Civilization and its Discontents -Freud

Chapter I Summary:

In the introductory paragraphs, Freud takes issue with his colleague's account of a socalled "oceanic" feelingthe sense of boundlessness and oneness felt between the ego and
the outside world. This feeling is "a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith." It does
not betoken an allegiance to a specific religion, but instead points to the source of
religious sentiment in human beings. Churches and religious institutions are adept at
channeling this sentiment into particular belief systems, but they do not themselves create
it.
Freud cannot attest to having experienced this "oceanic" feeling, and yet his lack of
identification does not lead him to deny its existence for other human beings. On the
contrary, he attempts to understand the phenomenon scientifically: if the feeling has no
outward physiological signs, there must be a psychoanalytic explanation for it. Freud
proceeds to summarize his previous findings. In general, the ego perceives itself as
maintaining "sharp and clear lines of demarcation" with the outside world. Only when it
is at the height of love does the ego consciously allow that boundary to become more
fluid and permeable without feeling threatened. Otherwise, the tendency of the ego is to
detach from the pain and unpleasure associated with the outside world, to throw feelings
of suffering arising from external sources outside of itself. This distinction between inside
and outside is a crucial part of the process of psychological development, allowing the
ego to recognize a "reality" separate from itself. At an earlier stage of development, the
ego had an all-encompassing, almost boundless sense of the world around it; with
maturity comes a "shrunken" sense of reality because the ego has delimited itself from
the outside world.
Is such an inference about the earliest stages of psychological development sound? In
other words, can we describe states of mind that we no longer inhabit? Yes, explains
Freud, because science makes precisely such claims all the time, for instance, about the
evolution of higher species from the lowest forms of life, even though the intermediate
links are materially missing. The mind is exceptional because infantile and mature
feelings continue to co-exist throughout a person's life: once a memory has been
recorded, it is never erased, and can be called to the surface under the right
circumstances. Freud draws another analogy to the field of archeology by describing the
excavation of past ruins under present-day edifices. He takes Rome, the "Eternal City," as
an example, only to conclude that the analogy is insufficient because the mind cannot
ultimately be represented in visual or pictorial terms.
Freud revises his earlier statement about memory: "What is past in mental life may be
preserved and is not necessarily erased." He returns to the question of "oceanic" feeling
with which the chapter commences, finding it uncompelling as an explanation of the

source of religious sentiment in human beings. Instead, according to Freud, it is a longing

for paternal protection in childhood that continues into adult life as a sustained "fear of
the superior power of Fate." Freud reiterates his frustration over the fact that this "sense
of oneness with the universe" is an intangible quantity impervious to traditional scientific
analysis, because it has no physiological basis.
Analysis:

The most important and intriguing aspect of this introductory chapter consists in Freud's
attempt to compare the enterprise of psychoanalysis toand simultaneously differentiate it
fromother accepted scientific disciplines.
The analogies to evolution science and archeology, far from being self-indulgent
digressions, actually illuminate Freud's conception of the individual and civilization. For
one, Freud implicitly subscribes to the precepts of Darwinian theory, and therefore
believes fundamentally in the progressive nature of the human species (as opposed to
Creationism), even if it is prone to periodic regression and spasms of violence. For Freud,
the evolution of human civilization has reached an impasse because it has conquered
nature with ever greater technological and mechanical force, which has paradoxically
made conditions less, rather than more, livable for the individual. Freud also believes in
the necessity of "adapting" to one's environmenta concept derived from the broader
framework of Darwinian theory and applied to his own theory of psychological
development.
Freud's analogy to archeology points up his background in classical literature and history,
but also the primacy of Western civilization to his thinking, since Freud considers ancient
Rome as the historical origin of culture and society. The "super-ego," as Freud will
conjecture toward the end of his essay, is both individual and collective. We inherit our
notion of authority and standards of greatness from past leaders or figures of imposing
personality, such as the Roman emperors Nero, Hadrian, and Agrippa to whom Freud
makes reference in his description of Roman architecture. At the same time, Freud makes
a nod to the influence of Eastern culture and civilization in discussing the "practices of
Yoga" and "the worldly wisdom of the East" as a "peculiar" and "unusual" method of
attaining self-knowledge and control over the impulses of the ego.
Chapter II Summary:

In Future of an Illusion, Freud laments the common man's preoccupation with the
"enormously exalted father" embodied by God. The whole idea of placating a supposedly
higher being for future recompense seems utterly infantile and absurd. The reality is,
however, that masses of men persist in this illusion for the duration of their lives.
According to Freud, men exhibit three main coping mechanisms to counter their

experience of suffering in the world: 1) deflection of pain and disappointment (through

planned distractions); 2) substitutive satisfactions (mainly through the replacement of
reality by art); 3) intoxicating substances. Freud concludes that religion cannot be clearly
categorized within this schema, and suspends this particular line of inquiry.
What does man wish for and aim to achieve in life? Religious belief hinges on this central
question: only it can answer what the ultimate purpose of life is. Most immediately, men
strive to be happy, and their behavior in the outside world is determined by the pleasure
principle. But the possibilities for happiness and pleasure are limited, and more often we
experience unhappiness from the following three sources: 1) our body; 2) the external
world; and 3) our relations to other men. We employ various strategies to avoid
unpleasure: by isolating ourselves voluntarily, becoming a member of the human
community (i.e. contributing to a common endeavor), or influencing our own organism.
Intoxication is a particularly prevalent method of influence. Sometimes we aim to control
our instincts through practices of spiritual meditation. Sublimation of instincts is another
method of influence, involving the "displacement of libido" or rechanneling of energies
into other activities.
The discipline required to influence our internal psyche makes this strategy accessible to
very few; more common is the derivation of satisfaction from illusions, such as the
enjoyment provided by works of art, which provides temporary relief from the misery of
the outside world. Another strategy, as mentioned previously, is isolation, but reality
intrudes far too forcefully for a solitary illusion to persist. Finally, Freud points to love as
a potentially intense source of happiness, the downside being the vulnerability and
defenselessness of the ego that accompany love for another person.
Freud reflects on the role of beauty in achieving happiness: while undoubtedly a source
of pleasure, beauty has no discernible nature or origin, even if philosophical studies in
aesthetics have succeeded in describing the conditions under which it is experienced. For
its part, psychoanalysis would appear to locate beauty in sexual feeling, since beauty is
often an attribute of the desired sexual object.
It is impossible to reach a state of full happiness. None of the above strategies will work
completely. "Happiness is a problem of the economics of the individual's libido," states
Freud. Each individual must identify the type of happiness most important to him as well
as the capacity of his own mental constitution to experience happiness. Adaptation to the
external environment is also key to a maximum yield of pleasure. Religion reduces these
variables by dictating a simple path to happiness. It thereby spares the masses of their
individual neuroses, but Freud sees few other benefits in religion. If the believer realizes
that religion has put such a constraint on the possibilities of his happiness, his only option
becomes to find pleasure in "unconditional submission" to his faith. But Freud remarks
that such a self-aware individual could have most likely found other, less arduous paths to
happiness.
Analysis:

Freud expresses his antagonism to organized religion in forthright and barely diplomatic
terms, calling it delusional and infantile. Aggressively secular in its orientation, Freud
takes Goethe's view that science and art constitute in themselves and provide the benefits
of religion. Freud enacts his own belief in the importance of the arts by inserting
generous citations of poetry and other insights from literary sources throughout.
According to Freud, the purpose of human life is not redemption in an afterlife, but the
achievement of happiness. His theory of the pleasure principle clashes directly with the
biblical "intention that man should be happy,'" which Freud notes with irony "is not
included in the plan of Creation.'"
Most surprising is Freud's emphasis on the compensatory value of beautythe idea that
aesthetically pleasing "human forms and gestures, natural objects and landscapes, artistic
and even scientific creations" can stave off suffering and provide temporary pleasure. The
logical connection between psychoanalysis and beauty is, in the end, quite tenuous and
insufficiently explored. Freud never adequately integrates his interest in beauty into the
broader scheme of the pleasure principle. In discussing the topic of beauty and aesthetics,
he borrows heavily from the theory of Emmanuel Kant, a prominent eighteenth-century
German philosopher whose seminal work, Critique of Judgment (1790), continues to set
the terms of contemporary debate on the definition, value, and function of beauty. Kant
believed, as Freud does, that beauty does not inhere in the material qualities of the object
but is a function of the viewer's receptivity to it.
Chapter III Summary:

