history essay 3

Sigmund Freud ~~

CIVILIZATION AND ITS

DISCONTENTS

TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY

James Strachey

WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL

INTRODUCTION BY

Peter Gay

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Copyright © 1961 by James Strachey

"Sigmund Freud: A Brief Life" copyright © 1989 by Peter Gay

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90

Contents

Sigmund Freud: A Brief Life, by Peter Gay ix Editor $ Introduction 3 Civilization and Its Discontents 5 Bibliography and Author Index 113 Index 119

II

In my Future of an Rlusion [l927C] I was concerned much le.ss with the deepest sources of the religious feeling than with what the common man understands by his religion­ with the system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him.the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here. The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father. Only such a being can understand the needs of the children of men and be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is so patently infan­ tile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. It is still more humiliating to discover how large a number of people living to-day, who cannot but see that this religion is not tenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions. One would like to mix among the ranks of the believers in order to meet these philosophers, who think they can rescue the God of

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 23

religion by replacing him by an impersonal, shadowy and abstract principle, and to address them with the warning words: 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain!' And if some of the great men of the past acted in the same way, no appeal can be made to their example: we know why they were obliged to.

Let us return to the common man and to his religion­ the only religion which ought to bear that name. The first thing that we think of is the well-known saying of one of our great poets and thinkers concerning the relation of religion to art and science:

Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt, hat auch Religion; Wer ;ene beide nicht OOsitzt, der haOO Religion!l

This saying on the one hand draws an antithesis between religion and the two highest achievements of man, and on the other, asserts that, as regards their value in life, those achievements and religion can represent or replace each other. If we also set out to deprive the common man, [who has neither science nor art] of his- religion, we shall clearly not have the poet's authority on our side. We will choose a particular path to bring us nearer an appreciation of his words. Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures. 'We cannot do without auxiliary constructions', as Theodor Fon­ tane tells us. 2 There are perhaps three such measures: pow­ erful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery;

l['He who possesses science and art also.has religion; but he who possesses neither of those two, let him have religionl']-Coethe, Ztzhme Xenien IX (Gedichte aus clem Nach1ass). l[lt has not been possible to trace this quotation.]

24) SIGMUND FREUD

substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicat­ ing substances, which make us insensitive to it. Something of the kind is indispensable. 3 Voltaire has deflections in mind when he end~Ctmdide with the advice to cultivate one's garden; and scientific activity is a deflection of this kind, too. The substitutive satisfactions, as offered by art, are illusions in contrast with reality, but they are none the less psychically effective, thanks to the role which phantasy has assumed in mental life. The intoxicating substances influ­ ence our body and alter its chemistry. It is no simple matter to see where religion has its place in this series. We must look further afield.

The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory an­ swer and perhaps does not admit of one. Some of those who have asked it have added that if it should tum out that life has no purpose, it would lose all value for them. But this threat alters nothing. It looks, on the contrary, as though one had a right to dismiss the question, for it seems to derive from the human presumptuousness, many other manifesta­ tions of which are already familiar to us. Nobody talles about the purpose of the life of animals, unless, perhaps, it may be supposed to lie in being of service to man. But this view is not tenable either, for there are many animals of which man can make nothing, except· to descn"be, classify and study them; and innumerable species of animals have escaped even this use, since they existed and became extinct before man set eyes on them. Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong

3In Die Fromme Helene Wilhelm Busch has said the same thing on a lower plane: 'Wer Sorgen hat, hat auch LikOr.' ['He who has cares has brandy too.']

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 2 S

in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.

We will therefore tum to the less ambitious question of what men themselves show by their behaviour to be the purpose and intention of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so. This endeavour has two sides, a positive and a negative aim. It aims, on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. In its nar­ rower sense the word 'happiness' only relates to the last. In conformity with this dichotomy in his aims, man's activity develops in two directions, according as it seeks to realize­ in the main, or even exclusively-the one or the other of these aims.

As we see, what decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle. This principle domi­ nates the operation of the mental apparatus from the start. There can be no doubt about its efficacy, and yet its pro­ gramme is at loggerheads with the whole world, with the macrocosm as much as with the microcosm. There is no possibility at all of its being carried through; all the regula­ tions of the universe run counter to it. One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be 'happy' is not included in the plan of 'Creation'. What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and it is from its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon. When any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it only produces a feeling of mild contentment. We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from

26) SIGMUND FREUD

a state of things." Thus our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other. We tend to regard it as a kind of gratuitous addition, although it cannot be any less fatefully inevitable than the suffering which comes from elsewhere.

It is no wonder if, under the pressure of these possibilities of suffering, men are accustomed to moderate their claims to happiness-just as the pleasure principle itself, indeed, under the influence of the external world, changed into the more modest reality principle--, if a man thinks himself happy merely to have escaped unhappiness or to have sur­ vived his suffering, and if in general the task of avoiding suffering pushes that of obtaining pleasure into the back­ ground. Reflection shows that the accomplishment of this task can be attempted along very different paths; and all these paths have been recommended by the various schools of worldly wisdom and put into practice by men. An unre­ stricted satisfaction of every need presents itself as the most enticing method of conducting one's life, but it means put­

04C0ethe, indeed, warns us that 'nothing is harder to bear than a succession of fair days.'

[Alles in der Welt liisst sich ertragen, Nur nicht eine Reihe von schOen

Tagen. (Weimar, 1810-n.))

But this may be an exaggeration.

Civilization and Its Discontents (27

ting enjoyment before caution, and soon brings its own punishment. The other methods, in which avoidance of unpleasure is the main purpose, are differentiated according to the source of unpleasure to which their attention is chiefly turned. Some of these methods are extreme and some mod­ erate; some are one-sided and some attack the problem simultaneously at several points. Against the suffering which may come upon one from human relationships the readiest safeguard is voluntary isolation, keeping oneself aloof from other people. The happiness which can be achieved along this path is, as we see, the happiness of quietness. Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself. There is, indeed, another and better path: that of becoming a member of the human community, and, with the help of a technique guided by science, going over to the attack against nature and subjecting her to the human will. Then one is working with all for the good of all. But the most interesting methods of averting suffering are those which seek to infiuence our own organism. In the last analysis, all suffering is nothing else than sensation; it only exists in so far as we feel it, and we only feel it in conse­ quence of certain ways in which our organism is regulated.

