Individuals and Society

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the idea of 'the individual' has become such an accepted construct in modern life it is easy to forget that the idea of an isolated, all-important private and individual 'self' is a relatively new development in human sociological thought. It shows however, that even today, human beings define themselves, not simply as individual selves, but as persons who must function within particular social contexts of family, work, and school.

From the Paper:

"Thus, individuals are affected by the roles society places upon them, but because one of these contemporary roles is 'an autonomous individual,' the individual is both a product of society and seeks to individually shape society and stand outside of its confines. But it is a worthy caveat that even the individualistic practice of psychology and psychoanalysis, although it may be seen as one of the first creative responses to such a development of a concept of 'an individual' located in society, suggested that society created mechanisms to ensure social control of individual human instincts. Freud stated that the individual's will did not operate outside of the society of the family. At the root of familial, controlling mechanisms Freud believed was the prohibition against incest and hence the evolution of the Oedipal complex within the human mind. The collective, shaping needs of society for order and limits upon human desires spawned the incest taboo and stifled the individual's desire to continually supplant his father's role."

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