Freud begins by defending his "astonishing contention" that civilization is responsible for
our misery: we organize ourselves into civilized society to escape suffering, only to
inflict it back upon ourselves. Freud identifies three key historical events that produced
this disillusionment with human civilization: 1) the victory of Christendom over pagan
religions. (Freud notes the low value placed on earthly life in Christian doctrine); 2) the
discovery and conquest of primitive tribes and peoples, who appeared to Europeans to be
living more happily in a state of nature; 3) scientific identification of the mechanism of
neuroses, which are caused by the frustrating demands put on the individual by modern
society. An antagonism toward civilization developed when people concluded that only a
reduction of those demandsin other words, withdrawal from the society that imposed
themwould lead to greater happiness.
Technology also brings the promise of better lives and greater happiness, but Freud
disputes the notion that advances in technology automatically improve our quality of life.
On the other hand, it is difficult to gauge the happiness of man at an earlier era because
"happiness" is an essentially subjective sentiment. People in extreme situations of
unhappiness might also be desensitized to their own suffering.

Civilization can be defined as the whole sum of human achievements and regulations
intended to protect men against nature and "adjust their mutual relations." Technological
advances have enhanced our power against nature, but also our capacities of sensory
perception through such inventions as the telephone and photograph. These inventions
have given man a sense of omnipotence and omniscience formerly attributed only to the
gods. Freud goes so far as to call man a "prosthetic God."
In addition to protection from nature, other expectations of living in a civilized society
include beauty (the aesthetic experience of various forms of art and artistic expression),
cleanliness (both in terms of personal hygiene and public sanitation), order (a principle
introduced by the sciences and learned from our observation of nature). Freud defends his
inclusion of beauty within his list of expectations. According to him, civilization is not
exclusively focused on what is useful. The cultivation of man's higher mental activities is
one of civilization's central aims, and it achieves this aim in part through the production
of art.
As for the regulation of our "mutual relations," a "decisive step" toward civilization lies
in the replacement of the individual's power by that of the community. But this
substitution henceforth restricts the possibilities of individual satisfaction in the interests
of law, order, and justice. Civilized societies place the rule of law over individual
instincts. Here Freud draws an analogy between the evolution of civilization and the
libidinal development of the individual, identifying three parallel stages in which each
occurs: 1) character-formation (acquisition of an identity); 2) sublimation (channeling of
primal energy into other physical or psychological activities); 3) nonsatisfaction/renunciation of instincts (burying of aggressive impulses in the individual;
imposition of the rule of law in society).
Analysis:

A rhetorical maneuver commonly used by Freud is to introduce objections to his line of

thinking from unspecific sources through a formulation such as "But here the voice of
pessimistic criticism makes itself heard..." Freud's style of argumentation takes the form
of a dialogue, like that of the patient-analyst relationship. In truth, Freud is not
responding to an actual critic so much as he is anticipating and accounting for the
possible grounds of opposition even before they are articulated. In the same vein, Freud
uses passive constructions to conceal references to himself and the use of his own
research in the service of his own arguments. "It was discovered that a person becomes
neurotic because he cannot tolerate the amount of frustration society imposes on him" is
one such example of Freud's circular and almost tautological thinking. This particular
"discovery" is clearly the product of the present investigation, which Freud recasts as
external verification of his claims about civilization.
The fluctuation between the first person pronoun and the collective "we" is rhetorically
noteworthy because it blurs the distinction between personal observation and common

knowledge. Freud often makes statements that he feels are intuitive or instinctively
recognized as true or accurate, using the plural voice to present as "common sense" what
is in fact a contestable interpretation or questionable assumption. Rather than define
terms rigorously, he expects the reader to "be guided by linguistic usage or, as it is also
called, linguistic feeling, in the conviction that we shall thus be doing justice to inner
discernments which still defy expression in abstract terms."
Chapter IV Summary:

The communal life of human beings has its roots in the compulsion to work (created by
external necessity) and the power of love (or an unwillingness to be deprived of one's
sexual object). Freud conjectures that genital erotism spurred the formation of durable
human relationships by making the satisfaction of sexual pleasure the prototype of other
forms of happiness that could be achieved with and through companionship. Given the
risks of love, some people make themselves independent of individual love objects and
instead devote themselves to a universal love for all of mankind, typified by the Christian
saints. Freud calls this phenomenon "love with an inhibited aim."
Even if one of the main purposes of civilization is to bind men libidinally to one another,
love and civilization eventually come into conflict with one another. Freud identifies
several different reasons for this later antagonism. For one, family units tend to isolate
themselves and prevent individuals from detaching and maturing on their own. Women in
particular have, according to Freud, a restraining influence on children and enter into
opposition with civilization out of resentment over the intimacy and love that the
requirements of work necessarily takes away from their marital relationships. Along these
lines, civilization saps sexual energy by diverting it into cultural endeavors. It also
restricts love object choices and mutilates our erotic lives. Taboos (against incest, first
and foremost), laws, and customs impose further restrictions. Fear of sexual revolt leads
to precautionary measures beginning in childhood. For Freud, Western European
civilization represents a high water-mark in the regulation of sexuality. Even
heterosexuality, freely practiced and endorsed by society, is forcibly channeled into
monogamy and marriage. Even where society fails to regulate and put an end to behavior
it deems transgressive, it still has a severely impairing effect on the sexual life of men.
Analysis:

In this short chapter, Freud is the most freewheeling and tentative in his claims, offering
little empirical evidence while attempting to lend a scientific veneer to his observations
about civilization through the use of biology. His footnotes, more extensive in this
chapter than in others, are replete with speculation on the social consequences of homo
sapiens assuming an erect posture, of the scent of excrement and anal erotism, of the
fundamentally "bisexual" nature of human sexuality. The bizarre nature of these

reflections is justified as a "digression which will enable us to fill in a gap which we left
in an earlier discussion."
The misogynistic streak of Freud's thinking is in evidence. Despite his disdainful attitude
towards them, women play a pivotal and paradoxical role in the development of
civilization, at once enabling its foundation and undermining the realization of its full
potential. Freud's observations on "the primitive family," combined with those on the
place of women in modern society, are lacking in historical perspective, and falsely
assume a continuity in the gender relations undergirding the structure of the familial unit.
On the other hand, Freud also acknowledges the increasingly repressive regulation of
human sexuality in Western civilization. The conjoined imperatives of marriage and
heterosexuality discussed at the end of the chapter are also viewed as historically recent
phenomena.
Chapter V Summary:

Civilization's antagonism toward sexuality arises from the necessity to build a communal
bond based on relations of friendship. If the activity of the libido were allowed to run
rampant, it would likely destroy the monogamous love-relationship of the couple that
society has endorsed as the most stable.
Freud objects to the commandment "Love thy neighbor" because, contrary to Biblical
teaching, he takes a pessimistic view of fellow man, whose primal instinct Freud
considers to be aggression, not love. The biblical commandment runs counter to the
original nature of man, and history is the proof: man has proven time and again that he
will exploit, abuse, humiliate, cause pain, torture and kill other men, from the invasion of
the Huns to the First World War. Civilization is continually threatened with disintegration
because of this inclination to aggression. It invests great energy in restraining these
instincts. The law has tried to refine itself to the point of regulating most forms of
aggression, but it still fails to prevent it.
Communism has claimed to find the path to deliverance through the abolition of private
property, which thereby eliminates an economic system that allows certain individuals to
accrue disproportionate wealth and abuse his fellow men. For Freud, communism is
based on a very faulty assumption, since it in no way alters human nature, only one of the
motivations by which it operates (i.e. greed). Aggression predates the ownership of
property. It has also served throughout history to bind communities together against those
outside them. The Jews in the Middle Ages were, for instance, the victims of intolerance
by Christians; in Russia, vilification of the bourgeois has served as a rallying cry for the
communist government, etc.
Civilized man has exchanged the possibility of happiness for security. But primitive
society is not to be envied, since in that context, only the head of the family enjoyed
instinctual freedom at the expense of all others. Some of these limitations of modern

society are surmountable, while others are intrinsic to civilization. Freud does not specify
which limitations on our instinctual freedom fall into which category. The most
dangerous society, according to him, is one in which the leader is exalted and individuals
do not acquire an adequate sense of identity. Freud points to American society as an
example of this danger, but refrains from pursuing his criticism further.
Analysis:

Whereas in Chapter III, Freud was comparing man to a "prosthetic God" on account of
his technological innovations, here he focuses on the opposite phenomenon: man's
regression into a state of barbarism and animality. With the Latin expression Homo
homini lupus ("Man is a wolf to man"), Freud metaphorically underscores the Darwinian
undertone of his argument about human civilization, viewing man's evolution in the
context of his descent from "lower" species.
Freud's critique of communism from an psychoanalytic perspective is a tour de force.
Without engaging the usual debate about the economic merits or disadvantages of a staterun government, it pinpoints the faulty assumption behind the abolition of private
property, namely, the inability to reform human nature in such a manner to eliminate all
motivation for the exploitation associated with capitalism. It is interesting to note the
extent to which the language of economics already enters into Freud's conception of the
individual. In his discussion of the pleasure principle, Freud regularly refers to the
"economics of the libido."
Interestingly, Freud suggests that the inclination to aggression otherwise so destructive to
civilization has also served to build and reinforce a sense of nationalism among peoples
who then define themselves in opposition to other "foreign" peoples. This insight can be
logically connected back to Freud's extended critique of the biblical commandment to
"Love thy neighbor" at the beginning of this chapter, since it points to the role of
aggression (as well as mutual love) in the process of communal identity-formation.
Chapter VI Summary:

Freud quotes Schiller: "hunger and love are what moves the world." At first glance, the
two appear to be driven by opposing instincts. Hunger can be characterized as an egoinstinct or satisfaction of internal needs, whereas love is directed toward objects external
to the ego. "Libido" is another term for this instinct. Freud finds himself forced to
abandon this antithesis when he considers the phenomenon of sadism, which is
technically an object-instinct, but also bound up in the ego and a desire for mastery. The
concept of narcissism elaborated in earlier writings by Freud also presents a complication
to this simple opposition between the ego-instincts and object-instincts, for it turns out
that the ego is cathected with libido and in fact the libido's original home. In other words,

in Freud's schema, self-love psychologically precedesand is a necessary condition ofthe

love directed towards others.
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud first elaborated the concept of the death drive,
opposed to Eros (the life instinct), which was widely resisted by the psychoanalytic
community. But its existence now seem undeniable. Aggression is "an original, selfsubsisting instinctual disposition in man" that "constitutes the greatest impediment to
civilization." The purpose of Eros is to bind men libidinally to one another into
communities. For Freud, the entire evolution of civilization can be summed up as a
struggle between Eros and the death drive.
Analysis:

Freud starts with an opposition between ego-instincts and object-instincts. Within the
course of his analysis, he puts into question the validity of this opposition by noting that
both instincts flow from the ego, or more specifically, that our urges toward external
objects are ultimately a function of our own desires (i.e. for mastery, control, pleasure).
This type of self-revision common in Freud's writings is a prototypical act of
deconstructive thought, which consists in demonstrating how each term of an apparent
opposition contains the difference of the other term within it. For example, Freud realizes
that the desires directed toward the outside (so-called object-instincts) in fact originate in
desires coming from within the subject. Similarly, in the following chapter, he will draw a
contrast between the fear of (external) authority and fear of the (internal) super-ego, only
to reveal that the latter flows from the former.
Freud is also not averse to admitting the erroneous nature of his own prior clinical
assumptions. A typical example occurs in this chapter: "I remember my own defensive
attitude when the idea of an instinct of destruction first emerged in psychoanalytic
literature" This is also a type of self-revision, but far from underscoring Freud's
apparent open-mindedness to new ideas, it also serves rhetorically to anticipate and
overcome in advance the reader's resistance to the concept (in this case, of the death
drive) that Freud is putting forward. Freud's style of argumentation is, in other words,
very similar to the psychoanalytic framework he is elaborating in that it already has the
concept of resistance built into it.
In no other chapter is Freud's reliance on literature and poetry as empirical evidence of
instincts more striking. Freud appears to integrate seamlessly his clinical experience with
allusions to Goethe and Schiller, according the two equal weight in his research. In a
footnote, he cites a passage from Faust in which the description of evil coincides with the
"destructive instinct" that Freud labels the death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. It
is interesting to observe how Freud treats literature as an authoritative source of
knowledge about human nature, without seeing a conflict in its epistemological status as
fiction, as something which might accurately describe a psychological feeling or
condition, but which is not at all the same as a patient's account.