The crudest, but also the most effective among these methods of influence is the chemical one-intoxication. I do not think that anyone completely understands its mecha­ nism, but it is a fact that there are foreign substances .which, when present in the blood or tissues, directly cause us plea­ surable sensations; and they alsO' "So alter the conditions governing our sensibility that we become incapable of re­ ceiving unpleasurable impulses. The two effects not only occur simultaneously, but seem to be intimately bound up with each other. But there must be substances in the chem­ istry of our own bodies which have similar effects, for we

28) S I G M U N D F R E U D

know at least one pathological state, mania, in which a condition similar to intoxication arises without the adminis­ tration of any intoxicating drug. Besides this, our normal mental life exhibits oscillations between a comparatively easy liberation of pleasure and a comparatively difficult one, parallel with which there goes a diminished or an increased receptivity to unpleasure. It is greatly to be regretted that this toxic side of mental processes has so far escaped scien­ tific examination. The service rendered by intoxicating media in the struggle for happiness and in keeping misery at a distance is so highly prized as a benefit that individuals and peoples alike have given them an established place in the economics of their libido. We owe to such media not merely the immediate yield of pleasure, but also a greatly desired degree of independence from the external world. For one knows that, with the help of this 'drowner of cares' one can at any time withdraw from the pressure of reality and find refuge in a world of one's own with better condi­ tions of sensibility. As is well known, it is precisely this property of intoxicants which also determines their danger and their injuriousness. They are responsible, in certain cir­ cumstances, for the useless waste of a large quota of energy which might have been employed for the improvement of the human lot.

The complicated structure of our mental apparatus ad­ mits, however, of a whole number of other influences. Just as a satisfaction of instinct spells happiness for us, so severe suffering is caused us if the external world lets us starve, if it refuses to sate our needs. One may therefore hope to be freed from a part of one's sufferings by influencing the instinctual impulses. This type of defence against suffering is no longer brought to bear on the sensory apparatus; it seeks to master the internal sources of our needs. The ex­ treme form of this is brought about by killing off the in-

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 29

stincts, as is prescribed by the worldly wisdom of the East and practised by Yoga. If it succeeds, then the subject has, it is true, given up all other activities as well-he has sacri­ ficed his life; and, by another path, he has once more only achieved the happiness of quietness. We follow the same path when our aims are less extreme and we merely attempt to control our instinctual life. In that case, the controlling elements are the higher psychical agencies, which have sub­ jected themselves to the reality principle. Here the aim of satisfaction is not by any means relinquished; but a certain amount of protection against suffering is secured, in that non-satisfaction is not so painfully felt in the case of in­ stincts kept in dependence as in the case of uninhibited ones. As against this, there is an undeniable diminution in the potentialities of enjoyment. The feeling of happiness derived from the satisfaction of a wild instinctual impulse untamed by the ego is incomparably more intense than that derived from sating an instinct that has been tamed. The irresistibility of perverse instincts, and perhaps the attrac­ tion in general of forbidden things finds an economic expla­ nation here.

Another technique for fending off suffering is the employ­ ment of the displacements of libido which our mental appa­ ratus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility. The task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the external world. In this, sublima­ tion of the instincts lends its assistance. One gains the most if one can sufficiently heighten the yield of pleasure from the sources of psychical and intellectual work. When that IS so, fate can do little against one. A satisfaction of this kind, such as an artist's joy in creating, in giving his phantasies body, or a scientist's in solving problems or discovering truths, has a special quality which we shall certainly one day be able to

34) S I G M U N D F R E U D

The love of beauty seems a perfect example of an impulse inhibited in its aim. 'Beauty' and 'attraction'7 are originally attributes of the sexual object. It is worth remarking that the genitals themselves, the sight of which is always exciting, are nevertheless hardly ever judged to be beautiful; the quality of beauty seems, instead, to attach to certain secondary sexual characters.

In spite of the incompleteness [of my enumeration (p. 32 ], 1 will venture on a few remarks as a conclusion to our enquiry. The programme of becoming happy, which the pleasure principle imposes on us [po 25], cannot be fulfilled; yet we must not-indeed, we cannot-give up our efforts to bring it nearer to fulfillment by some means or other. Very different paths may be taken in that direction, and we may give priority either to the positive aspect of the aim, that of gaining pleasure, or to its negative one, that of avoiding unpleasure. By none of these paths can we attain all that we desire. Happiness, in the reduced sense in which we reCognize it as possible, is a problem of the economics of the individual's libido. There is no golden rule which applies to everyone: every man must find out for himself in what particular fashion he can be saved.8 All kinds of differ­ ent factors will operate to direct his choice. It is a question of how much real satisfaction he can expect to get hom the external world, how far he is led to make himself indepen­ dent of it, and, finally, how much strength he feels he has for altering the world to suit his wishes. In this, his psychical

?[The German 'Reiz' means 'stimulus' as well as 'chann' or 'attraction'. Freud had argued on the same lines in the first edition of his Three Essays (l<}05d ), Standard Ed., 7,2.09, as well as in a footnote added to that work in 1915, ibid., 156.] 8[The allusion is to a saying attnbuted to Frederick the Great: 'in my State every man can be saved after his own fashion.' Freud had quoted this a short time before, in Lay Aoolysis (192.6e), Standard Ed., 30,2.36.]

Civilization and Iu Discontenu (35

constitution will play a decisive part, irrespectively of the external circumstances. The man who is predominantly erotic will give first preference to his emotional relationships to other people; the narcissistic man, who inclines to be self-sufficient, will seek his main satisfactions in his internal mental processes; the man of action will never give up the external world on which he can try out his strength.9 As regards the second of these types, the nature of his talents and the amount of instinctual sublimation open to him will decide where he shall locate his interests. Any choice that is pushed to an extreme will be penalized by exposing the individual to the dangers which arise if a technique of living that has been chosen as an exclusive one should prove inade­ quate. Just as a cautious business-man avoids tying up all his capital in one concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the whole of our satisfaction &om a single aspiration. Its success is never certain, for that de­ pends on the convergence of many factors, perhaps on none more than on the capacity of the psychical constitution to adapt its function to the environment and then to exploit that environment for a yield of pleasure. A person who is born with a specially unfavourable instinctual constitution, and who has not properly undergone the transformation and rearrangement of his libidinal components which is indis­ pensable for later achievements, will find it hard to obtain happiness hom his external situation, especially if he is faced with tasks of some difficulty. As a last technique of living, which will at least bring him substitutive satisfactions, he is offered that of a flight into neurotic illness-a flight which he usually accomplishes when he is still young. The man who sees his pursuit of happiness come to nothing, in later

9[Freud further develops his ideas on these different types in his paper on 'Libidinal Types' (19310).]

v

Psycho-Analytic work has shown us that it is precisely these frustrations of sexual life which people known as neurotics cannot tolerate. The neurotic creates substitutive satisfac­ tions for himself in his symptoms, and these either cause him suffering in themselves or become sources of suffering for him by raising difficulties in his relations with his envi­ ronment and the society he belongs to. The latter fact is easy to understand; the former presents us with a new problem. But civilization demands other sacrifices besides that of sexual satisfaction.

