Dr. PIchanick Moderns May 2nd, 2017 When we need to regress Freud addresses a paradox in his book Civilization and Its Discontents. He discusses how we as a society collectively repress our instincts by willing ourselves to not be one with nature. Our nature is the ability to have to instinctively make ourselves happy. He discusses this motivation to emancipate ourselves as a journey towards instinctual and emotional freedom. Freedom is our ability to control our thoughts, thus being able to choose not to think and just be live is freedom as well. By being able to free our minds of pointless thoughts, we are no longer distracting ourselves from makes us happy. Much of what makes us happy are things society has but put under taboo saying …show more content…
The paradox is that society has constructed these rules and punishments to prevent us from giving into our very desires, so in return not allowing us to make ourselves happy. While these laws are said to be in place in order to keep us from making one another unhappy. This is hard to understand yet freud goes onto to explain we as people have an incessant urge to please our Id and laws get in the way of that. Its ironic that what prevents us from making ourselves happy, is what prevents us from making one another unhappy. So logic states that we are just always in a state of neutrality. Satisfying one's Id has been deemed as thrill seeking, dangerous, as well as outside of the law. These actions not only have laws but also social standards preventing us from acting in the manner that could make us potentially the most happy. So this is the most confusing argument being made, why even follow societal norms when you are proven to be happier when you are free from your civilly constructed thoughts. Society buries us under norms that constrain our ability to be ourselves. Things as simple as what to wear and how to look trap us every day. Interestingly enough for us to be able to compromise happiness to protect ourselves from being unhappy, this is the only way that we can live in peaceful relationships with one another. What freud proposes is the conundrum that people as long as they want to have peace, they are going to be living a …show more content…
Libido to freud is the potential sum of all of one's instincts that have to do with the feeling of love. Freud says our lives and everything involved in revolves around this sensation. These intimate feelings people have for one another are the foundations for forming romantic relationships with one another. Relationships always start with a feeling of beauty and admiration, eventually growing into more. Most modern day relationships start this way, society calls this shallow yet everyone does it anyway. We struggle as people to deny ourselves this satisfaction. This intimacy leads to the start and conception of families which is the ultimate goal of the natural man, to continue his line. In this chapter he talks about not eros but also thanatos. Both urges yet on polar sides of spectrum but he conjectures that both will satisfy one's need to be free. Yet another paradox proposed by freud, that out nature is to either procreate or destroy. By suppressing our nature and not allowing ourselves to think, we aren't allowing ourselves to act in the dangerous manner as well as the less threatening manner. He argues this is why civilization is good for mankind, it keeps our polar natures at bay and us away from the internal conflict of destruction and
Freud believed that a human must go through certain stages in their lives or they will not socially develop to their full extent. He also made claims that a human is always struggling between their human, and instinctual nature. This was a very controversial topic because Freud concluded there was a lack of individuality of the human race. If Freud’s theory was the case then humans would have less of a choice in their life, and are truly slaves to their instinctual nature. While an intelligent figure of his time, I believe that Freud went in the wrong direction when approaching his theory. While humans do have a large amount of urges that he described, the person themselves can choose what to do based not solely on society, but their wants and needs as well. Had Freud been alive today I’m sure that his theory would have theorized much different things about the human nature. I think it is important to analyze the distinct cultural setting behi...
In Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents and Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, both authors explore the source of human violence and aggression. Sigmund Freud’s book reacts to the state of Europe after World War I, while Primo Levi’s narrative is a first-hand account of his experiences during World War II. International and domestic tensions are high when both works are written; Sigmund Freud adopts a pessimistic tone throughout the work, while Primo Levi evolves from a despairing approach to a more optimistic view during his time at Auschwitz. To Sigmund Freud, savagery comes from the natural state of human beings, while Primo Levi infers violence is rooted in individual’s humanity being stripped away is.
There have been philosophers that have been philosophizing for thousands of years. Discovering new ideas and different ways to think about things. Thinking in new, creative ways is an inevitable future that humanity will face unless stagnancy in the development of technology and morality occurs. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World displays this possibility incredibly and makes stagnancy look unappealing. With stagnancy and lack of new and imaginative thoughts, however, complete happiness seems like a less menacing task than before. Nobody questions why certain luxuries are not available. The whole world can be content. Why would this not be favorable for humanity? Happiness is hindered greatly by the ability to think.
Thinkers and philosophers have been pondering misery since the dawn of civilization. At the dawn of humanity, humans existed to survive and reproduce; every day was a struggle. However, with the advent of civilization, humanity has moved further and further away from its original evolutionary drives, and it can be argued by secular thinkers that humans exist now to find happiness. Therefore, misery can be seen as the biggest obstacle to human happiness, yet misery itself is a mystery to many. Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents put forth the authors’ opinions on the origins of mortal misery, and suggest methods to solve the problem of misery. Although the two have differing views, both see
Sigmund Freud first theorized the psychosexual theory after studying a patients mental health. The theory states that a human develops from underlying unconscious motives in order to achieve sensual satisfaction.
