In this lecture I want to ofer a few remarks on Freud's Civilization and

Its Discontents, paying particular attention to the connections between this

book and other titles we have studied, particularly the Greeks. I don't have an
overall argumentative point to make about Freud, except to ofer a crude
analogy that Freud here is playing !lato to "iet#sche's $omer. %his is a very
crude analogy in some respects because, as I hope to point out, although
Freud is very like !lato in some respects, "iet#sche is only responding to a
part of the Iliad and for his own purposes overlooks some essential features.
%he main focus of my remarks is &hapter 'II, that section of the text where
Freud raises the (uestion of what means civili#ation employs to inhibit what
he sees as the innate instinctual aggressiveness of human beings.
)ou will recall that fundamental to Freud's view of civili#ation is the idea
that human beings are essentially biological creatures with strong instincts,
among which is aggression, which Freud calls *an original selfsubsisting
instinctual disposition in man . . . the greatest impediment to civili#ation.*
%he (uestion then obviously arises $ow does civili#ation channel, cope with,
control, or suppress this anti+social instinct, In &hapter 'II Freud develops
the theory of the superego, the internali#ation of aggressiveness and
redirecting of it back onto the ego and the conse(uent creation in human
beings of guilt, which expresses itself as a *need for punishment.* -nd this
primal guilt is, according to Freud, the origin of civili#ation.
"ow, I have always had some trouble understanding and accepting
Freud's notion of guilt, largely because, in spite of what other members of the
team tell me, I don't sufer from it. .o Freud's theory, fascinating as it is,
leaves me with a sense that it is, in some sense false or incomplete. %o
explain what I mean, I'd like to return to $omer's Iliad for a moment. %here,
you will recall, we witnessed a society which organi#ed itself in complex ways
without any apparent sense of guilt. !eople in the Iliad function without this
internali#ed authority, without a sense of sin, without everything that Freud
tells us is necessary for civili#ation. %he warriors do not weigh the perils of
sin in their mental activity /which appears very diferent from our own0, nor
do they sufer internali#ed punishment when they make a mistake /e.g.,
-gamemnon's folly0.
%hey do not manifest these characteristics because, as we talked about,
the group there is controlled above all, not by some individual psychological
process but rather by social conventions, above all by the rules of status and
shame. %hese provide the warriors with a shared sense of what they, as
individuals in a cohesive group must do from one moment to the next. %he
traditional conventions enable each person to evaluate himself or herself in
accordance, not with internali#ed authorities but with social recognition or
social disapproval. -nd these conventions are so strong, that they can
channel aggressiveness and, as in the case of $ector standing before the
walls of %roy, counter the strongest instincts.
In other words, $omer's world, it appears stands somewhat in contrast to
Freud's views. -nd, in my opinion, it ofers in some ways a more persuasive
and healthier morality than that developed by Freud. It does so, in my view,
because it stresses the social component of human identify, motivation,
deliberation, choice, and responsibility.
$omer, as we discussed at some length, thus sees the proper way to live
as a matter of self+assertion within the limits set by the group. %here is no
complex internal agoni#ing to be undergone we attain full humanity by
seeking group recognition and by avoiding shame. $appiness is a matter of
acting in society in particular ways.
1hen we read !lato, we studied the great attack on this traditional
system of social behaviour as the basis of the best life. !lato takes issue with
the social, conventional, traditional nature of the $omeric sense of the self
and of appropriate behaviour. $e does this, above all, by seeking to
internali#e our sense of ourselves, by ofering an image of the psyche as a
dynamic con2ict between the diferent levels and by stressing that a virtuous
life depends, more than anything else, on achieving a psychic harmony
between the competing elements, in which there is a clear authority over the
destructive elements. In that sense, although his terminology is diferent
from Freud's, !lato is clearly initiating a pro3ect in some interesting ways
very like Freud's.
4ne might well ask, *1hy is it that !lato is so determined to break down
the traditional social ethic of shame and status,* -nd I think the simple
answer is that the traditions had become incapable of holding society
peacefully together. !lato witnessed the civil war in which the Greek states
destroyed each other, in which the controlling forces of the group had failed
miserably to make men act in civili#ed ways. $e therefore launched a pro3ect
seeking to ground moral behaviour in a diferent sense of the self.
%his is the aspect "iet#sche calls attention to when, in the Genealogy of
Morals, he says the entire issue boils down to $omer versus !lato. $e sees
!lato as the great problem precisely because of this internali#ation of
authority, of raising reason over spontaneous feelings, or seeking to harness
what "iet#sche most admired about the $omeric warriors, their heroic
irrational assertiveness in the face of terrible circumstances, what "iet#sche
called the pessimism of the strong. For "iet#sche, this was their essential
(uality, the aspect of their response that he wants modern bermenschen to
see as the proper basis for their own full emancipation. "iet#sche is prepared
to overlook the social constraints upon the $omeric warrior /and thus one
can hardly argue that he has a full appreciation of the complexity of their
conduct0. .till, "iet#sche's emphasis on the diference between $omer and
!lato is a useful reminder of the central signi5cance of !lato's attempt to
reground Greek behaviour the internali#ation of authority and the metaphor
of a self divided against itself.