We have treated the difficulty of cultural development as a general difficulty of development by tracing it to the iner­ tia of the libido, to its disinclination to give up an old position for a new one. l We are saying much the same thing when we derive the antithesis between civilization and sexu­ ality from the circumstances that sexual love is a relationship between two individuals in which a third can only be super­ fluous or disturbing, whereas civilization depends on rela­ tionships between a considerable number of individuals.

lISee, for instance, p. 58 above. For some remarks on Freud's use of the concept of 'psychical inertia' in general, see an Editor's footnote to Freud, 1915/, Standard Ed., 1,., 2.72..]

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 6S

When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves, and do not even need the child they have in common to make them happy. In no other case does Eros so clearly betray the core of his being, his purpose of making one out of more than one; but when he has achieved this in the proverbial way through the love of two human beings, he refuses to go further.

So far, we can quite well imagine a cultural community consisting of double individuals like this, who, libidinally satisfied in themselves, are connected with one another through the bonds of common work and common interests. If this were so, civilization would not have to withdraw any energy from sexuality. But this desirable state of things does not, and never did, exist. Reality shows us that civilization is not content with the ties we have so far allowed it. It aims at binding the members of the community together in a libidinal way as well and employs every means to that end. It favours every path by which strong identifications can be established between the members of the community, and it summons up aim-inhibited libido on the largest scale so as to strengthen the communal bond by relations of friendShip. In order for these aims to be fulfilled, a restriction upon sexual life is unavoidable. But we .are unable to understand what the necessity is which forces civilization along this path arid which causes its antagonism to sexuality. There must be some disturbing factor which we have not yet discovered.

The clue may be supplied by one of the ideal demands, as we have called them,2 of civilized society. It runs: 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' It is known throughout the world and is undoubtedly older than Christianitr, which

2 [See p. 10<}. Cf. also' "Civilized" Sexual Morality' (1<}08d), Standard Ed., 9, 199·)

66) SIGMUND FREUD

puts it forward as its proudest claim. Yet it is certainly not very old; even in historical times it was still strange to man­ kind. Let us adopt a naive attitude towards it, as though we were hearing it for the first time; we shall be unable. then to suppress a feeling of surprise and bewilderment. Why should we do it? What good will it do us? But, above all, how shall we achieve it? How can it be possible? My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throwaway without reflection. It imposes duties on me for whose ful­ filment I must be ready to make sacrifices. If I love someone; he must deserve it in some way. (I leave out of account the use he may be to me, and also his possible significance for me as a sexual object, for neither of these two kinds of relationship comes into question where the precept to love my neighbour is concerned.) He deserves it if he is so like me in important ways that I can love myself in him; and he deserves it if he is so much more perfect than myself that I can love my ideal of my own self in him. Again, I have to love him if he is my friend's son, since the pain my friend would feel if any harm came to him would be my pain too-I should have to share it. But if he is a stranger to me and if he cannot attract me by any worth of his own or any significance that he may already have acquired for my emo­ tional life, it will be hard for me to love him. Indeed, I should be wrong to do so, for my love is valued by all my own people as a sign of my preferring them, and it is an injustice to them if I put a stranger on a par with them. But if I am to love him (with this universal love) merely because he, too, is an inhabitant of this earth, like an insect, an earth-worm or a grass-snake, then I fear that only a small modicum of my love will fall to his share-not by any possi­ bility as much as, by the judgement of my reason, I am entitled to retain for myself. What is the poirit of a precept

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 67

enunciated with so much solemnity if its fulfilment cannot be recommended as reasonable?

On closer inspection, I find still further difficulties. Not merely is this stranger in general unworthy of my love; I must honestly confess that he has more claim to my hostility and even my hatred. He seems not to have the least trace of love for me and shows me not the slightest consideration. If it will do him any good he has no hesitation in injuring me, nor does he ask himself whether the amount of advan­ tage he gains bears any proportion to the extent of the harm he does to me. Indeed, he need not even obtain an advan­ tage; if he can satisfy any sort of desire by it, he thinks nothing of jeering at me, insulting me, slandering me and showing his superior power; and the more secure he feels and the more helpless I am, the more certainly I can expect him to behave like this to me. If he behaves differently, if he shows me consideration and forbearance as a stranger, I am ready to treat him in the same way, in any case and quite apart from any precept. Indeed, if this grandiose command­ ment had run 'Love thy neighbour as thy neighbour loves thee', I should not take exception to it. And there is a second commandment, which seems to me even more incompre­ hensible and arouses still stronger opposition in me. It is 'Love thine enemies'. If I think it over, however, I see that I am wrong in treating it as a greater imposition. At bottom it is the same thing. 3

3A great imaginative writer may pennit himself to give expression-jok­ ingly, at all events-to psychological truths that are severely proscribed. Thus Heine confesses: 'Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies. hanging from those trees. Before their death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all

68) SIGMUND FREUD

I think I can now hear a dignified voice admonishing me: 'It is precisely because your neighbour is not worthy of love, and is on the contrary your enemy, that you should love him as yourself. I then understand that the case is one like that of Credo quia absurdum...

Now it is very probable that my neighbour, when he is enjoined to love me as himself, will answer exactly as I have done and will repel me for the same reasons. I hope he will not have the same objective grounds for doing so, but he will have the same idea as I have. Even so, the behaviour of human beings shows differences, which ethics, disregarding the fact that such differences are determined, classifies as 'good' or 'bad'. So long as these undeniable differences have not been removed, obedience to high ethical demands en­ tails damage to the aims of civilization, for it puts a positive premium on being bad. One is irresistibly reminded of an incident in the French Chamber when capital punishment was being debated. A member had been passionately sup­ porting its abolition and his speech was being received with tumultuous applause, when a voice from the hall called out: 'Que messieurs les assassins commencentl'5

The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend them­ selves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, crea­ tures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reck­ oned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their

the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, if is true, forgive one's enemies-but not before they have been hanged.' (Gedanken und Einfiille [Section I].) 4[See Chapter V of The Future of an Rlusion (1927C).

