Civilization and its Discontents
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In his book Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud examines the cultural frustrations which are brought about by the conflicts between the demands of the instincts of man and the prohibitions of civilization. The structure of culture, Freud finds, is designed to restrict the instinctive life of man, the instinctive life being one of egoistic self-satisfaction and aggression or destruction. To delve into every aspect of this antagonism that Freud studies would be too great a task for a paper of this length, therefore, I would like to focus my attention on the sections of Civilization and its Discontents dealing with suffering, love, happiness and the pleasure principle, and aggression and guilt, since these were the most valuable to me in understanding Freud's theory. In dealing with any of these, one undoubtedly overlaps principles which deal with the others and it is precisely this aspect of Freud's analysis that renders his theme comprehensible and interesting, though I do not claim full understanding nor agreement with Freud's theory. Freud views man's existence as a conflict between nature and culture. Man creates fences to his own desires and this is the dilemma of social action in history. The theme of this conflict is id vs. ego, but more, this must be translated into cultural reality. The id, as Freud calls it, is the extension of nature in the human being. It is the origin of all energy. All life forces and drives, whatever their nature, are inborn
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s of the external world; and the third, which Freud believes to be more painful to man than any other, is from man's relations with other men. To defend against this suffering, man develops ways to deal with the dilemma of the civilized psyche. Here Freud identifies many methods. One interesting method is practiced in the East by Yoga. In this extreme form, the Yogi overcomes suffering by killing off all his instincts. Phantasy, the only portion of the self that is not touched with reality, is another method that can be used to fend off suffering. Phantasy is used by those people who are particularly sensitive to the influence of art. But these two examples as well as the many other methods Freud describes, are not without their drawbacks. Of the yogi, Freud reveals, "If it succeeds, then the subject has, it is true, given up all other activities as well--he has sacrificed his life; and, by another path, he has once more only achieved the happiness of quietness" (p. 26). Phantasy through art only temporarily consoles us without alleviating the burden of our real troubles.
Happiness, therefore, is a dilemma for man since his wants always seem to outweigh what is available to him. The problem then, is an economic one whic
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2256
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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