"Civilization and its Discontents"

Paper Summary:

This paper explores how Freud offers a pessimistic view of human nature and human society in his book. It shows how Freud extends his theory of the individual's intra-psychic conflicts, such as between ego and id, and between the conscious and the unconscious mind, to the public arena of civil society. In this way, Freud comes to define human civilization as the cause of intense conflict, both between the individuals within the social community and between the individual and society.

From the Paper:

"According to Freud, the claims of the individual and the claims of the community are always in conflict and, in order for civilization to exist, "civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security" (63). The result, for the individual is the surrendering of most of their instinctual drives and urges for sexual and personal freedom in return for societal protection and security. However, perhaps surprisingly, Freud does not consider sexual privations to be the most acute, but concludes that the renunciation of aggression is the hardest privation of all. In Civilization, and its Discontents, Freud argues that the price for the continued existence of civil society is by a communal renunciation of instinctual gratification, and the associated suffering experienced by the individual through the repression of instinctual urges and personal satisfaction."

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