Freud returns to the question of the commandment to love one's neigh­ bour as oneself below, on p. 1000f.]. 5['It's the murderers who should make the first move.']

Civilization and Its Discontents (6<)

neighbour is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work with­ out compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus. 6 Who, in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion? As a rule this cruel aggressiveness waits for some provocation or puts itself at the service of some other purpose, whose goal might also have been reached by milder measures. In circumstances that are favourable to it, when the mental counter-forces which ordinarily inhibit it are out of action, it also manifests itself spontaneously and reveals man as a savage beast to whom consideration towards his own kind is something alien. Anyone who calls to mind the atrocities committed during the racial migrations or the invasions of the Huns, or by the people known as Mongols under Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane, or at the capture of Jerusalem by the pious Crusaders, or even, indeed, the horrors of the recent World War-anyone who calls these things to mind will have to bow humbly before the truth of this view.

The existence of this inclination to aggression, which we can detect in ourselves and justly assume to be present in others, is the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbour and which forces civilization into such a high expenditure [of energy]. In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is per­ petually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in common would not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests. Civilization has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man's

6['Man is a wolf to man.' Derived from Plautus, Asinari4 II,. iv, 88.]

70) SIGMUND FREUD

aggressive instincts and to hold the manifestations of them in check by psychical reaction-formations. Hence, therefore, the use of methods intended to incite people into identifi­ cations and aim-inhibited relationships of love, hence the restriction upon sexual life, and hence too the ideal's com­ mandment to love one's neighbour as oneself-a command­ ment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man. In spite of every effort, these endeavours of civilization have not so far achieved very much. It hopes to prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence by itself assuming the right to use violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hold of the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness. The time comes when each one of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will. At the same time, it would be unfair to reproach civilization with trying to eliminate strife and com­ petition from human activity. These things are undoubtedly indispensable. But opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.

The communists believe that they have found the path to deliverance from our evils. According to them, man is wholly good and is well-disposed to his neighbour; but the institution of private property has corrupted his nature. The ownership of private wealth gives the individual power, and with it the temptation to ill-treat his neighbour; while the man who is excluded from possession is bound to rebel in hostility against his oppressor. If private property were abol­ ished, all wealth held in common, and everyone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men. Since everyone's needs would be satisfied, no one would have any reason to regard another as

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 71

his enemy; all would willingly undertake the work that was necessary. I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous? But I am able to recognize that the psychological premisses on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest; but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times, when prop­ erty was still very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nursery almost before property has given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people (with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother's relation to her male child8 ). If we do away with personal rights over material wealth, there still remains pre­ rogative in the field of sexual relationships, which is bound to become the source of the strongest dislike and the most violent hostility among men who in other respects are on an equal footing. If we were to remove this factor, too, by allowing complete freedom of sexual life and thus abolishing

7 Anyone who has tasted the miseries of poverty in his own youth and has experienced the indifference and arrogance of the well-to-do, should be safe from the suspicion of having no understanding or good will towards en­ deavours to fight against the inequality of wealth among men and all that it leads to. To be sure, if an attempt is made to base this fight upon an abstract demand, in the name of justice, for equality for all men, there is a very obvious objection to be made-that nature, by endowing individuals with extremely unequal physical attributes and mental capacities, has intnr duced injustices against which there is no remedy. 8[Cf. a footnote to Chapter VI of Croup PKYchology (1912C), St4nd4rd Ed., 18, lOin. A rather longer discussion of the point occurs near the end of Lecture XXXIII of the New Introductory Lectures (1933a).]

72 ) S I G M U N D F R E U D

the family, the germ-cell of civilization, we cannot, it is true, easily foresee what new paths the development of civiliza­ tion could take; but one thing we can expect, and that is that this indestructible feature of human nature will follow it there.

It is clearly not easy for men to give up the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression. They do not feel comfort­ able without it. The advantage which a comparatively small cultural group offers of allowing this instinct an outlet in the form of hostility against intruders is not to be despised. It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness. I once discussed the phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other-like the Spaniards and Portuguese, for instance, the North Germans and South Germans, the English and Scotch, and so on.9 I gave this phenomenon the name of 'the narcissism of minor differences', a name which does not do much to explain it. We can now see that it is a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the incli­ nation to aggression, by means of which cohesion between the members of the community is made easier. In this re­ spect the Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have ren­ dered most usefui services to the civilizations of the coun· tries that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the massacres of the Jews in the Middle Ages did not suffice to make that period more peaceful and secure for their Chri~ tian fellows. When once the Apostle Paul had posited uni­ versallove between men as the foundation of his Christian

9[See Chapter VI of Group Psychology (192IC), Standard Ed, 18, 101, and 'The Taboo of Virginity' (191&), ibid., 11, 199.]

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 73

community, extreme intolerance on the part of Christen­ dom towards those who remained outside it became the inevitable consequence. To the Romans, who had not founded their communal life as a State upon love, religious intolerance was something foreign, although with them reli­ gion was a concern of the State and the State was permeated by religion. Neither was it an unaccountable chance that the dream of a Germanic world-dominion called for antisemit­ ism as its complement; and it is intelligible that the attempt to establish a new, communist civilization in Russia should find its psychological support in the persecution of the bour­ geois. One only wonders, with concern, what the Soviets will do after they have wiped out their bourgeois.

If civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man's sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization. In fact, primitive man was better off in knowing no restric­ tions of instinct. To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happiness for any length of time were very slender. Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possi­ bilities of happiness for a portion of security. We must not forget, however, that in the primal family only the head of it enjoyed this instinctual freedom; the rest lived in slavish suppression. In that primal period of civilizatiol), the con­ trast between a minority who enjoyed the advantages of civilization and a majority who were robbed of those advan­ tages was, therefore, carried to extremes. As regards the primitive peoples who exist t<Hlay, careful researches have shown that their instinctual life is by no means to be envied for its freedom. It is subject to restrictions of a different kind but perhaps of greater severity than those attaching to mod­ ern civilized man.

