The Nexus Archive
Psychoanalysis · Psychology
Civilization and Its Discontents
by Freud · The Excavator of the Unconscious · Modern Europe, 1856-1939
Freud asks why civilization's protections intensify guilt, aggression, renunciation, and unhappiness.
- Brutal
- ~2 hr read
- 3 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the I guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
Why Safety Does Not Make Us Happy
Civilization protects people from nature and from one another, yet its demands can make them deeply unhappy. Published in 1930, Civilization and Its Discontents turns that familiar strain into a question about the mind. What happens to desires that people must set aside in order to live together?
Freud writes as a participant in the argument. A friend's objection to his account of religion prompts him to reconsider how the self takes shape. Personal observations sit beside large speculations about the beginnings of social life. He tests explanations, revises earlier theories and repeatedly acknowledges what he cannot prove.
The book's tension lies in the double force of human attachments. Love can bind people together and make them vulnerable; the wish for security can demand painful sacrifices. Freud asks how much civilization can change those conflicts, and how much belongs to the needs and impulses it tries to govern.
The opening pages
CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
JONATHAN CAPE AND HARRISON SMITH, INCORPORATED,
139 EAST 46TH STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y. AND 77 WELLINGTON
STREET, WEST, TORONTO, CANADA; JONATHAN CAPE, LTD.,
30 BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON, W. C. 1, ENGLAND
CIVILIZATION
AND ITS DISCONTENTS
SIGMUND FREUD, M.D., LL.D.
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
BY
JOAN RIVIERE
NEW YORK
JONATHAN CAPE & HARRISON SMITH
COPYRIGHT, 1930
BY JONATHAN CAPE AND
HARRISON SMITH, INC.
FIRST PUBLISHED IN AMERICA, 1930
SECOND PRINTING OCTOBER, 1930
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
BY THE DE VINNE-HALLENBECK COMPANY
AND BOUND BY THE J. F. TAPLEY COMPANY
I
The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious things in life. And yet, in making any general judgement of this kind one is in danger of forgetting the manifold variety of humanity and its mental life. There are certain men from whom their contemporaries do not withhold veneration, although their greatness rests on attributes and achievements which are completely foreign to the aims and ideals of the multitude. One might well be inclined to suppose that after all it is only a minority who appreciate these great men, while the majority cares nothing for them. But the discrepancy between men’s opinions and their behaviour is so wide and their desires so many-sided that things are probably not so simple.
One of these exceptional men calls himself my friend in his letters to me. I had sent him my little book which treats of religion as an illusion and he answered that he agreed entirely with my views on religion, but that he was sorry I had not properly appreciated the ultimate source of religious sentiments. This consists in a peculiar feeling, which never leaves him personally, which he finds shared by many others, and which he may suppose millions more also experience. It is a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded, something ‘oceanic’. It is, he says, a purely subjective experience, not an article of belief; it implies no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of the religious spirit and is taken hold of by the various Churches and religious systems, directed by them into definite channels and also, no doubt, used up in them. One may rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even though one reject all beliefs and all illusions.
Chapter guides · 3
I
The Oceanic Feeling Under Examination
A friend describes a feeling of limitless unity as the source of religious sentiment. Freud cannot find it in himself, but he tests it against a developmental account of the ego.
A feeling Freud does not share
Freud's friend calls the oceanic feeling a subjective sense of eternity and unbounded connection, distinct from belief or a promise of immortality. Freud allows that others may experience it, but he questions whether they have interpreted it correctly or shown that it produces the need for religion.
The ego acquires an outside
Freud offers a genetic explanation. On his reconstruction, the infant gradually distinguishes bodily sensation from the mother's breast and other objects, learns to separate internal from external sources of pain, and takes a first step toward the reality principle. The bounded adult ego is a later formation, while the earlier sense of oneness may survive beside it.
Helplessness outweighs oneness
After using Rome to expose the limits of picturing every past stage at once, Freud weakens his claim: what is past in the mind can survive, but need not always do so. He accepts the oceanic feeling as a possible remnant, while giving childhood helplessness, longing for a father, and fear of fate the stronger place in his account of religion. A second friend reports that Yogi practices of withdrawal, attention to the body and special breathing can produce new sensations, which he takes for regressions to deeply buried early states and a physical basis for much mystical wisdom. Freud stops short of these depths and closes with a line from Schiller’s diver: “Who breathes overhead in the rose-tinted light may be glad!”
III
Why Civilization Cannot Guarantee Happiness
No path to happiness works for everyone. Freud then defines civilization as protection from nature and regulation among people, and says communal Right is possible only by restricting each member's possibilities of gratification.
Pleasure under three pressures
The pleasure principle seeks intense satisfaction and escape from pain, but Freud says lasting happiness is blocked by the body's decay, the outer world's force, and suffering in human relations. Avoiding pain therefore often displaces the pursuit of pleasure.
Many routes, none sovereign
Intoxication alters sensation; instinctual control reduces both suffering and enjoyment; sublimation and art offer limited refuge; love brings intense pleasure with unusual vulnerability. Freud concludes that no single method secures happiness, because success depends on a person's constitution and circumstances.
Protection and privation
Freud defines culture by two tasks: protection against nature and regulation of human relations. When a united community replaces individual brute force with Right, its members restrict their own possibilities of gratification. He calls sublimation a conspicuous feature of cultural evolution, one that lets higher mental activity play a major part in civilized life. Separately, he says civilization rests on instinctual renunciation: this privation causes antagonism and can produce serious disorders if it is not made good economically.
VI
Aggression Against the Bonds of Culture
Freud traces communal life to work and love, then argues that civilization's bonds meet two conflicts: restrictions on sexuality and an aggression he regards as instinctual rather than a product of property.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Civilization and Its Discontents?
- About 2 hr in total.
- How difficult is Civilization and Its Discontents?
- Brutal. A mid-length work of psychology; about 2 hours of reading.
- Which translation is this?
- The Joan Riviere translation from the German, first published in 1930. The text follows Civilization and Its Discontents (1930).
- Can I read Civilization and Its Discontents for free?
- Civilization and Its Discontents is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 3 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Freud
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Nexus currently stages him through the public-domain English lecture route A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis while further source candidates remain deferred.
“What hidden motives shape thought, speech, and suffering?”
Freud changed psychology, literature, criticism, and modern self-understanding, even where later readers reject or revise him.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Civilization and Its Discontents is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.