Chapter VII Summary:

One of the primary functions of society to restrain our aggressive impulses. It achieves
this goal by installing within the individual a sort of watchdog agency, which Freud calls
the super-ego, to master our desire for aggression. Freud speculates that the individual,
once forbidden from expressing this desire externally, subdues excess aggression by
redirecting it towards his own ego. The super-ego regulates the actions of the ego in the
form of a "conscience" and consequently imposes a sense of guilt and need for selfpunishment on the individual.
Freud attempts to account for the root cause of guilt, concluding that it arises from doing
something or intending to do something "bad." Whether or not the action or intention is
bad in absolute moral terms is irrelevant; it is sufficient for the ego to deem it as such.
Freud goes further, however, in rejecting the existence of a "natural" capacity to
distinguish between good and bad. What is considered bad often feels good or is
otherwise desirable to the ego. For Freud, the only thing "bad" in this sense is the threat
of the loss of love. In children, this fear is acute and involves losing parents; in adults, the
community takes the place of the parental figure.
With the establishment of the super-ego comes a sense of bad conscience. Because it is
internalized, the super-ego omnisciently regulates both our thoughts and deeds, whereas
prior to its installation, individuals only had to submit themselves to a higher authority
for punishment (such as parents) in the case of fully accomplished acts. Those who have
carried saintliness and virtuosity to an extreme are paradoxically the most likely to feel
sinful. External frustration also enhances the power of conscience to reproach and impose
punishment on the ego. Whole peoples have behaved this way: the Jews interpreted their
misfortune as the consequence of their own sinfulness and created a set of overly strict
commandments in reaction to their fate. There are two sources of guilt: 1) fear of
authority and 2) fear of the super-ego. In the latter case, instinct renunciation no longer
liberates the individual from the sense of internal guilt that the super-ego continues to
perpetuate. By extension, in order to maintain its own order and stability, civilization
reinforces the sense of guilt to regulate and accommodate the ever-increasing numbers of
relationships between men. As time goes on, it becomes a more repressive force that
individuals find increasingly difficult to tolerate.
Analysis:

Freud's religious background permeates his discourse at almost every turn. Scholars are
in disagreement about the extent to which Judaism influences Freud's conception of
psychoanalysis. Certainly, his interpretations of the religion and its core beliefs have
often been at odds with mainstream Jewish tradition. The frequent references to Jewish
history and culture throughout the essay paradoxically points up the importance of

religion to Freud's thought at the same time that Freud categorically rejects the practice
and institution of organized religion as infantile and delusional. The phenomenon of guilt,
for example, is integral to Freud's understanding of the formation of the super-ego, and
traced back to the historical experience of the Jews, who "produced the prophets, who
held up their sinfulness before them; and out of their sense of guilt they created the
overstrict commandments of their priestly religion." Similarly, Freud cites the persecution
of the Jews as a manifestation of the "inclination to aggression" that sometimes serves as
a cohesive force behind identity-formation.
Chapter VIII Summary:

Freud apologizes for the dtours to which his analysis has been prone. He elevates his
discussion of the increasing sense of guilt taken up in the last chapter to "most important
problem in the development of civilization." In his view, it takes an enormous toll on the
happiness of individuals. In the case of obsessive neurotics, guilt makes itself heard
noisily within the conscience, but often it operates in more surreptitious ways. Freud
classifies guilt as a particular form of anxiety. In his clinical view, anxiety is behind every
symptom, whether consciously or unconsciously expressed. While the collective level of
anxiety within civilization has increased, it remains largely undiagnosed, and manifests
itself as a widespread and vague malaise to which people attach other causes. Religions
claim to redeem mankind from guilt, through rituals of sacrificial death or martyrdom
(i.e. the assumption of collective guilt by an individual).
Freud devotes a few pages to introducing definitional clarity into his seemingly
interchangeable use of the following terms: the "super-ego" is an internal agency whose
existence has been inferred; "conscience" is one of the functions ascribed to the superego, to keep watch over the intentions and actions of the ego; "sense of guilt" designates
the perception that the ego has of being surveyed and arises from the tension between its
own strivings and the (often overly severe) demands of the super-ego. It can be felt prior
to the execution of the guilty act, whereas "remorse" refers exclusively to the reaction
after the act of aggression has been carried out.
Earlier, Freud had claimed that thwarted instincts in general lead to a heightened sense of
guilt. Here he specifies that only aggressive instincts are transformed into a sense of guilt
via the regulating action of the super-ego. Freud applies the same revision to his
understanding of symptoms, which are " in their essence substitutive satisfactions for
unfulfilled sexual wishes." Not all repressed instincts, however, manifest themselves as
symptoms. Some translate more specifically into a sense of guilt.
Freud's earlier analogy between the development of civilization and the libidinal
maturation of the individual also undergoes revision. The program of the pleasure
principle, which consists in finding and achieving happiness, is retained as the central
aim of individual psychological development; however, in the context of civilization,
personal happiness is dispensed with in favor of unity and social cohesion. In joining a