When we justly find fault with the present state of our civilization for so inadequately fulfilling our demands for a

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results in a further intensification of the sense of guilt. Since civilization obeys an internal erotic impulsion which causes human beings to unite in a closely-knit group, it can only achieve this aim through an ever-increasing reinforcement of the sense of guilt. What began in relation to the father is completed in relation to the group. If civilization is a necessary course of development from the family to human­ ity as a whole, then-as a result of the inborn conflict arising from ambivalence, of the eternal struggle between the trends of love and death-there is inextricably bound up with it an increase of the sense of guilt, which will perhaps reach heights that the individual finds hard to tolerate. One is reminded of the great poet's moving arraignment of the 'Heavenly Powers':-

Ihr fij.hrt in $ Leben uns hinein. Ihr Ulsst den Annen schuldig werden, Dann iiberUlsst Ihr ihn den Pein, Denn ;ede Schuld riicht sich auf Erden. 12

And we may well heave a sigh of relief at the thought that it is nevertheless vouchsafed to a few to salvage without effort from the whirlpool of their own feelings the deepest truths, towards which the rest of us have to find our way through tormenting uncertainty and with restless groping.

l20ne of the Harp-player's songs in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisrer. [fo earth, this weary earth, ye bring us To guilt ye let us heedless go, Then leave repentance fierce to wring us: A moment's guilt, arr age of woe!

Carlyle's translation. The first couplet appears as an association to a dream in Freud's short book On Dreams (19()lO), St4ndtzrd Ed., 5,637 and 639·J

VIII

Having reached the end of his journey, the author must ask his readers' forgiveness for not having been a more skilful guide and for not having spared them empty stretches of road and troublesome detours. There is no doubt that it could have been done better. I will attempt, late in the day, to make some amends.

In the first place, I suspect that the reader has the impres­ sion that our discussions on the sense of guilt disrupt the framework of this essay: that they take up too much space, so that the rest of its subject-matter, with which they are not always closely connected, is pushed to one side. This may have spoilt the structure of my paper; but it corresponds faithfully to my intention to represent the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civiliza­ tion and to show that the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt. 1 Anything that still sounds strange about

l'Thus conscience does make cowards of us all .. .' That the education of young people at the present day conceals from

them the part which sexuality will play in their lives is not the only reproach which we are obliged to make against it. Its other sin is that it does not prepare them for the aggressiveneiS of which they are destined to become the objects. In sending the young out into life with such a false psychologi­

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this statement, which is the final conclusion of our investiga­ tion, can probably be traced to the quite peculiar relation­ ship-as yet completely unexplained-which the sense of guilt has to our consciousness. In the common case of re­ morse, which we regard as normal, this feeling makes itself clearly enough perceptible to consciousness. Indeed, we are accustomed to speak of a 'consciousness of guilt' instead of a 'sense of guilt'. 2 Our study of the neuroses, to which, after all, we owe the most valuable pointers to an understanding of normal conditions, brings us up against some contradic­ tions. In one of those affections, obsessional neurosis, the sense of guilt makes itself noisily heard in consciousness; it dominates the clinical picture and the patient's life as well, and it hardly allows anything else to appear alongside of it. But in most other cases and forms of neurosis it remains completely unconscious, without on that account producing any less important effects. Our patients do not believe us when we attribute an 'unconscious sense of guilt' to them. In order to make ourselves at all intelligible to them, we tell them of an unconscious need for punishment, in which the sense of guilt finds expression. But its connection with a particular form of neurosis must not be over-estimated.

cal orientation, education is behaving as though one were to equip people starting on a Polar expedition with summer clothing and maps of the Italian Lakes. In this it becomes evident that a certain misuse is being made of ethical demands. The strictness of those demands would not do so much harm if education were to say: 'This is how men ought to be, in order to be happy and to make others happy; but you have to reckon on their not being like that.' Instead of this the young are made to believe that everyone else fulfils those ethical demands-that is, that everyone else is virtuous. It is on this that the demand is based that the young, too, shall become virtuous. 2 ['Schuldbewusstsein 'instead of 'Schuldgefiihl'. The second of these terms is the one which Freud has been using for the most part. They are syno­ nyms apart from their literal meaning, and both are translated by the usual English 'sense of guilt' except on such special occasions as this.)

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 99

Even in obsessional neurosis there are types of patients who are not aware of their sense of guilt, or who only feel it as a tormenting uneasiness, a kind of anxiety, if they are pre­ vented from carrying out certain actions. It ought to be possible eventually to understand these things; but as yet we cannot. Here perhaps we may be glad to have it pointed out that the sense of guilt is at bottom nothing else but a topo­ graphical variety of anxiety; in its later phases it coincides completely with fear of the super-ego. And the relations of anxiety to consciousness exhibit the same extraordinary vari­ ations. Anxiety is always present somewhere or other behind every symptom; but at one time it takes noisy possession of the whole of consciousness, while at another it conceals itself so completely that we are obliged to speak of uncon­ scious anxiety or, if we want to have a clearer psychological conscience, since anxiety is in the first instance simply a feeling,3 of possibilities of anxiety. Consequently it is very conceivable that the sense of guilt produced by civilization is not perceived as such either, and remains to a large extent unconscious, or appears as a sort of malaise, 4 a dissatisfac­ tion, for which people seek other motivations. Religions, at any rate, have never overlooked the part played in civiliza­ tion by a sense of guilt. Furthermore-a point which I failed to appreciate elsewhere 5-they claim to redeem mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin. From the man­ ner in which, in Christianity, this redemption is achieved­ by the sacrificial death of a single person, who in this manner takes upon himself a guilt that is common to everyone-we have been able to infer what the first occasion may have

3[See Chapter VIII of Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (192.6d), Stan­ dard Ed., 20, 132..-Feelings cannot properly be described as 'unconscious' (cf. The Ego and the Id, Standard Ed., 19, 2.2.-3).] 4['Unbehagen~' the word which appears in the title of this work.] 51n The Future of an fllusion (1927C).

