Suffering In Sigmund Freud's Civilization And Its Discontents

Throughout the rest of the book, Freud addresses the conflict between civilization and the individual. He starts with the fundamental paradox of civilization: we created civilization as a tool to protect ourselves from unhappiness; however it is our largest source of unhappiness. He also points out that contemporary technological advances have been a mixed blessing for human happiness. He also asks what the purpose of civilization is if it is not to satisfy the pleasure principal. He later concedes that civilization has to make compromises of happiness to fulfill its primary goal of bringing people into peaceful relationships with each other, by making them subject to a higher, communal authority.

     Another argument Freud makes is how religion is an attempt to fill in the gaps where civilization and the pursuit of life cannot make individuals happy. "The urge to rectify the shortcomings of civilization which made themselves painfully felt" is fulfilled by religion. (Freud,

Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers are two extremely renowned individuals who have greatly contributed to the history of psychology. Their contributions are the foundation for the tools, techniques, and methodologies used by psychologist today. Although, each psychologist is from different times and developed different methods, they shared a passion for the workings of the human mind. As a result, their drive and foundation has motivated and prompted new theories and research for the future. This paper will provide a summary of two articles highlighting the processes contemporary psychologists use to develop the theories of Freud and Rogers. It also explains their views of human nature and worldviews as

It does, however, imply that at the center of all of us is a genetic code of animalistic survival. Regardless of how civilized we become, what moral guidelines we breed, or how giving we are to the less fortunate, we all at the core will do what is necessary to survive. This includes actions that would be considered antisocial, if not actions directly against others.

In chapter 8, Freud analyses the relationship between civilization and individual further. In his view, personal fulfillment still can be achieved under the community culture. He explains, “ Here by far the most important thing is the aim of creating a unity out of the individual human beings. It is true that the aim of happiness is still there, but it is pushed into the background”(Freud 105). In other words, community formed with every single individual and forming a community is the most important objective in the process of society development. Personal satisfaction can be achieved maximize if it is assumed that personal development is independent. However, the fact is not that simple. Individuals were born in community and they grow up in the environment that surrounded by their families and friends. They developed themselves along with the improvement of community. Individual and society are inseparable. So when individual considers about achieving personal fulfillment, the community culture is the first and the most primary restriction because they live in the community and they must obey community rules first. That is why Freud writes that personal happiness is always people pursuing but it is pushed into background when it intersects with community culture. For this reason, individual

Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels” exhibits the mindless, unbiased, and instinctive ways she proposes humans should live by observing a weasel at a nearby pond close to her home. Dillard encounters about a sixty second gaze with a weasel she seems to entirely connect with. In turn, this preludes a rapid sequence of questions and propositions about “living as we should”. Unfortunately, we tend to consume our self with our surroundings and distractions in life, which is not a problem until we are blatantly told. How have we strayed so far from our once instinctive lifestyle?

Joel Kupperman in Six Myths about the Good Life: Thinking About What Has Value evaluates that humans as a whole want more comfort and pleasure in life as he it “may represent a tendency that is wired into normal human nature” (Kupperman 1). Through the explanation of pleasure as well as its arguable counterpart, suffering and the discussion of their values in addition to the counterargument of hedonic treadmill, Kupperman’s views about the role of pleasure in living a good life can be strongly supported and evaluated.

In the book, Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud, Freud focuses on the commonly acknowledged cultural taboo against incest and studies how it structures primitive societies. He speculates on his concept of the Oedipal Complex and how it affects society as a whole. He wishes to establish a connection between the Oedipal Complex and the phenomenon of conscience, which involves the sense of a moral code governing our lives and our sense of guilt. In order to establish this connection, Freud discusses ambivalence, our belief in the omnipotence of our thoughts, and animal phobias and sacrificial rituals in order to make a sound, reasonable argument.

Freud mainly focuses on human nature and questions the desire, ideas ,and beliefs that shape a human, he then further analyses them. We see in his literature, Civilization and its Disconnect, that he questions religion and the belief in God. He himself does not believe in God, but wants to know why many people follow and trust something that they cannot see. He also questions the concept of human relationships. Knowing that a two person relationship and interaction is inevitable and that it is a part of life, but he does not know if a third relationship, and further on, is necessary. Regardless, human relationships are a part of society, and one of causes of civilizations, which Freud defines as “the whole some of achievement and the regulations which distinguish our lives” (Freud). With one of the achievements

The Bible is a sacred text that has guided men and women in life to stay on this path of goodness and selflessness. According to Freud the Bible may be the cause of civilization’s unhappiness. Mankind’s freedom has been stifled because of the restrain society has put on our “primal nature”. Anything that goes against the structure the Bible has made in society has been repelled and ignored because it is no longer something that can be thought of as real or taken seriously. Freud believes that the happiness we cannot attain is due to the freedoms we lack. This belief of lacking in freedom is not correct based on the Bible’s chapters. Mans inability to be happy or remain happy is due to his or her need of having something to prove. This

Freud referred to the Hobbes argument that humans are naturally hostile to one another, humans depend on their own man made devices and hostile nature, leading humanity into a war where a man will be against each other (Hobbes 1906, 96). Human civilization is an effort to set up limitations for man’s aggressive

but his theories on dreams seemed to be the most popular, even to this day.Freud thinks that the agent that

This misery of the oppressed class arises from multiple factors. First, the people in this class are forced to submit to bourgeois greed through exploitation. Since the proletariat depend on wage labor for basic survival, they are forced into hard labor with minimal payment- no more than required to entice them to work. This system fulfills the capitalists’ greed, but subjects the proletariat to miserable living conditions, because they have no alternative. Marx is concerned with oppression, while Freud is concerned with repression. However, both reflect on the principle that this stifling of the individual creates misery and discontent in society. While Marx believes this misery can be overcome by overhauling the pattern of social order, Freud seems to believe that the maladies found in society are more or less unavoidable. In Freud’s view, suffering comes from three sources: “the superior power of nature, the feebleness of our own bodies and…family, state and society” (Freud 37). He believes that the first two causes of suffering are unavoidable. However, what he refers to as “the regulations which adjust the mutual relationships of human beings” (37) are avoidable. This is what he refers to as civilization, and we feel a “strange attitude of hostility toward civilization” (38). Citizens begin to harbor aggressive hatred

So, Freud speculates on the conjecture that our universe or our world was created in such a way, that we are not be able to live happily for a prolonged time (Farrell 11). He introduces the Principle of Reality, the negative way of achieving happiness, when man strives to avoid

This fulfillment would later lead to love and the formation of families. In addition, the ego seeks not only pleasure in the fulfillment of sexual desires, but in companionship of a more plutonic nature. This form of companionship, according to Freud, leads to the formation of civilization. Freud writes that civilization is perpetuated and developed through the internalization of natural aggressiveness, and that the repression of such aggressiveness in the interest of civilization leads to the formation of the superego and thus feelings of guilt, not only for carrying out such aggressiveness, but for musing upon it. Therefore, Freud seeks to imply that the relationship between mental life and civilization is intertwined, that they are dependent upon one another.