larger community, the individual oscillates between the poles of egoism and altruism,
between the urge toward personal happiness and the urge toward union. This struggle is
completely internal, a function of the ebb and flow of the libido, not to be confused with
the struggle between Eros and the death drive outlined elsewhere in Freud's essay.
Freud extends this analogy to the concept of the super-ego, positing the existence of a
cultural super-ego formed by the personalities of great leaders or by martyred figures
representing humanity at its most downtrodden, notably that of Jesus Christ. In society,
the cultural super-ego operates under the heading of "ethics," whose main purpose in
Freud's view is to reign in the "constitutional impulse" of men to act aggressively toward
one another. Like the individual super-ego, it makes overbearing demands that cannot be
realistically met. Freud remarks that the cultural imperative to restrain aggressive
behavior might in the end cause greater psychological unhappiness than aggression that
has been fully acted out.
Pushing the analogy between the individual and civilization still further, Freud wonders
whether it would be possible to characterize certain epochs of civilization as "neurotic."
The problem is that diagnoses of neurosis are based on a relative definition of individual
psychological normality, and would be difficult to apply to entire groups, let alone
segments of civilization.
Finally, Freud emphasizes the instinct of aggression and self-destruction as the single
greatest problem facing civilization, as manifested in "the present time." He ends posing
the question: which force"eternal Eros" or his potent adversarywill prevail?
Analysis:

That Freud should use the term "dtours" to describe metaphorically the meanderings of
his paper is no coincidence, given his protracted reflection at the beginning of the essay
on the inadequacy of pictorial or visual metaphors in describing the complexity of the
mind, and more specifically, the simultaneous existence of infantile and mature feelings.
It is interesting that Freud should conceive of his own thought patterns through the
metaphor of a roadmap, which is an essentially spatial metaphor similar to the one Freud
rejected in the first chapter.
The structure of Freud's discussion calls to mind the etymological meaning of "essay,"
which at its origin designated an experiment, a tentative and often speculative proceeding
that emphasized process over result, and consequently involved many "detours" from the
stated topic of discussion. In terms of genre, the essay was derived from the scientific
principle of an experiment, but its structure was elastic enough to accommodate both
empirical and theoretical evidence, both relevant and digressive considerations. Freud, by
integrating references to literature and other disciplines (politics and economics, for
example), stays true to the interdisciplinary origins of the essay, as well as to the
experimental nature of the essay.

It is significant that the last line of the essay, added later in the 1931 edition of
Civilization and Its Discontents, takes the form of a question. Instead of concluding with
a definitive statement about the prevailing force within human civilization, Freud leaves
his deliberately inquiry open-ended and amenable to speculation. His interest lies not in
casting a judgment or making a prediction (which the course of history would prove or
disprove), but in identifying the underlying impulses and trends within the broader
culture and civilization. If we examine the rhetorical strategy in this chapter, Freud's point
of departure is the analysis of the individual and his symptoms. He proceeds to build a
more extended analogy between the development of the individual and the evolution of
civilization, until that analogy no longer seems sustainable for two main reasons: 1)
unlike the clinical manifestations of the individual super-ego that allows Freud to infer its
existence (namely, symptoms of anxiety, fear, guilt, etc.), there can be no empirical
evidence of a "cultural super-ego," even if such a concept can be logically deduced from
the value that a culture places on certain leaders or individuals; 2) to characterize an
entire epoch of civilization as "neurotic," as it is possible to diagnose an individual, the
existence of a collective pathology would have to be referenced against a normative
psychological state of being. Freud warns us that "we are only dealing with analogies and
that it is dangerous," since they ultimately have only logical, but not necessarily clinical
or empirical, validity.