100) SIGMUND FREUD

been on which this primal guilt, which was also the begin­ ning of civilization, was acquired. 6

Though it cannot be of great importance, it may not be superfluous to elucidate the meaning of a few words such as 'super-ego', 'conscience', 'sense of guilt', 'need for punish­ ment' and 'remorse', which we have often, perhaps, used too loosely and interchangeably. They all relate to the same state of affairs, but denote different aspects of it. The super-ego is an agency which has been inferred by us, and conscience is a function which we ascribe, among other functions, to that agency. This function consists in keeping a watch over the actions and intentions of the ego and judging them, in exercising a censorship. The sense of guilt, the harshness of the super-ego, is thus the same thing as the severity of the conscience. It is the perception which the ego has of being watched over in this way, the assessment of the tension between its own strivings and the demands of the super-ego. The fear of this critical agency (a fear which is at the bottom of the whole relationship), the need for punishment, is an instinctual manifestation on the part of the ego, which has become masochistic under the influence of a sadistic super­ ego; it is a portion, that is to say, of the instinct towards internal destruction present in the ego, employed for form­ ing an erotic attachment to the super-ego. We ought not to speak of a conscience until a super-ego is demonstrably pre­ sent. As to a sense of guilt, we must admit that it is in existence before the super-ego, and therefore before con­ science, too. At that time it is the immediate expression of fear of the external authority, a recognition of the tension between the ego and that authority. It is the direct deriva­ tive of the conflict between the need for the authority's love and the urge towards instinctual satisfaction, whose inhibi­

6Totem and Taboo (1912-13) [Standard Ed., 13,153-5)·

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 101

tion produces the inclination to aggression. The superimpo­ sition of these two strata of the sense of guilt-<>ne coming from fear of the external authority, the other from fear of the internal authority-has hampered our insight into the position of conscience in a number of ways. Remorse is a general term for the ego's reaction in a case of sense of guilt. It contains, in little altered form, the sensory material of the anxiety which is operating behind the sense of guilt; it is itself a punishment and can include the need for punish­ ment. Thus remorse, too, can be older than conscience.

Nor will it do any harm if we once more review the contradictions which have for a while perplexed us during our enquiry. Thus, at one point the sense of guilt was the consequence of acts of aggression that had been abstained from; but at another point-and precisely at its historical beginning, the killing of the father-it was the consequence of an act of aggression that had been carried out [po 94f.]. But a way out of this difficulty was found. For the institution of the internal authority, the super-ego, altered the situation radically. Before this, the sense of guilt coincided with re­ morse. (We may remark, incidentally, that the term 're­ morse' should be reserved for the reaction after an act of aggression has actually been carried out.) After this, owing to the omniscience of the super-ego, the difference between an aggression intended and an aggression carried out lost its force. Henceforward a sense of guilt could be produced not only by an act of violence that is actually carried out (as all the world knows), but also by one that is merely intended (as psycho-analysis has discovered). Irrespectively of this al­ teration in the psychological situation, the conflict arising from ambivalence-the conflict between the two primal instincts-leaves the same result behind [po 95f.]. We are tempted to look here for the solution of the problem of the varying relation in which the sense of guilt stands to con·

102 ) S I G M U N D F R E U D

sciousness. It might be thought that a sense of guilt arising from remorse for an evil deed must always be conscious, whereas a sense of guilt arising from the perception of an evil impulse may remain unconscious. But the answer is not so simple as that. Obsessional neurosis speaks energetically against it.

The second contradiction concerned the aggressive en­ ergy with which we suppose the super-ego to be endowed. According to one view, that energy merely carries on the punitive energy of the external authority and keeps it alive in the mind [po 83]; while, according to another view, it consists, on the contrary, of one's own awessive energy which has not been used and which one now directs against that inhibiting authority [po 90]. The first view seemed to fit in better with the history, and the second with the theory, of the sense of guilt. Closer reflection has resolved this apparently irreconcilable contradiction almost too com­ pletely; what remained as the essential and common factor was that in each case we were dealing with an awessiveness which had been displaced inwards. Clinical observation, moreover, allows us in fact ta distinguish two sources for the awessiveness which we attribute to the super-ego; one or the other of them exercises the stronger effect in any given case, but as a general rule they operate in unison.

This is, I think, the place at which to put forward for serious consideration a view which I have earlier recom­ mended for provisional acceptance? In the most recent analytic literature a predilection is shown for the idea that any kind of frustration, any thwarted instinctual satisfaction, results, or may result, in a heightening of the sense of guilt.8

A great theoretical simplification will, I think, be achieved

7[H has not been possible to trace this earlier recommendation.] 81'his view is taken in particular by Ernest Jones, Susan Isaacs and Melanie Klein; and a)so, I understand, by Reilc and Alexander.

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 103

if we regard this as applying only to the aggressive instincts, and little will be found to contradict this assumption. For how are we to account, on dynamic and economic grounds, for an increase in the sense of guilt appearing in place of an unfulfilled erotic demand? This only seems possible in a round-about way-if we suppose, that is, that the prevention of an erotic satisfaction calls up a piece of awessiveness against the person who has interfered with the satisfaction, and that this awessiveness has itself to be suppressed in tum. But if this is so, it is after all only the awessiveness which is transformed into a sense of guilt, by being sup­ pressed and made over to the super-ego. I am convinced that many processes will admit of a simpler and clearer exposition if the findings of psycho-analysis with regard to the deriva­ tion of the sense of guilt are restricted to the awessive instincts. Examination of the clinical material gives us no unequivocal answer here, because, as our hypothesis tells us, the two classes of instinct hardly ever appear in a pure form, isolated from each other; but an investigation of extreme cases would probably point in the direction I anticipate.

I am tempted to extract a first advantage from this more restricted view of the case by applying it to the process of repression. As we have learned, neurotic symptoms are, in their essence, substitutive satisfactions for unfulfilled sexual wishes. In the course of our analytic work we have discov­ ered to our surprise that perhaps every neurosis conceals a quota of unconscious sense of guilt, which in its tum fortifies the symptoms by making use of them as a punishment. It now seems plausible to formulate the following proposition. When an instinctual trend undergoes repression, its libidi­ nal elements are turned into symptoms, and its aggressive components into a sense of guilt. Even if this proposition is only an average approximation to the truth, it is worthy of our interest.

