children too strictly causes problems with the conscience and it's relation to the rest of the mind, and also that being too permissive causes, not other problems, but the exact same ones (a super-ego that attacks the conscious mind (or the rest of the mind). The Spectator writes on the book jacket, "The theme is a very simple one which has often been foreshadowed in Freud's earlier works. Civilization is only made possible by individual renouncement. . . the sense of guilt has become the maker of civilized humanity".

Not to discredit this work in anyway, or to credit anyone else, but for whatever reason, this book reminded me of 'Hitler's Secret Conversations (a book I kind of suspected is a fraud)'. In that book, the fuhrer sits around the dinner table expressing so many opinions on everything, as if he's a regular (if opinionated) person and not the ruler of a good portion of the world. They both live in the same country at the same time, maybe that's it. Perhaps my memory is faulty, or triggered by something unrelated. Perhaps the author had read this book, or perhaps the fuhrer had even read this and the 'conversations' one is not a fraud. Who knows?

Freud will use Latin phrases occasionally, and quote sources, even attending a lecture given by Mark Twain that much interests him, speaking with Twain and discussing it in here. A previous reader of this book had jotted down author's names such as 'Wordsworth', 'Emerson', 'Lawrence' in the margins as if they shared similar ideas or as if this is where Freud came up with them. On page 90 Freud writes, "'Natural Ethics', as it is called, has nothing to offer here except the narcissistic satisfaction of being able to think oneself better than others". I took this phrase to be the re-wording of something Nietzche had said.

Freud writes, "women soon come into opposition to civilization and display their retarding and restraining influence - those very women who, in the beginning, laid the foundations of civilization by the claims of their love. Women represent the interests of the family and of sexual life. The work of civilization has become increasingly the business of men, it confronts them with ever more difficult tasks and compels them to carry out instinctual sublimations of which women are little capable". Freud was anything but a biological determinist; his picture could well appear beside it's opposite in the dictionary. If Freud were to examine the modern world he might claim that men are unable to accomplish this feat. Here Freud explains what he calls the conscience. What if a large segment of society is incapable of developing a fully formed conscience?

Perhaps we should worry more about a smaller segment of society, and wonder what will happen as They become unable to develop a fully formed conscience? Or will that be allowed to happen?

Excellent thought provoking book that casts a new light on your perception of civilization and the individual's love/hate relationship with it. Not to nit pick, but the death instinct and the libido are not in "constant" opposition, but a bit of both can always be found in each one's expression. For example, the cold pleasure of self destruction and the aggressiveness of the sexual act. This is not my "take" on it so to speak, but discussed extensively by Freud himself in his other works, where he even gives eating as an example. (The destruction of outside organic matter to sustain life.) Regarding libido and death instincts as polar opposites is a simplification that, oddly enough, makes things more confusing.

This is considered a classic work of Freud. For my own part I did not find it wholly convincing. Freud attaches far too much importance to human sexuality, suggesting that almost everything (aggression included) is connected to it. His argument appears to be that civilization requires the repression of certain human desires, in order for union and order to be maintained. The Super-ego makes very high demands on the self, the Ego, and that is bound to produce some neurosis and aggression. Insofar as the fact that the self has competing interests for one’s own personal happiness, and the union with the greater whole, I agree. I cannot accept all his arguments, however, or that the “love thy neighbor as thyself” command is all that bad. I don’t think even Christians expect it to be fulfilled, knowing the nature of human selfishness and sinfulness, the command serves to try to make better, not perfect, in realistic terms. I am also not in agreement with why Freud did not relate aggression to simpler processes of human survival instinct, and the natural aggression we have to simply survive. Not everything is sexual or based on sublimated sexuality. In any case, Freud’s arguments are partially helpful, but certainly not perfect.

While Civilization and its Discontents contains some insight into human nature too much of the book is enmeshed in Freud's notions of the ego, id, libido, etc. to be of real contemporary interest. However, those interested in the history of ideas, particularly the history of psychology, will find the book worth reading.

Whether you agree with Freud's psychoanalytical theories or not, there is no dispute over his intelligence, insight, and his eloquence. In this short book, he explains the conflicts civilization process created in individual psyche. Basically, he argues that the civilization's aim in uniting community in order to avoid sources of suffering imposes restrictions on individual liberty (of origin is libido--pleasure principle) which becomes the main source of discontents. He also warns about the danger of a powerful group with control over the force of nature which can potentially eliminate some human beings, which is rather prophetic considering the Nazi's presenct in Europe shortly after publication of this book. His logic is very tight according his main theories (structural theory, mainly), and writing is precise and eloquent. Just Brilliant.

Freud is a master intepreter of individual and collective life and dream. However he is also a mythic interpreter whose visions do not readily subject themselves to scientific confirmation, or disproof. For this reason Karl Popper believed them to be outside the realm of ' scientific' respectability.

Freud's idea of civilization coming as a form of sublimation of our aggression, has I think limited explanatory and zero predictory power. He wrote the work when the world was on the edge of darkness, and all Civilization threatened.

What would seem to confirm a certain part of his vision is the coming into being once again ,more than half- a - century from he fall of the Nazis he feared- and little more than a decade since the fall of the Evil Empire the Soviet Union- a new threat to Mankind. Again the dark forces of totalitarian thought threaten Mankind. Only this time it comes from the very realm a certain reading of Freud might have expected to be diminishing. It is out of the realm of Freud's illusion, religion , that comes this new totalitarian terrorist Islam.

So there seems to be something for the idea of a persistence even more than recurrence of Thanatos, the drive for Evil and destruction. The Freudian myth of two conflicting powers a destructive and constructive one seems again confirmed.

Whether our Civilization will be able to overcome this time as it has in the past is a real question. But it cannot be answered by Freud.