Freud discounts the idea that this passive and non-judgmental affection for all is the pinnacle of human love and purpose.Exploring what Freud sees as the important clash between the desire for individuality and the expectations of society, the book is considered one of Freuds most important and widely read works, and was described in 1989 by historian Peter Gay as one of the most influential and studied books in the field of modern psychology.
The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individuals quest for instinctive freedom and civilization s contrary demand for conformity and repression of instincts. Freud states that when any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it creates a feeling of mild contentment. Many of humankinds primitive instincts (for example, the desire to kill and the insatiable craving for sexual gratification) are clearly harmful to the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments if these rules are broken. Thus our possibilities for happiness are restricted by the law. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that gives rise to perpetual feelings of discontent among its citizens. These include, most notably, the desires for sex, and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authority figures and sexual competitors, who obstruct the individuals path to gratification. Freud categorizes the oceanic feeling as being a regression into an earlier state of consciousness before the ego had differentiated itself from the world of objects. The need for this religious feeling, he writes, arises out of the infants helplessness and the longing for the father, as there is no greater infantile need than a fathers protection. Freud imagines that the oceanic feeling became connected with religion later on in cultural practices. The ego of the child forms over the oceanic feeling when it grasps that there are negative aspects of reality from which it would prefer to distance itself. But at the same time as the ego is hoping to avoid displeasure, it is also building itself so that it may be better able to act towards securing happiness, and these are the twin aims of the pleasure principle when the ego realizes that it must also deal with reality. Freud claims that the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle 4 and the rest of the chapter is an exploration of various styles of adaptation that humans use to secure happiness from the world while also trying to limit their exposure to suffering or avoid it altogether. Freud regards this last source of displeasure as perhaps more painful to us than any other, 5 and the remainder of this book will extrapolate on the conflict between the individuals instinct for seeking gratification and the reality of societal life. People become neurotic because they cannot tolerate the frustration which society imposes in the service of its cultural ideals. Freud points out that advances in science and technology have been, at best, a mixed blessing for human happiness. He asks what society is for if not to satisfy the pleasure principle, but concedes that as well as pursuing happiness, civilization must also compromise happiness in order to fulfill its primary goal of bringing individuals into peaceful relationship with one another, which it does by making them subject to a higher, communal authority. Civilization is built out of wish-fulfillments of the human ideals of control, beauty, hygiene, order, and especially for the exercise of humanitys highest intellectual functions. Freud draws a key analogy between the development of civilization and libidinal development in the individual, which allows Freud to speak of civilization in his own terms: there is anal eroticism that develops into a need for order and cleanliness, a sublimation of instincts into useful actions, alongside a more repressive renunciation of instinct. This final point Freud sees as the most important character of civilization, and if it is not compensated for, then one can be certain that serious disorders will ensue. The structure of civilization serves to circumvent the natural processes and feelings of human development and eroticism. It is no wonder then, that this repression could lead to discontent among civilians. This stage is followed by Freuds hypothesis from Totem and Taboo that human culture is bound up in an ancient Oedipal drama of brothers banding together to kill their father, and then creating a culture of rules to mediate ambivalent instinctual desires.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |