Civilization and Its Discontents

Freud é um grande escritor, um ensaista que arquiteta muito bem seus textos, alternando entre registros de pesquisa empírica, teorização especulativa e relato de experiências, tingindo tudo com uma fina ironia. No mal-estar, em que pese a falta de consideração para com os instintos diretamente altruístas (eliminados em favor da tese do "humano lobo do humano"), há a luta entre eros e morte, instinto de vida e instinto de destruição. Embate situado na busca da felicidade e confronto com a realidade, que se desdobra do psiquismo individual para aquele social, de âmbito cultural e enfim ético.

Se há um sentimento oceânico, que remete a um estágio em que o Eu ainda não conseguia diferenciar-se do mundo, ainda não tendo show more sofrido desgostos o suficiente para gerar a noção de realidade e exterior, a religião não estaria aí diretamente ligada. Freud lembra em muitos momentos teses Nietzscheanas. A ligação se daria a um anseio por proteção, de uma providência maior, normalmente associada à ideia de um pai. A religião seria uma forma mais acentuada de tentar assegurar a felicidade e proteção, usando da forma radical do delírio coletivo ligado a um infantilismo para poupar a neurose individual, rebaixando o valor da vida e deformando a imagem do mundo.

Buscamos a felicidade, mas somos confrontados com a potência da natureza, a fragilidade de nosso corpo e a insuficiência das normas que regulam os vínculos humanos na família, estado e sociedade. Destes, somente o terceiro elemento aparenta-nos passível de melhoria. Apenas diminuir as expectativas não é suficiente. Procuramos deslocar os investimentos perigosos para formar redes de segurança, mas também de equilíbrio libidinal - a cultura, o valor do trabalho. Mesmo simples amor que conduz à felicidade é instável e perigoso e deve ser reconduzido, na figura da família, o casamento. O amor genital é reconduzido à amizade. A cultura subtrai da sexualidade energia, sempre construindo maneiras de oprimi-la, por temer uma revolta libidinal.

A liberdade individual sofria de sua fragilidade de defesa contra as intempéries e impulsos que levavam à destruição. A comunidade faz seus membros se protegerem da força bruta do indivíduo, ao mesmo tempo que começa a regulação no indivíduo de sua utilização de força bruta, o que leva à noção de justiça, mas assim leva a um complemento de frustração em cada indivíduo, frustração que os neuróticos não conseguem suportar de modo funcional.

Há paliativos para amaciar a vida: poderosas diversões, gratificações substitutivas, substâncias inebriantes. A arte diverte menos, mas gratifica pelo alcance cultural que atinge. Mesmo a causa comunista que, diminuindo a desigualdade social, melhoria em muito a condição humana, não resolveria as profundas angústias e insatisfação do homem, que vêm da inserção na cultura, do desconforto com privilégios sexuais, libidinais, desejos etc, da agressividade e resultam na zombaria contra o diferente, mobilizando um deslocamento libidinal da insatisfação para o outro (seja o diabo, os próprios comunistas, etc).

Assim, há um processo em que a agressividade é iontrojetada, internalizada, dirigida contra o próprio Eu, acolhida por uma parte deste, Super-Eu, que dá consistência à consciência, produzindo má-consciência, policiamento e culpa. O infortúnio e a frustração exterior conduz a um fortalecimento da consciência no Super-Eu, e o aprofundamento da culpa protege a ilusão de um destino ou Deus protetor, interiorizando pela cultura o errado, ao invés de condená-lo no mundo exterior. O medo ante à autoridade passa a ser aquele diante do Super-Eu. A consciência resulta da renúncia instintual.

A culminação se dá em uma ética onde, os mandamentos de um Super-eu análogo da sociedade, uma terapia para atingir o que falta na cultura, a capacidade de afastar os humanos do pendor para a agressão mútua. Mas assim como o Super-eu do indivíduo, aí não há observância de fatos básicos da garantia do equilíbrio psíquico, sendo uma força que se impõe sem averiguar se a tarefa é exequível. Dessas culturas que desenvolveram para si uma ética, abudariam neuroses do social. O preço do progresso cultura da sociedade cristã é a perda da felicidade, pelo acréscimo do sentimento de culpa. Na repressão, elementos libidinais transformam-se em sintomas, componentes agressivos em culpa. Daí o mal-estar na civilização. show less

The impact of Sigmund Freud on contemporary Western thought can hardly be underestimated. Many of the key "psychological" terms we employ can be traced back to his writing. Although fascinating and often insightful, much of his influence has been destructive, providing comfort and a scientific imprimatur for a large portion of the anti-Western diatribes of the last generation.

Let us first dispose of several misconceptions that have clouded the popular image of this brilliant thinker. To begin with, Freud is no touchy-feely, tree-hugging, crystal-gazing therapist from Vermont. He is a hardened observer of human nature, quite Hobbesian, convinced that aggression and unbounded self-interest are primary factors in the motivation of human show more behavior. He mocks those who preach unlimited love, as well as those who would coddle criminals. His views on women would shock many an unsuspecting feminist.

Likewise, Freud is clear in his opposition to utopian political schemes, such as communism. He writes that the Marxist view of private property is based on a fallacy:

"The psychological premises on which the [communist] system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest; but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property."

It is quite possible that Freud's psychoanalytic treatment of mentally ill individuals, or even of merely miserable ones, has proven to be highly effective. This is arguable, but it belongs to another discussion. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt, and say that his contribution in this field was worthy of his reputation.

The problem begins where psychoanalysis ends and the development of a comprehensive theory of human society begins. Percolating throughout his writing is a misapplication of concepts from the psychology of the individual to the level of civilization--which, incidentally, is one of Freud's favorite words. For example, take the notion of guilt, which he claims is the "most important problem in the development of civilization." Guilt certainly has a role to play in our lives, and the shedding of unnecessary guilt goes a long way to ameliorating one's peace of mind, but the most important problem?

Freud's highly influential work, "Civilization and Its Discontents," abounds with such sweeping, grandiose statements, the applicability of which seldom extends further than the Viennese café in which he was seated when the epiphany struck him. Here's another one:

"Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this. These collections of men are to be libidinally bound to one another."

One might think that the study of aesthetics could somehow rise above the fray of the battling instinct gods, but this also is traced back to the shadowy domain of individual impulses:

"All that seems certain is [beauty's] derivation from the field of sexual feeling. The love of beauty seems a perfect example of an impulse inhibited in its aim. `Beauty' and `attraction' are originally attributes of the sexual object. It is worth remarking that the genitals themselves, the sight of which is always exciting, are nevertheless hardly ever judged to be beautiful..."

One could easily imagine this being said by a character in a film by Fellini, in a scene satirizing the mumbo-jumbo of ivory tower academics.

Freud's remarks on religion, which he holds in the highest contempt, are indicative of an abysmal ignorance. He claims that religion derives from the "infant's helplessness and the longing for the father aroused by it." Other factors are later admitted, but (as in the case of aesthetics) everything is traced back to the individual and his instincts. There is no consideration of the actual content of religion, its insight and its wisdom. Even Nietzsche, certainly no friend of Judeo-Christian teachings, once remarked that the Old Testament was the greatest work of literature ever produced by man.

Freud's macro-level analysis fails because he has seized upon a certain realm, individual psychology, and inflated it to supernatural dimensions. Certainly, it has an impact, but it is only one slice of the societal pie, or more accurately, one ingredient therein. It can never explain all of human existence. Human society is a complex organism, with multiple and criss-crossing influences.

Freud's error is only too typical of the modern mind, estranged as it is from the profound ocean of history. What escapes Freud completely is the fact that culture has an existence that is independent of any given individual or group of individuals. Culture is produced layer upon layer. It is much greater than the sum of its human parts, and does not result from the intent or design of any single person, group, or generation.

Thus an analysis (were it possible) that could aggregate the thoughts and impulses of every human mind that has ever existed would still be insufficient for understanding the essence of culture.

In Freud's world view, man is wrested from his culture; he is fragmented, alienated, and made a slave of his animal self. Freud inherited and expanded the legacy of Darwin, who attempted to prove that man is nothing more than an animal. Freud went one step further, in attempting to demonstrate that all of man's creations--so utterly at variance with the animal world--can nevertheless be traced back to instincts and bodily functions that we have in common with apes and aardvarks. To say that this has provided fuel for deconstructionists of every variety would be to state the obvious.

Freud's most impressive feat may have been to complete the work of Hegel and Darwin in constructing the new secular religion for Western man. Hegel, through his "world-historical spirit" and immutable "laws" of society's development, strips man of his free will, and paves the way for the unbounded totalitarianism that has so marked modern society. Darwin teaches that man is an animal, a shock treatment that has led people to despair of the perennial search for a higher nature--a quest that had run like a thread through the annals of Western civilization. Freud adds the third idol of the trinity, that of the instincts, particularly the sexual.

Put the three together, and there is nothing left of God, reason, art, the intellect, purpose, wisdom, or contemplation. show less

Mad props for discovering the unconscious and the tropes of the dreamweaver, but in other ways this innovative thinker is a hidebound reactionary, sexist, homophobic. He also treats his arbitrary assumptions as facts: we can be quite sure that fathers in the pre-civilization epoch were monsters, etc. Can we, though? Which anthropological studies of hunter gatherer families are you (not) citing? Maybe fathers who weren't under the cruel yoke of capitalism suffered no bullying to pass on to the nearest available victim. Freud also seems quite sure that civilization is restraining our aggressive urges; I think, rather, civilization is responsible for war. Civilization, the state, is institutional violence. In 1930 this should have been show more apparent to the good doctor. By September 1939, when he died, the writing in blood was certainly on the wall. Apparently Gandhi's "What do you think about Western civilization?" "It would be a good idea" is apocryphal. A shame; Freud might have learned something. Jung wanted the id and the ego to unite against the superego; Freud wanted the superego and the ego to unite against the id. Jung remains correct. show less

Freud's a divisive author, no doubt about it. So often he'll create a reaction in people (particularly men) when they learn that he posits that all men want to sleep with their mothers. As wild and possibly misplaced as his fixation on the Oedipus Complex is, Freud tends to gesture successfully at truths in the human condition. He won't lead us to concrete proof, but neither does he claim to. "There is something going on here" he'll say in wonderfully worded prose. His ideas on the dual nature of humanity being tied between Eros and Thanatos may not be dead-on but he gives us the material through which to investigate drives of pleasure and aggression more fully. As a foundational work in today's modern thinking and, with Russia's show more current aggression in the world, I've got to give this one a 5/5. show less

Escrito às vésperas do colapso da Bolsa de Valores de Nova York (1929) e publicado em Viena no ano seguinte, O mal-estar na civilização é uma penetrante investigação sobre as origens da infelicidade, sobre o conflito entre indivíduo e sociedade e suas diferentes configurações na vida civilizada. Este clássico da antropologia e da sociologia também constitui, nas palavras do historiador Peter Gay, “uma teoria psicanalítica da política”. Na tradução de Paulo César de Souza, que preserva a exatidão conceitual e toda a dimensão literária da prosa do criador da psicanálise, o livro proporciona um verdadeiro mergulho na teoria freudiana da cultura, segundo a qual civilização e sexualidade coexistem de modo sempre show more conflituoso. A partir dos fundamentos biológicos da libido e da agressividade, Freud demonstra que a repressão e a sublimação dos instintos sexuais, bem como sua canalização para o mundo do trabalho, constituem as principais causas das doenças psíquicas de nossa época. show less

This is the first time I've read Freud. Before this, everything I knew about Freud came from secondary sources or through "osmosis" (learning from listening to other people talk about him). I am more sympathetic to psychoanalysis than a lot of modern people, but in this book Freud's pessimism and misogynist/heterosexist assumptions about gender roles are on full display. To be generous, I saw this book as more of an indictment of Western society than human culture as a whole.

I don't know where the image of Freudian therapists as "touchy-feely" came from. This book is pretty cynical.

Civilization and Its Discontents presents itself as a direct sequel to Freud's Future of an Illusion. Where the earlier text was chiefly concerned with the irrational adherence to religious ideas, this one starts out inquiring into the "deepest sources of religious feeling" (9), what might in more sympathetic hands be termed the psychology of mysticism. In section II of the essay, Freud at first tries to relate such sources to the chief means of palliating life's suffering: i.e. "powerful diversions of interest, ... substitutive gratifications, ... and intoxicating substances" (10), which three may be taken as another iteration of the chief Platonic frenzies (dropping the Muses as was done by Ficino and his successors): oracular, show more erotic, and mantic. (In the writings of Aleister Crowley these become the musical, sexual, and pharmaceutical methods of inspiring ecstasy.) At the end of this section, Freud seems to imply that a chief function of religion is to guard against the abusive individual indulgence in the frenzies, and to supply a deferred substitute in the form of metaphysical guarantees. (As Crowley wrote, "No religion has failed hitherto by not promising enough; the present breaking up of all religions is due to the fact that people have asked to see the securities.")

In the third of the essay's eight sections, Freud pivots to concentrate on the business indicated by its title. He begins to explore the tensions between individual gratification on one hand and social growth and welfare on the other. In particular, he focuses at first on the occasional hostility toward cultural development as such, and the idealization of a pre-lapsarian state. As the discussion continues on to the etiology of culture generally, it becomes distinctly androcentric ("Women represent the interests of the family and sexual life; the work of civilization has become more and more men's business," 33) and culminates with a presentation of 1930s family life and sexual discipline that seems positively Victorian in the most pejorative sense of the term.

Returning to religion, Freud identifies the social instrumentality of the religious "love of neighbor," as well as the insupportable demands that it makes of individuals. This context is the one in which he develops an outline of the conflict between Eros and Thanatos, the life-instinct and the death-instinct. The instinctual bind is what he then hypothesizes as the motive force in the development of the super-ego (i.e. conscience) in the individual.

In the closing passages, the idea of the super-ego of a community or of "an epoch of civilization" is introduced, and Freud proposes that such super-egos take their particular forms in reaction to perceived human figures, such as Jesus bestowing the "love of neighbor" fixation on the collective super-ego of Christian culture. The possibility to personify such a collective psychic function makes it provocatively similar to the "Aeon" as used in Thelemic parlance, especially when Freud posits the derangement and replacement of such a super-ego. And in this final section, while disclaiming "any opinion regarding the value of human civilization" (70), he does seem to come full circle to the critique of culture, suggesting that the survival of humanity itself may be dependent on the arrival at a new covenant between Eros and Thanatos at the collective level. show less