Evolution of Civilization and Instincts
Question 7: Chapter VI; How does the struggle between eros and thanatos represent the meaning of the evolution of civilization? Why is even the blindest fury of destructiveness accompanied by an extraordinarily high degree of narcissistic enjoyment? Is Freud’s claim credible? Why or why not?
Sigmund Freud (1930) gives insights into the evolution of civilization in his work Civilization and Its Discontents. The evolution of civilization is illustrated through the use of a significant clash between the desire for individuality and societal expectations (Gay, 1989, p. 722). Freud demonstrates that it is imperative to study human nature before studying social institutions- the psychoanalytic perspective. Peter Gay evaluates Freud’s work in his translation book ‘The Freud Reader’ (1989). Gay (722) notes that Civilization and Its Discontents is a tribute and a witness to Freud’s structural theory.
There is a notable presence of the struggle that is found between eros and thanatos. This aspect illustrates the tension between civilization and the individual. Gay asserts that the primary battle originates from the individual’s pursuit of instinctive freedom and civilization’s antagonistic claim for suppression and conventionality of instincts (730). According to Freud, when any pleasure principle’s desirable situation is protracted, it develops a mild contentment feeling. Gay states that most of our primitive instincts (eros and thanatos) are detrimental to the well-being of a human community.
Consequently, the civilization created laws that forbid adultery, rape, and murder. Moreover, society exercises severe penalties for individuals who break these laws. Therefore, the opportunities for our happiness are constrained by the law. Freud claims that this development is an essential feature of civilization that produces a continuous feeling of discontent among the citizens (Gay 751).
Freud’s claim is credible and is based on the concept that humans have particular instincts that are irreversible. These instincts are mostly craving for sex and the disposition to violent bellicosity towards sexual rivals and authority individuals who obstruct the paths of these individuals to enjoyment.
Question 7: Chapter (VII) Why does “the tension of the sense of guilt” practically guarantee “permanent internal unhappiness”? Explain in detail. Is Freud’s diagnosis correct?
Freud explains how repression of the thanatos produces neurosis in the individual, whereby the natural aggressiveness of a child is bottled-up by the society and interpolated back against their ego. These aggressive energies, Freud asserts that, develop into super-egos in the form of conscience, which punishes the ego both for remorse and sins it has only visualized. Freud posits that people must give in themselves to establishing these feelings of guilt since their belligerent instincts should suppress if they anticipation love, which civilized society has assumed for its members (Gay 124). Additionally, Freud notes that neurotic suppression and guilty conscience are the prices humans pay to exist together amicably in the society.
The guilty conscience acts as the price we pay to belong or to live harmoniously in the society, but is typically left unconscious and is experienced as discontent or anxiety. “Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within him to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city,” Freud posits (Gay 124). Additionally, Freud contemplates that besides the person’s super-ego, there are ‘cultural super-egos’ that set themselves up as conscience for the community, and that his recommendations for them are similar to the recommendations for several of his neurotic patients. Moreover, Freud asserts that the cultural super-ego must depress its demands on the delicate ego.
Civilization and Its Discontents concludes this issue by expounding on the discrepancy between thanatos and eros- “When an instinctual trend undergoes repression, its libidinal elements are turned into symptoms, and its aggressive components into a sense of guilt,” and he contemplates on the way through which the perpetual conflict between these divine authorities will play out in humankind. Therefore, Freud’s diagnosis is correct since the sense of guilt is an expression of the battle resulting from the vacillation of the struggle between eros and thanatos.
.
Works Cited
Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its Discontents. Standard ed., 21:59-146
Gay, P. (1989), Peter Gay (ed.), The Freud Reader, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 0-393-95806-X.