European writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, permanently captured the cultural attitudes and popular opinions associated with the ideas of civilization and the primitive of their time. The Era of New Imperialism brought culturally polarizing ideas to the forefront of public thought—ideas like the exploitation of primitive peoples for the benefit of civilized Europeans. Several decades later, during the Interwar Period, many ideas of the previous century were challenged, yet many established attitudes remained. H. Rider Haggard’s She epitomized the new imperialist culture of the late 19th century as it promoted a naturally determined separation between the civilized and the primitive. Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents embodied the reflective yet traditional culture of the early 20th century by furthering the animalistic characterization of primitive people and by criticizing civilization for its impediment of people’s happiness.
In 1887, H. Rider Haggard wrote She, a novel that incorporated the attitudes and ideologies associated with the new imperialism that dominated European thought and policy of its time. During this era, European powers greatly increased their global influence; from the French colonization of Indochina to the British in India, nearly every western European country claimed possession of an overseas colony. One of the most important events of this imperialist period was the Berlin Conference of 1884-85. During this international meeting, European powers divided up the continent of Africa into separate European colonies. Not a single African was present; the conference was an exclusive meeting of European powers to negotiate the details of their possession of an entire continent....
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...ss. When compared to Haggard’s older, more polarizing opinions, Freud’s ideas seem more moderate, as he noted both positive and negative features of each societal type. These two sets of opinions on civilization and the primitive could be made relevant to some of today’s issues, like the widening technological gap between developed countries and third-world nations. As western countries become remarkably more advanced in technology, medicine, and education, a moral question arises: is it the duty of first-world nations to share their modern advancements with the people of more primitive countries? Perhaps a closer look into the ideas of Haggard or Freud would lend a valuable answer.
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Ed. and Trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1962.
Haggard, H. Rider. She. New York: The Modern Library, 2002.
ADLER, Mortimer J. Editor in Chief. Great Books of the Western World. The Major Works of Sigmund Freud. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1996.
Europe, in the late 1800’s, was starting a land grab on the African continent. Around 1878, most of Africa was unexplored, but by 1914, most of Africa, with the lucky exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, was carved up between European powers. There were countless motivations that spurred the European powers to carve Africa, like economic, political, and socio–cultural, and there were countless attitudes towards this expansion into Africa, some of approval and some of condemnation. Europe in this period was a world of competing countries. Britain had a global empire to lead, France had competition with Britain for wealth and so did other nations like Germany and Russia.
The colonization of Africa officially began in 1884 with the Berlin Conference. Western European powers began to split up the land and resources in Africa among themselves. This period of history became known as the Scramble for Africa. The Scramble for Africa occurred because as the slave trade ended, capitalists saw Africa as a continent that they could now exploit through legitimate trade. European capitalists found new ways to make money off of the continent. With greater exploration of the continent even more valuable resources were found. The encouragement of legitimate trade in Africa brought Europeans flocking to colonize Africa. Africa lost their independence, and along with it, their control over their natural resources. Europeans used the term the "White Man's Burden," a concept used by white colonizers in order to impose their way of life on Africans within their colonies, to ...
In conclusion, “Civilization and Its Discontents” by Sigmund Freud was a book that sought to explain both organized religion and civilization in general. The book was largely influenced by the hostile environment of post World War I Germany and was a widely read and widely influential book.
Past Biography. 1995 ed. Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction Of Psychoanalysis. New York: Boni and Liveright,
Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Ed. James Strachey. Trans. James Strachey. Standard. Vol. 22. London: Hogarth Press, 1964.
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
Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. New York:
Freud for Historians. By Peter Gay. (Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. vii + 252. Preface, bibliography, acknowledgments, index.)
Freud, S., Strachey, J., Freud, A., Rothgeb, C., & Richards, A. (1953). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (1st ed.). London: Hogarth Press.
Freud begins Totem and Taboo by postulating an equation between the psychological development of the earliest human societies, living in the simplest forms of social organization or the primitives, contemporary human societies who lack any sense of modern culture and live under similarly simple forms of social organization which can be called savages and neurosis. Freud focusses on the paradox that although it is expected that the savages or primitive people might have no sexual ethics set, surprisingly these people have strict avoidance of incestuous relation disobeying which leads to punishment. Primitive and savage societies have equivalent forms of social and religious organization, namely totemism. Furthermore, strict practices were undertaken to prevent even seeing an individual with whom one might have incest, called avoidances. Freud extrapolates that repressed incestuous desires between family members are most likely the explanation for all avoidances, according with knowledge garnered from his studies on infantile sexuality. The original choices of love objects for infants are their family members, particularly the boy for his mother and then his sister if he has one, but these are always repressed. In most cases the boy successfully substitutes other women outside the family for these original choices, but neurotic patients suffer from inhibition and regression, or that “he has either failed to get free from the psycho-sexual conditions that prevailed in his childhood or he has returned to them.” In civilized societies, this condition is relatively rare, but Freud speculates that in primitive or savage societies sexual desires have not been as successfully sublimated as in modern Europe, such that the equation between primitives, savages, and neurotics seems to him justified by the available
Stwertka, Eve. Psychoanalysis: from Freud to the Age of Therapy. New York: Franklin Watts, 1988. Print.
While Collins does a succinct job of examining the economic and political factors that heightened colonization, he fails to hone in on the mental warfare that was an essential tool in creating African division and ultimately European conquest. Not only was the systematic dehumanization tactics crippling for the African society, but also, the system of racial hierarchy created the division essential for European success. The spillover effects of colonialism imparted detrimental affects on the African psyche, ultimately causing many, like Shanu, to, “become victims to the white man’s greed.”
The Berlin Conference was started in 1884 by German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck and lasted through February of 1885. It was designed to assist the European countries in developing themselves as a stronger force among world powers to allow them to overtake more unknown territories. “The motives for what became known as the ‘scramble for Africa’ in which Europeans began slicing up that cake, were political, economic, and cultural” (Nardo). King Leopold II, from Belgium, showed the strongest interest in the conference as he was strategically planning the capture of a colony to finally expand his empire. He felt that without the possession of other territories that Belgium held a lower status politically and economically than the countries that had already captured new lands.
Sigmund Freud has made significant contributions to society. His ideals about how society both functions and interacts have shaped the world in implicit and explicit ways. His theories were passed on to his nephew, Bernie Bernays, which then made them a reality. His ideas also resonate with the observations of other theorists, such as Marcuse. The film “The Century of the Self” put the ways we are unwillingly controlled into perspective. Consumerism has masked itself in all aspects of our lives to manipulate the individual, control masses, and suppress individuality.