6ike, Freud, !lato is fairly pessimistic about his scheme having any long+
term progressive efect. %he Republic may be a utopian vision, but it doesn't
seem particularly optimistic about its chances of being reali#ed. 7ut there's a
sense that if we are to established civili#ed life properly, then the 5rst thing
we must attend to is the individual's sense of his or her own psychological
and therefore moral makeup. In that sense, !lato and Freud are very similar.
$owever, one mustn't overstate the similarities. For !lato starts with a
very diferent conception of human beings than does Freud, and !lato is still
concerned with a fairly rigid control of human beings through social
institutions. %he understanding which !lato wants us to accept is, it seems,
available only to relatively few. %he others will have to conduct themselves in
accordance with the dictates of those who do understand, and the law,
education, and everything else must be so organi#ed as to make sure these
social arrangements are put into place. In other words, !lato, unlike Freud, is
very alert to the particular ways in which human beings' social needs must be
structured and institutionali#ed so as to encourage the development of the
proper harmony. -nother way of saying is to stress that !lato is not a liberal
with a faith in individual freedom8 whereas, Freud clearly is. /9ore about that
later0.
In passing we might notice that -ristotle, as we saw, also follows !lato in
basing the good life upon a notion of the proper psychological disposition.
%he ma3or diference between the two, of course, is that -ristotle is a lot less
nervous than !lato about human feelings and about human traditions. %hus in
-ristotle's Ethics, we get a sense that the good life is both a matter of
psychological ad3ustment and training with a generous helping of self+
assertion in a particular group. For -ristotle, following $omer, still sees
human beings as most typically shaped by their political afiliations, social
identities, and relationships /in the widest sense of the term0.
"ow, what interests me about &hapter 'II in Civilization and Its
Discontents is the way in which Freud brie2y confronts what $omer is
talking about, acknowledges its existence, and then essentially forgets about
it. For me this is a signi5cant and potentially damaging fudging of an
important issue namely the issue of the extent to which human beings are
not 3ust driven by biological instincts but also by complex social needs.
In &hapter 'II, Freud does pay attention to the efects of shame and
shame culture, although in this book he doesn't call it that. $e refers /on p.
:;0 to the stage that a culture must go through in order to achieve the fully
developed super ego. -ccording to Freud, the 5rst stage is *social anxiety*
according to which people are controlled by what others think of their
conduct. In Freud's view much of his own society is generally ruled in this
way. 7ut he also claims that civili#ation must develop beyond that point to the
internali#ation of authority, which is a *higher stage.* In other words, Freud's
theory is directing us to see that behaviour controlled by social conventions is
somehow *cruder* or *more primitive* than behaviour in which each
individual is controlled largely by an authority working within his or her own
psyche. $e wants, to put the matter very simply, to see morality less as a
matter of shame /that is, socially determined0 than of guilt /that is,
individually determined0. In this pro3ect, Freud is following closely in !lato's
footsteps, at least in intention, if not in method.
%here's a sense, too, of certain dificulties in Freud's notion of remorse, a
feeling which arises before the origin of guilt by the actions of sons in killing
the father they love. %his would seem to suggest a type of moral feeling
based, not on internal authority and selfpunishment, but on a common
awareness of an in3ury to a member of the group and a sense of having done
something in3urious to the group.
-nd so Freud doesn't really dwell on the importance of the shame and
status. In fact having established the stage of *social anxiety* as a path on the
route to the development of guilt, conscience, and the superego, he forgets
about the distinction, later calling them both guilt. %he reason for this, I
would suggest, is that Freud generally wishes to avoid having to explore any
possible social origins for unhappiness in order to avoid compromising his
notion of the human being as essentially a biological creature governed by
instincts, in which in some fundamental way, human beings are basically very
aggressively hostile to each other by nature.
Given what Freud says about *social anxiety* and about my own sense of
being much more strongly motivated by shame than by guilt, I am naturally
led to wonder why Freud is so determined to play down the social component
of human life++to stress animal instincts rather than social needs, to make the
dynamics of the individual psyche more fundamental than the dynamics of
group interaction, to see the crucial aspect in the best available life the
development of a harsh internal authority which punishes us, not only for
incorrect actions, but also for sinful wishes and intentions. 1hy, in other
words, is Freud so un+$omeric.