104) SIGMUND FREUD

Some readers of this work may further have an impression that they have heard the formula of the struggle between Eros and the death instinct too often. It was alleged to characterize the process of civilization which mankind un­ dergoes [po 81] but it was also brought into connection with the development of the individual [po 76], and, in addition, it was said to have revealed the secret of organic life in general [po 77f.]. We cannot, I think, avoid going into the relations of these three processes to one another. The repeti­ tion of the same formula is justified by the consideration that both the process of human civilization and of the devel­ opment of the individual are also vital processes-which is to say that they must share in the most general characteristic of life. On the other hand, evidence of the presence of this general characteristic fails, for the very reason of its general nature, to help us to arrive at any differentiation [between the processes], so long as it is not narrowed down by special qualifications. We can only be satisfied, therefore, if we assert that the process of civilization is a modification which the vital process experiences under the influence of a task that is set it by Eros and instigated by Ananke-by the exigencies of reality; and that this task is one of uniting separate individuals into a community bound together by libidinal ties. When, however, we look at the relation be­ tween the process of human civilization and the develop­ mental or educative process of individual human beings, we shall conclude without much hesitation that the two are very similar in nature, if not the very same process applied to different kinds of object. The process of the civilization of the human species is, of course, an abstraction of a higher order than is the development of the individual and it is therefore harder to apprehend in concrete terms, nor should we pursue analogies to an obsessional extreme; but in view of the similarity between the aims of the two processes-in

Civilization and Its Discontents ( lOS

the one case the integration of a separate individual into a human group, and in the other case the creation of a unified group out of many individuals-we cannot be surprised at the similarity between the means employed and the result­ ant phenomena.

In view of its exceptional importance, we must not long postpone the mention of one feature which distinguishes between the two processes. In the developmental process of the individual, the programme of the pleasure principle, which consists in finding the satisfaction of happiness, is retained as the main aim. Integration in, or adaptation to, a human community appears as a scarcely avoidable condi­ tion which must be fulfilled before this aim of happiness can be achieved. If it could be done without that condition, it would perhaps be preferable. To put it in other words, the development of the individual seems to us to be a product of the interaction between two urges, the urge towards hap­ piness, which we usually call 'egoistic', and the urge towards union with others in the community, which we call 'altruis­ tic'. Neither of these descriptions goes much below the surface. In the process of individual development, as we have said, the main accent falls mostly on the egoistic urge (or the urge towards happiness); while the other urge, which may be described as a 'cultural' one, is usually content with the role of imposing restrictions. But in the process of civili­ zation things are different. Here by far the most importarrt thing is the aim of creating a unity out of the individual human beings. It is true that the aim of happiness is still there, but it is pushed into the background. It almost seems as if the creation of a great human community would be most successful if no attention had to be paid to the ,happi­ ness of the individual. The developmental process of the individual can thus be expected to have special features of its own which are not reproduced in the process of human

106) S I G M U N D F R E U D

civilization. It is only in so far as the first of these processes has union with the community as its aim that it need coin­ cide with the second process.

Just as a planet revolves around a central body as well as rotating on its own axis, so the human individual takes part in the course of development of mankind at the same time as he pursues his own path in life. But to our dull eyes the play of forces in the heavens seems fixed in a never-changing order; in the field of organic life we can still see how the forces contend with one another, and how the effects of the conflict are continually changing. So, also, the two urges, the one towards personal happiness and the other towards union with other human beings must struggle with each other in every individual; and so, also, the two processes of individual and of cultural development must stand in hostile opposi­ tion to each other and mutually dispute the ground. But this struggle between the individual and society is not a deriva­ tive of the contradiction-probably an irreconcilable one­ between the primal instincts of Eros and death. It is a dispute within the economics of the libido, comparable to the contest concerning the distribution of libido between ego and objects; and it does admit of an eventual accommo­ dation in the indivjdual, as, it may be hoped, it will also do in the future of civilization, however much that civilization may oppress the life of the individual to-day.

The analogy between the process of civilization and the path of individual development may be extended in an im­ portant respect. It can be asserted that the community, too, evolves a super-ego under whose influence cultural develop­ ment proceeds. It would be a tempting task for anyone who has a knowledge of human civilizations to follow out this analogy in detail. I will confine myself to bringing forward a few striking points. The super-ego of an epoch of civiliza­ tion has an origin similar to that of an individual. It is based

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 1°7

on the impression left behind by the personalities of great leaders-men of overwhelming force of mind or men in whom one of the human impulsions has found its strongest and purest, and therefore often its most one-sided, expres­ sion. In many instances the analogy goes still further, in that during their lifetime these figures were-often enough, even if not always-mocked and maltreated by others and even despatched in a cruel fashion. In the same way, indeed, the primal father did not attain divinity until long after he had met his death by violence. The most arresting example of this fateful conjunction is to be seen in the figure of Jesus Christ-if, indeed, that figure is not a part of mythology, which called it into being from an obscure memory of that primal event. Another point of agreement between the cul­ tural and the individual super-ego is that the former, just like the latter, sets up strict ideal demands, disobedience to which is visited with 'fear of conscience' [po 90]. Here, indeed, we come across the remarkable circumstance that the mental processes concerned are actually more familiar to us and more accessible to consciousness as they are seen jn the group than they can be in the individual man. In him, when tension arises, it is only the aggressiveness of the super-ego which, in the form of reproaches, makes itself noisily heard; its actual demands often remain unconscious in the background. If we bring them to conscious knowl­ edge, we find that they coincide with the precepts of the prevailing cultural super-ego. At this point the two pro­ cesses, that of the cultural development of the group and that of the cultural development of the individual, are, as it were, always interlocked. For that reason some of the mani­ festations and properties of the super-ego can be more easily detected in its behaviour in the cultural community than in the separate individual.

The cultural super-ego has developed its ideals and set up

108) SIGMUND FREUD

its demands. Among the latter, those which deal with the relations of human beings to one another are comprised under the heading of ethics. People have at all times set the greatest value on ethics, as though they expected that it in particular would produce especially important results. And it does in fact deal with a subject which can easily be recog­ nized as the sorest spot in every civilization. Ethics is thus to be regarded as a therapeutic attempt-as an endeavour to achieve, by means of a command of the super-ego, some­ thing which has so far not been achieved by means of any other cultural activities. As we already know, the problem before us is how to get rid of the greatest hindrance to civilization-namely, the constitutional inclination of human beings to be aggressive towards one another; and for that very reason we are especially interested in what is proba­ bly the most recent of the cultural commands of the super­ ego, the commandment to love one's neighbour as oneself. [Cf. p. 6Sff. above.] In our research into, and therapy of, a neurosis, we are led to make two reproaches against the super-ego of the individual. In the severity of its commands and prohibitions it troubles itself too little about the happi­ ness of the ego, in that it takes insufficient account of the resistances against obeying them-of the instinctual strength of the id [in the first place], and of the difficulties' presented by the real external environment [in the second]. Consequently we are very often obliged, for therapeutic purposes, to oppose the super-ego, and we endeavour to lower its demands. Exactly the same objections can be made against the ethical demands of the cultural super-ego. It, too, does not trouble itself enough about the facts of the mental constitution of human beings. It issues a command and does not ask whether it is possible for people to obey it. On the contrary, it assumes that a man's ego is psychologi­ cally capable of anything that is required of it, that his ego

