An Analysis Of Sigmund Freud's Civilization And Its Discontents

The primary goal of Sigmund Freud’s deliberations is to reveal where our unidentified psychological inclinations come from. In his book “Civilization and its Discontents,” Freud discusses a category of psychological themes regarding how internal influences developed by people’s psyches motivate people to act in certain ways. He focuses on complexes of the mind such as aggression, the super-ego, and the relationship between guilt and remorse. An essential argument that Freud makes is that the human psyche is structured and is largely developed based on surrounding forces, such as other people. Freud attempts to convey a message that a person’s mentality is not only primordial, but is also created in a process potentially known as the struggle

However, by societal standards, a person who desires to appear socially intact and to be socially accepted must control these aggressive thoughts so they don’t lead to aggressive actions. According to Freud, by these means civilization “obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire for aggression” (71). Therefore, the subdued aggression remains within the individual, as he or she is not able to reveal it, and the build-up results in a self-attack of one’s own conscience and ego. Civilization exerts control over this part of a person’s psyche due to a distinct anxiety that Freud refers to as a “fear of loss of love” (71). Essentially, people act in certain ways that they may consider to be “wrong” and end up feeling guilty for, even if they themselves don’t truly believe the action to be wrong because they are bound to social standards of acceptable behavior. The text allows for an interpretation based on the idea that all sentient human beings are predominantly influenced and motivated by one another in some way, even if those influences and motivations aren’t completely

Freud describes guilt as a feeling originating from either fear of authority or fear of the super-ego, which deviates from one’s foundational ego. Guilt in itself is something that a person feels due to acting in a “bad” way or simply having the intention to do. People are not automatically inclined to believe acting in a certain way is “bad” and, as Freud states, the only reason people develop this sense of guilt is once more the result of an inner “fear of loss of love” (71). Thus, guilt is not an inborn state of emotion; again, it is created as a result of being surrounded by and influenced by other humans. On the other hand, remorse is a feeling that occurs after an individual has acted in a “bad” way. Freud claims that remorse is a term that should be used to describe when someone feels guilty because of and after acting in such a way. The most prominent factor involved with these two emotions is conflict in several different forms such as “conflict due to ambivalence” and “of the eternal struggle between Eros and the instinct of destruction or death” (79). The definitions of guilt and remorse formulated by Freud contribute to the idea that mentality is far more something that is developed by external influences rather than