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Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Gray
German 390/Comp. Lit. 396/Engl 363/CHID 498/JSIS 488/Lit 298
I. Background
A. Written 1929, published 1930. German title: Das Unbehagen in der Kultur.
-- Unbehagen: "Malaise," a sense of uneasiness, dissatisfaction, vauge "discontent."
-- Kultur: A more encompassing term than English "civilization"; includes science,
technology, art society, etc. All human cultural achievements and advancements.
First World War as defining experience for Freud and his contemporaries. WWI as the first
technologically advanced war, with the use of tanks, poison gas, etc. Death became
anonymous in the trenches, mass killing took place for the first time in this war. This
experience generated a new sense of pessimism about the human being and human nature.
1. In its positive manifestation, the pleasure principle simply names the egoistic drive for
the satisfaction of all our demands; it is a drive to gain pleasure.
-- But we quickly realize that the external world and the demands of others interfere
and prevents the satisfaction of many of our desires—enter the Reality Principle, our
awareness that our demands cannot all be met.
2. This leads to a second, negative expression of the pleasure principle; the attempt to
avoid displeasure as much as possible.
-- We thus learn to renounce desires or demands that cannot be met, since this causes
us less displeasure than giving in to the desire and having it left unsatisfied.
1. Deflections: we re-channel our demands and desires into areas where they can more
easily be satisfied. In this category Freud includes scientific activity or other forms of
professional achievement. These are paths of least resistance. (Closest connection to
reality.)
2. Substitutive Satisfactions: these are forms of compensation for lack of pleasure
elsewhere. Here Freud includes all forms of illusion, including religious fervor,
fantasy, escape into art, etc. These overlap with what Freud elsewhere refers to as
"fantasy."
3. Intoxication: we escape our displeasure by forgetting it, shunting it aside and turning
to things like alcohol, drugs, etc. Here we treat the symptoms (our displeasure itself),
not the causes (the reasons for our displeasure). As strategies of avoidance and denial,
these can increase the real displeasure they are intended to circumvent. (Farthest from
reality.)
1. Of these 3 sources, the first 2 seem unavoidable; we cannot overcome the frailty of our
bodies, and we will never control nature completely.
2. But the third category, social relations, seems as though it should be under human
control. We cannot explain why we cannot dispense with social suffering, why we
cannot regulate our social interactions in such a way that they do not avoid the greatest
displeasure for all.
3. This leads Freud to one of his central hypotheses: The reason why we cannot dispense
with social displeasure is because a piece of nature lies behind social conflict. (See
Freud Reader p. 735) In other words, our social compacts are not determined simply
by reason, but are also by a function and manifestation of our instincts. The conflict
that arises for us as social conflict is a reflection of the tensions that structure the
human psyche. We cannot escape social conflict because it is merely a re-iteration on
the communal level of the psychic conflicts of the individual. Nature, in short, remains
the common denominator of all our sources of pain.
4. This will lead Freud to the formulation of a new thesis: the existence of an aggressive
instinct that parallels and complements our other primary instinct, the libidinal drive.
A. Paradox: Civilization, although its purpose would seem to be amelioration of human misery
and suffering, is actually partially responsible for that suffering, according to Freud. This
explains our subliminal hostility toward civilization.
2) What are the negative aspects of civilization that cause it to produce unhappiness?
a. The power of the individual is sacrificed to the power of the group; strong individuals find
that they are marginalized and must make greater concessions. (Here Freud alludes to a
prominent Nietzschean thematic: the subordination of the powerful individual to the norm of
a morality sanctioned by the weak for their own protection.)
b. Civilization diminishes the liberty and freedom of the individual. We mistakenly believe
that social institutions promote and protect our liberties, but in fact they limit them and
hence are the cause of considerable displeasure.
c. The conditions of civilization demand from us renunciation of instinct; as we know from
Freud's theory, this is the most difficult thing for human beings to do because we are
inherently egocentric and driven toward the satisfaction of our instincts. Moreover, Freud
believes these renunciations can come back to haunt us; they can recur in pathological forms
as the "return of the repressed."
d. Civilization places limitations on sexuality; it not only dictates what forms of sexual
expression are "permissible," and censors all others, but it even places strict restrictions on
the forms of sexuality it allows. E.g., society insists on monogamy, faithfulness to a single
partner, it limits sexual expression according to gender roles, etc.