...e had thoughts of the ideal man stems coming from the anger about his society who treated humans as machines and animals. Freud was more like a therapist for giving every problem for the human’s unhappiness and frustration, solutions to have life that is more livable. Freud saw the inner struggle which was affected by the civilization and society, but believed that there’s potential ways to satisfy one’s self. Unlike Nietzsche who saw the outer struggle not the nature of the human, who focused more on what the society, religion who led to frustration
“Civilization and Its Discontents” is a book written by Sigmund Freud in 1929 (originally titled “Das Unbehagen in der Kultur” or The Uneasiness in Culture.) This is considered to be one of Freud’s most important and widely read works. In this book, Freud explains his perspective by enumerating what he sees as fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. He asserts that this tension stems from the individual’s quest for freedom and non-conformity and civilization’s quest for uniformity and instinctual repression. Most of humankind’s primitive instincts are clearly destructive to the health and well-being of a human community (such as the desire to kill.) As a direct result, civilization creates laws designed to prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and has severe consequences for those that break these laws. Freud argues that this process is an inherent quality of civilization that instills perpetual feelings of discontent in its citizens. This theory is based on the idea that humans have characteristic instincts that are immutable. The most notable of these are the desires for sex, and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authoritative figures as well as sexual competitors. Both of these obstruct the gratification of a person’s instincts. Freud also believes that humans are governed by the pleasure principle, and that they will do whatever satisfies or pleasures them. He also believes that fulfilling these instincts satisfies the pleasure principle.
...lity to feel and express emotion. We will be like animals; our main function in life is to reproduce ourselves, ensuring the survival of our species, with no space for feeling or thought. We will not be living our lives, only surviving and guaranteeing the future generations. But is it really possible to suppress human nature? Perhaps you can smother it, what came before may be lost for what seems like eternity, but it will always be there in our person, niggling away. It is in our nature, English literature handmaids tale will society ever reach point where considered natural norm therefore unable undergo further change impossible imagine that such point could ever exist people would have different belief values expectations according their past experiences “Handmaid Tale” by Margaret Atwood oppressive Gilead regime enforces their ideals unsuspecting population.
In Civilization and Its Discontents (Ch. 2), Sigmund Freud argues that happiness is routed in two basic ideas: the first having to do with no pain and the other having to do with pleasure. Along with his idea of what the root of happiness is, he also describes multiple ways this happiness can be attained. Freud states that love and beauty are both means of achieving happiness. Although love and beauty cannot completely prevent all worldly suffering, they both offer a powerful explanation that can help an individual determine the true meaning of their life. In this presentation, we will argue that this argument succeeds because true happiness is difficult to come by in this life, but things such as love and beauty provide a basis for passionate strife in an individual, while also causing an intoxicating kind of sensation that may lead to a definite meaning to Earthly existence for a human being.
“Humans are not a rational animal, but a rationalizing one” (“Class 20”). This was asserted by the much acclaimed, significant, and influential social psychologist Leon Festinger as referencing to his theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Social psychology is “a branch of psychology particularly concerned with understanding social behaviors such as” incentive and compliance (Sheehy). Festinger’s contributions to the social and cognitive branches of psychology as well psychology overall prove themselves worthy to today. This theory specifically challenged many common notions that were seemingly already accepted by behaviorists everywhere during his time (Tavris and Aronson). Its reality awakens its verifications. Consecutively, its “enormous motivational power” affects many on a daily basis (Tavris and Aronson). In the final analysis, the theory of Cognitive Dissonance by Leon Festinger is fundamental to behaviorism while directly changing the way human beings across the planet think and do.
Sigmund Freud describes humans as struggling between two drives, Eros and Thanatos or more plainly the life and death instincts, the death instinct is most interesting because Freud states that it stems from the human molecular desire to return to our original state of nothingness. Perhaps it is this death instinct that drives us into nothingness our desire not to act being a manifestation of the instincts affect on our body, acting in balance with Eros or the life instinct, it would be reasonable to speculate that those who are able to resist the death instinct would in turn be more productive and happy people, but to say that all of us are equally capable of battling in the war that wages within ourselves would be a fool's gamble, in fact
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia, a small town in Austro-Hungarian. His parents were Amalia and Jacob Freud. His father was an industrious wool merchant with a happy and witty personality. His mother was a cheerful and vivacious woman. He was one of nine siblings. He was the first-born child of Amali and Jacob; however, two male siblings where from his father’s first marriage. When he was a young boy, his family moved to Vienna where he lived most of his life. At the age of twenty-six, he fell madly in love with Martha Bernays when she was visiting one of his sisters. Shortly thereafter, they married and had six children of their own three boys and three girls. His children describe him as a loving and compassionate man.
The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic principles of Freud’s theories and to raise the main issues.
Throughout Freud’s time, he came up with many different theories. One of his theories was Life and Death Instincts. This theory evolved throughout his life and work. He believed that these drives were responsible for much of behavior. He eventually came to believe that these life instincts alone couldn’t explain all human behavior. Freud then determined that all instincts fall into one of 2 major classes: the life instincts or the death instincts. Life instincts deal with basic survival, reproduction, and pleasure. Death instincts are apparent after people experience a traumatic event and they often reenact the experience. In Freud’s view, self-destructive behavior is an expression of the energy that is created by the death instincts.
When we are young children, we are introduced to the concept of "living happily ever after". This is a fairy-tale emotional state of absolute happiness, where nothing really happens, and nothing even seems to matter. It is a state of feeling good all the time. In fairy tales, this feeling is usually found in fulfilling marriages, royal castles, singing birds and laughing children. In real life, an even-keeled mood is more psychologically healthy than a mood in which you frequently achieve great heights of happiness. Furthermore, when you ask people what makes their lives worth living, they rarely mention their mood. They are more likely to talk about what they find meaningful, such as their work or relationships. Research suggests that if you focus too much on trying to feel good all the time, you’ll actually undermine your ability to ever feel good because no amount of feeling good will be satisfying to you. If feeling good all the time were the only requirement for happiness, then a person who uses cocaine every day would be extremely happy. In our endless struggle for more money, more love and more security, we have forgotten the most fundamental fact: happiness is not caused by possessions or social positions, and can in fact be experienced in any daily activity. We have made happiness a utopia: expensive, complicated, and unreachable.