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Civilization and Its Discontents



Criticisms



Uninformed.

Freud is uninformed as to the coming events of the twentieth century, especially the Second World War and the Holocaust. This work was published in 1930. In 1931 when they published a second edition, Freud added a final sentence speculating whether Eros or Death would come out as stronger in the coming years. This was as Hitler was coming to power, and it was becoming clear to Freud and to others what a menace they were in for. But even Freud could not have foreseen what horrors really were in store, and if he had, it might have altered his opinions of Eros and Death. Had this book been written in the context of World War II, Freud might have fundamentally altered his theory to state that the Death drive is the stronger, using Nazi death camps as evidence. This even seems probable, since before Hitler came to power, Freud left this last question out, and with the knowledge of things to come, who knows what else might have changed.

As well as WWII, Freud didn’t see the full run of communism, and while he was on the money with his analysis of why it fails, he didn’t have the perspective of the actual progress of communism past 1939.

Misinformed.

Freud bases a good amount of the theory in this book on events that may or may not have happened 50,000 years ago with prehistoric man. On multiple occasions, Freud goes back to the hunter-gatherer days to illustrate how civilization developed. For example, according to Freud, one of the first developments in civilization was when the proverbial sons killed their father and learned the value of cooperation, while at the same time becoming burdened with guilt and remorse. While it’s possible that this is historical fact, Freud doesn’t really substantiate these claims with any evidence, and we are only left to assume that that’s how...