Bottom line: When humans enter into social bonds and the strictures of civilization, they
sacrifice a portion of their happiness in the interest of greater security. Note how this is
essentially an economic decision: we trade immediate gratification for long-term stability.
In other words, we renounce pleasure in one large and intensive "payment" and opt instead
for pleasure on the installment plan, spread out in smaller increments over a longer period of
time.
According to Freud, all of this leads to a sense of what he calls "cultural frustration": we feel
inhibited, limited by our accession to culture. What civilization and the management of our
drives and instincts offers us, in short, is a greater degree of predictability, and this helps
compensate for the renunciations we have to make.
1. The family as germinal unit of society develops out of the wish to remove the element
of chance from genital satisfaction; the primitive father demands the constant
presence of the mother and compensates her by providing stable satisfaction of her
material, existential needs.
2. Caritas, or generalized love of humanity at large, emerges as a strategy for avoiding
the down-side of exclusive love. Love not only provides us with the greatest
satisfactions, but it also makes us more vulnerable than any other emotion. To avoid
or minimize this vulnerability, we invest our erotic impulses into multiple objects.
Note once again Freud's economic thinking: even in love we hedge our bets, protect
ourselves from erotic bankruptcy by, as it were, diversifying our erotic portfolio.
3. Civilization also emerges out of totemic culture on the basis of the strategic union of
the weaker sons against the power and authority of the father. The banding together of
the sons, their subordination of their mutual hostilities for the purpose of a strategic
alliance against the father, is one of the first acts of civilization. Note how in this
conception civilization emerges from a negative, aggressive impulse; the war of all
against all, that constitutes the state of nature, is suspended solely in order to dethrone
a mutual and more powerful "enemy."
Eros Thanatos
interhuman bonding fragmentation, dissolution of bonds
love and "caritas" aggression
Life Death
drive for integration war of all against all
A. Freud returns in the context of the aggressive instinct to his deliberations on the
super-ego and contemplates three different possible developmental origins for this
psychic agency whose sole purpose (as conscience) is the discipline and punishment of
the ego.
For a graphic that depicts the growth of the super-ego based on these 3
sources, click here.
1) The theory of the super-ego explains why we feel guilty not only for
misdeeds we actually commit, but for the simple intention of committing some
misdeed, without ever carrying through on this intention.
-- Guilt is produced by the super-ego as that internal psychic control mechanism
that serves the interests of civilization by suppression our aggressive instincts.
-- We feel guilty for the very wish or desire to do evil.
A. The conflict with civilization transforms our psyche into a masochistic mechanism
bent on punishment and disciplining of the ego.
-- This distinguishes fundamentally the super-ego from its earlier theoretical
formulations, such as the censoring mechanism of the "pre-conscious."
B. The super-ego is not an innate psychic agency, it is not an original part of the
psyche at birth. It is not given a priori, as are the unconscious (the id) and the ego.
-- The super-ego is a derivative psychic function, produced by the tensions between
the individual ego and the disciplinary mechanisms of the society with which it must
interact.
D. This suggests—and perhaps this is what Freud means when he talks briefly at the
conclusion of Civilization about "cultural neuroses"—that different types of societies
will produce different forms of super-egos. For example: Has the U.S. become a
"paranoid" society after 9/11? What about things like Nazi Germany, with the
"Gestapo"? Can such an oppressive institution transform the social super-ego, maker it
more "repressive"? The "roaring 20s" as a pleasure-seeking society?