Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud

Freud doesn’t get a lot of respect these days, but I found this book for the most part lucid and rational, if not exactly scientific. Part of Freud’s thesis borrows from Rousseau in arguing that civilization represents a compromise with the individual for the sake of preserving security, but for Freud this is problematic, because he sees civilized society as repressing the natural instincts of man and thereby causing unhappiness and neurosis. For Freud the conscience, or the “super-ego,” is merely the internalization of society’s condemnation of man’s natural but at times antisocial desires, and as such it is a source of constant anxiety, as these desires are for the most part impossible to eliminate. Freud does not seem to have made his mind up whether civilization is a good thing or a bad thing, but as a psychoanalyst he sees a clear and unfortunate conflict between civilization and the individual pyche. An interesting discussion, if a bit ponderous.