I think there are a number of answers. <epending upon how persuasive
one 5nds this book, any one of these might be turned into a ma3or criticism of
this entire theory.
In the 5rst place, Freud was a biological scientist, more interested in the
working of individual psychology than in group dynamics. 4bviously what he
has to say can be used and is used to make many grand theories about social
phenomena. 7ut Freud wants to remain true to where all his investigations
started, inside the psyche of the individual.
%his (uality is what makes Freud a liberal in the best traditions of =ohn
.tuart 9ill. 6ike 9ill, Freud's goal is to increase /even if only slightly0
individual freedom. %o do that, Freud believes, we have to give human beings
a better sense of how they function psychologically, of the dynamic problems
which exist within their own personalities. - better knowledge of these,
Freud believes, will not only make people more psychologically healthy, but it
will, in the best traditions of !lato, make them more psychically harmonious
and therefore, within certain limits, happier, better people. For Freud, as for
9ill, emancipating the individual from the group conventions /for example,
by internali#ing the authoritative 3udge of his actions0 is much more
important than stressing human social needs /e.g. his remarks about work0.
7ut, unlike "iet#sche, Freud does not endorse unlimited self assertion in
contempt for the group, for those who are con5dent and spontaneous enough
to carry out such a pro3ect. For Freud that is clearly beyond the capacity of
ordinary people and the unleashed aggressions would destroy more than they
would create.
Freud, like !lato, witnessed the sudden catastrophic break up of
traditional social groupings and the collapse of apparently stable social units
which had functioned to organi#e people's sense of themselves for several
generations. In a world where so many millions become refugees,
immigrants, displaced people, transients, and where many social groups are
so large that we lose our sense of belonging to anything manageable, what
reliable and properly si#ed group is there in which we can put our faith, In
many respects, Civilization and Its Discontents is very much a post+1orld 1ar
I book, facing up to the gloomy recognition that some of the most
fundamental re(uirements of civili#ed life seem to be beyond human beings
much of the time and that the social environment ofers no hope for radical
improvement.
The question however remains: To what extent is Freud's project here, his vision of civilized
human beings as permanently unhappy biological instinctual creatures capable of alleviating but
never removing the alienating pressures of communal lifeto what extent is that a useful basis for
understanding human life as we live it, as individuals in a civilized group! " don't propose to
answer that here, but it is a question to which answers range all the way from no use at all #a
manifestation of the cover up of advanced capitalism$, to important but in need of some major
qualifications to address the imposed alienating effects of the superego, and to an important
advance in humanity's understanding of itself%
Modern History Sourcebook:
Sigmund Freud:
Civilization & Die Weltanschauung, 1918
&y Weltanschauung, then, " mean an intellectual construction which gives a unified solution of all the
problems of our existence in virtue of a comprehensive hypothesis, a construction, therefore, in which
no question is left open and in which everything in which we are interested finds a place% "t is easy to
see that the possession of such a Weltanschauung is one of the ideal wishes of man'ind% (hen one
believes in such a thing, one feels secure in life, one 'nows what one ought to strive after, and how
one ought to organize one's emotions and interests to the best purpose% "f that is what is meant by a
Weltanschauung, then the question is an easy one for psychoanalysis to answer%%%%
"t is inadmissible to declare that science is one field of human intellectual activity, and that religion
and philosophy are others, at least as valuable, and that science has no business to interfere with the
other two, that they all have an equal claim to truth, and that everyone is free to choose whence he
shall draw his convictions and in what he shall place his belief% )uch an attitude is considered
particularly respectable, tolerant, broadminded and free from narrow prejudices% *nfortunately it is
not tenable+ it shares all the pernicious qualities of an entirely unscientific Weltanschauung and in
practice comes to much the same thing% The bare fact is that truth cannot be tolerant and cannot admit
compromise or limitations, that scientific research loo's on the whole field of human activity as its
own, and must adopt an uncompromisingly critical attitude towards any other power that see's to
usurp any part of its province%%%%
,f the three forces which can dispute the position of science, religion alone is a really serious enemy%
-rt is almost always harmless and beneficent, it does not see' to be anything else but an illusion%
)ave in the case of a few people who are, one might say, obsessed by art, it never dares to ma'e any
attac's on the realm of reality% .hilosophy is not opposed to science, it behaves itself as if it were a
science, and to a certain extent it ma'es use of the same methods+ but it parts company with science,
in that it clings to the illusion that it can produce a complete and coherent picture of the universe%%% "n
contradistinction to philosophy, religion is a tremendous force, which exerts its power over the
strongest emotions of human beings% -s we 'now, at one time it included everything that played any
part in the mental life of man'ind, that it too' the place of science, when as yet science hardly
existed, and that it built up a Weltanschauung of incomparable consistency and coherence which,
although it has been severely sha'en, has lasted to this day%%%%
/eligion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the
wishworld, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological
necessities% &ut it cannot achieve its end% "ts doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in
which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race% "ts consolations deserve no
