Work · Science & Human Sciences
Civilization and Its Discontents
Civilization rests on the renunciation of instinct – and produces guilt.
Introduction
Freud wrote the essay in 1929, aged 73 and suffering from cancer of the jaw; it appeared in Vienna at the end of that year, dated 1930. It begins with the “oceanic feeling” that his friend Romain Rolland had described as the source of religion, which Freud traces back to early infancy. He then asks why people suffer from the civilisation they have built: it restricts sexual and aggressive drives and turns aggression inwards as the superego, so that guilt grows as civilisation advances. The conflict between Eros and the death drive appears as the struggle of the human species itself. The book became a key reference for Marcuse and the Frankfurt School.
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Connections
Builds on
- The Interpretation of Dreams1900 · Sigmund Freud
Taken up in
- On the Process of Civilisation1939 · Norbert Elias
Answered in
- Eros and Civilization1955 · Herbert Marcuse
More works by Sigmund Freud
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