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 109

has unlimited mastery over his id. This is a mistake; and even in what are known as normal people the id cannot be controlled beyond certain limits. If more is demanded of a man, a revolt will be produced in him or a neurosis, or he will be made unhappy. The commandment, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself', is the strongest defence against human aggressiveness and an excellent example of the unpsycholog­ ical proceedings of the cultural super-ego. The command­ ment is impossible to fulfil; such an enormous inflation of love can only lower its value, not get rid of the difficulty. Civilization pays no attention to all this; it merely ad­ monishes us that the harder it is to obey the precept the more meritorious it is to do so. But anyone who follows such a precept in present-day civilization only puts himself at a disadvantage vis-a.-vis the person who disregards it. What a potent obstacle to civilization aggressiveness must be, if the defence against it can cause as much unhappiness as aggres­ siveness itself! 'Natural' ethics, as it is called, has nothing to offer here except the narcissistic satisfaction of being able to think oneself better than others. At this point the ethics based on religion introduces its promises of a better after­ life. But so long as virtue is not rewarded here on earth, ethics will, I fancy, preach in vain. I too think it quite certain that a real change in the relations of human beings to posses­ sions would be of more help in this direction than any ethical commands; but the recognition of this fact among socialists has been obscured and made useless for practical purposes by a fresh idealistic misconception of human na­ ture. [Cf. p. 71 above.]

I believe the line of thought which seeks to trace in the phenomena of cultural development the part played by a super-ego promises still further discoveries. I hasten to come to a close. But there is one question which I can hardly evade. If the development of civilization has such a far­

110) SIGMUND FREUD

reaching similarity to the development of the individual and if it employs the same methods, may we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations, or some epochs of civilization­ possibly the whole of mankind-have become 'neurotic,?9 An analytic dissection of such neuroses might lead to thera­ peutic recommendations which could lay claim to great practical interest. I would not say that an attempt of this kind to carry psycho-analysis over to the cultural community was absurd or doomed to be fruitless. But we should have to be very cautious and not forget that, after all, we are only dealing with analogies and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to tear them from the sphere in which they have originated and been evolved. Moreover, the diagnosis of communal neuroses is faced with a special difficulty. In an individual neurosis we take as our starting­ point the contrast that distinguishes the patient from his environment, which is assumed to be 'normal'. For a group all of whose members are affected by one and the same disorder no such background could exist; it would have to be found elsewhere. And as regards the therapeutic applica­ tion of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most correct analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses authority to impose such a therapy upon the group? But in spite of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture to embark upon a pathology of cultural communities.

For a wide variety of reasons, it is very far from my intention to express an opinion upon the value of human civilization. I have endeavoured to guard myself against the enthusiastic prejudice which holds that our civilization is the

9Cf. some remarks in The Future of an fllusion (1927C).

Civilization and Its Discontents ( 111

most precious thing that we possess or could acquire and that its path will necessarily lead to heights of unimagined perfection. I can at least listen without indignation to the critic who is of the opinion that when one surveys the aims of cultural endeavour and the means it employs, one is bound to come to the conclusion that the whole effort is not worth the trouble, and that the outcome of it can only be a state of affairs which the individual will be unable to tolerate. My impartiality is made all the easier to me by my knowing very little about all these things. One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgements of value follow directly his wishes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments. I should find it very understandable if someOne were to point out the obligatory nature of the course of human civilization and were to say, for instance, that the tendencies to a restric­ tion of sexual life or to the institution of a humanitarian ideal at the expense of natural selection were developmental trends which cannot be averted or turned aside and to which it is best for us to yield as though they were necessities of nature. I know, too, the objection that can be made against this, to the effect that in the history of mankind, trends such as these, which were considered unsurmountable, have often been thrown aside and replaced by other trends. Thus I have not the courage to rise up before my fellow-men as a prophet, and I bow to their reproach that I can offer them no consolation: for at bottom that is what they are all de­ manding-the wildest revolutionaries no less passionately than the most virtuous believers.

The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction. It may be that in this respect precisely the present time

112 ) SIGMUND FREUD

deserves a special interest. Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. And now it is to be expected that the other of the two 'Heavenly Powers' [po 96f.], eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally im­ mortal adversary. But who can foresee with what success and with what result?lo

IO[The 6nal sentence was added in 1931-when the menace of Hitler was already beginning to be apparent.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY & AUTHOR INDEX

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

C.S. = Freud, GesammeLte Schriften (12 vols.), Vienna, 1924-34 C.W. =Freud, GesammeLte Werke (18 vols.), London, from 1940 c.P. =Freud, Collected Papers (5 vols.), London, 1924-50 Standard Ed. =Freud, Standard Edition (24 vols.), New York, from 1953

TITLES of books and periodicals are in italics; titles of papers are in inverted commas. Abbreviations are in accordance with the WorLd List of Scientific PeriodicaLs (London, 1952). Further abbreviations used in this volume will be found in the List above. Numerals in boldface refer to volumes: ordinary numerals refer to pages. The figures in parentheses at the end of each entry indicate the page or pages of this volume on which the work in question is mentioned. In the case of the Freud entries, the letters attached to the dates of publication are in accordance with the corresponding entries in the complete bibliography of Freud's writings included in the last volume of the Standard Edition.

For non-technical authors, and for technical authors where no specific work is mentioned, see the Ceneral Index.

AICHHORN, A. (1925) Verwahrloste lugend, Vienna. (93) [Trans.: Wayward Youth, New York, 1935; London, 1936.]

ALEXANDER, F. (1927) Die PsychoanaLyse der GesamtpersonLichkeit, Vienna. (93) [Trans.: The PsychoanaLysis of the Total Personality, New York, 1930.]

ATKINSON, J. J. (1903) PrimaL Law, London. Included in A. Lang's SociaL Origins, London, 1903· (55)

BLEULER, E. (1913) 'Oer Sexualwiderstand', lb. psychoan. psychopath. Forsch., 5, 442. (62)