trust% 0xperience teaches us that the world is not a nursery% The ethical commands to which religion
see's to lend its weight require some other foundation instead, for human society cannot do without
them, and it is dangerous to lin' up obedience to them with religious belief% "f one attempts to assign
to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition as a parallel to
the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to
maturity%%%%
-nd indeed the ban which religion has imposed upon thought in the interests of its own preservation
is by no means without danger both for the individual and for society% -nalytic experience has taught
us that such prohibitions, even though they were originally confined to some particular field, have a
tendency to spread, and then become the cause of severe inhibitions in people's lives% "n women a
process of this sort can be observed to follow from the prohibition against their occupying
themselves, even in thought, with the sexual side of their nature% The biographies of almost all the
eminent people of past times show the disastrous results of the inhibition of thought by religion%
"ntellect, on the other handor rather, to call it by a more familiar name, reasonis among the
forces which may be expected to exert a unifying influence upon mencreatures who can be held
together only with the greatest difficulty, and whom it is therefore scarcely possible to control% Thin'
how impossible human society would be if everyone had his own particular multiplication table and
his own private units of weight and length% ,ur best hope for the future is that the intellect the
scientific spiritreasonshould in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind% The very
nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to human emotions and to all that is
determined by them the position to which they are entitled% &ut the common pressure exercised by
such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and would
prepare the way for further unifications% (hatever, li'e the ban laid upon thought by religion,
opposes such a development is a danger for the future of man'ind%%%%
The strength of 1arxism obviously does not lie in its view of history or in the prophecies about the
future which it bases upon that view, but in its clear insight into the determining influence which is
exerted by the economic conditions of man upon his intellectual, ethical and artistic reactions% -
whole collection of correlations and causal sequences were thus discovered, which had hitherto been
almost completely disregarded% &ut it cannot be assumed that economic motives are the only ones
which determine the behavior of men in society% The unquestionable fact that different individuals,
races and nations behave differently under the same economic conditions in itself proves that the
economic factor cannot be the sole determinant% "t is quite impossible to understand how
psychological factors can be overloo'ed where the reactions of living human beings are involved+ for
not only were such factors already concerned in the establishment of these economic conditions but
even in obeying these conditions, men can do no more than set their original instinctual impulses in
motiontheir selfpreservative instinct, their love of aggression, their need for love and their impulse
to attain pleasure and avoid pain%
"n an earlier lecture we have emphasized the importance of the part played by the super-ego, which
represents tradition and the ideals of the past, and which will resist for some time the pressure exerted
by new economic situations% -nd, finally, we must not forget that the mass of man'ind, subjected
though they are to economic necessities, are borne on by a process of cultural developmentsome
call it civilizationwhich is no doubt influenced by all the other factors, but is equally certainly
independent of them in its origin+ it is comparable to an organic process, and is quite capable of itself
having an effect upon the other factors% "t displaces the aims of the instincts, and causes men to rebel
against what has hitherto been tolerable+ and, moreover, the progressive strengthening of the
scientific spirit seems to be an essential part of it% "f anyone were in a position to show in detail how
these different factorsthe general human instinctual disposition, its racial variations and its cultural
modificationsbehave under the influence of varying social organization, professional activities and
methods of subsistence, how these factors inhibit or aid one anotherif, " say, anyone could show
this, then he would not only have improved 1arxism but would have made it into a true social
science% For sociology, which deals with the behavior of man in society, can be nothing other than
applied psychology% )trictly spea'ing, indeed, there are only two sciencespsychology, pure and
applied, and natural science%
The inclination to aggression is an original, selfsubsisting instinctual disposition in man, and " return
to my view that it constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization% -t one point in the course of this
enquiry " was led to the idea that civilization was a special process which man'ind undergoes, and "
am still under the influence of that idea% " may now add that civilization is a process in the service of
Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, the races, people
and nations, into one great unity, the unity of man'ind%
(hy this has to happen, we do not 'now+ the wor' of 0ros is precisely this% These collections of men
are to be libidinally bound to one another% 2ecessity alone, the advantages of wor' in common, will
not hold them together% &ut man's natural aggressive instinct, the hostility of each against all and all
against each, opposes this programme of civilization% This aggressive instinct is the derivative and the
main representative of the death instinct which we have found alongside 0ros and which shares
worlddominion with it% -nd now, " thin', the meaning of evolution of civilization is no longer
obscure to us% "t must present the struggle between 0ros and 3eath, between the instinct of life and
the instinct of destruction, as it wor's itself out in the human species% This struggle is what all life
essentially consists of, and the evolution of civilization may therefore be simply described as the
struggle for life of the human species%