A brooding reader that rings the death knell for merry views on humanity's advancement through culture, Civilization and its Discontents begins with a recapitulation of Freud's scornful views on religion as a psychological balm and then goes on to question permanent chestnuts about human society. It stands as a brilliant summary of the views on culture from a psychoanalytic perspective that he had been developing since the turn of the century. It is both eyewitness and homage to the late theory of mind, the so-called structural theory, with its focus on attack, indeed the death drive, as the ruthless enemy of eros. Freud's composition is that what works for society doesn't necessarily work for man. Man, by nature fierce and egotistical, desires self-satisfaction. But civilisation inhibits his instinctual crusades. The result is a pang of pervasive and everyday guilt.

Specifications

Common questions