Freud’s Civilization And Its Discontents

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Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents: The Societal Super-Ego Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents appears to be his seminal work in culmination all of his theories, claims, and assumptions about the human psyche. The themes found in his book seems to range from his claims about aggression, group and individual psychology, Eros versus Thanatos, consciousness and the super-ego, and his critique of organized religion. It is not surprising that all the books that we have read in class up to this moment has been a preparation for this accumulation of Freud’s ideas. Freud combines all these themes in order to make a conjecture on how civilization is formed and the internal problems that it commonly presents itself. The overall arching idea that arises from Civilization and its Discontents is how the human species, plagued with its instinctual demands for sex and destruction, are put into check and balanced out with the rules and laws of society for the purpose of keeping such instincts into safe moderation. This societal super-ego is the main topic of discussion that I will attempt to embark on in describing Freud’s most widely read book. The super-ego is essentially the conscience that keeps the ego in check. It keeps the ego in check by monitoring what the ego does and what actions it takes. In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud relates the super-ego to the primal father that is killed by his two sons. The sons, from being remorseful of the father’s death, treat the father as the founder of their religion to govern society. Out of the sense of guilt from such an act of rebelling against the primal father, a sense of authority is bestowed from which once belonged to the father down to the sons which gives birth to society and its laws. Freud connects this idea to his theory of the primal horde found in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the

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