This is part two of the summary of Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. As stated in part one, I’ll give my corrections at the end of this article.
Chapter Five:
the main purpose of this chapter is to discuss non-sexual restrictions that civilization demands of man.
A love relationship is at its peak when the sexual objects are sufficient to themselves, they don't even need a child to make them happy, a third person might be superfluous or disturbing. Civilization depends on a much more larger relationship of individuals. Here the energy of both individuals is fully conserved for their sexual love, but civilization isn't satisfied with that, it works towards binding the members of a community together in a libidinal way. Hence, communal love and neighborly love are of highest virtues, it summons up Aim-inhibited libido on the largest scale; the community. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself", this statement is what Aim-inhibited love strives towards, it is restrictive of sexual love. This neighborly love is absurd, as it does injustice to the people who truly deserve one's love. Usually people love another person if that person makes it possible for someone to love the ideal of themselves in that person. A neighborly love, or stranger love, is by no means deserved: putting a stranger and a deserved one on the same level of love is unjust to the loved ones. "A friend to all is a friend to none". On the other hand, one has an aggressive instinct that a neighbor might be able to satisfy, "Their neighbor is for them someone who temps them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to deploy his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him..." Freud uses this to get to the point that man has an aggressive instinct civilization tames, which results in manifestation in other ways, he gives the example of many cruel historical figures as Genghis Khan and the capture of Jerusalem by the pious Crusaders or the recent world war, at his time (little did he know what was coming next). By this instinct civilization is vulnerable to disintegration therefore civilization uses its utmost efforts in order to set limits to that instinct. Although resonably it may be better for someone not to be aggressive towards any stranger instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests. Communists according to Freud believe that the deliverance from our evils would be by abolishing private property hence the abolishment of aggressivity also follows as it eliminates envy, the victim won't have a reason to be aggressive towards his abuser. Freud warns against the untenable illusions of communism and its abolishment for the humanly love of aggressivity, a strong instinct. "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 manifestation of their aggressiveness", Freud believed this is the role Jews played in all the place on earth that they were considered as outsiders, they were the scapegoat for the aggressivity of the universal love among Christians. For Communists the group that they let out their aggressivity on was of course the bourgeoisie, "...One only wonders, with concern, what the Soviets will do after they have wiped out their bourgeoisie", the same analogy implies to any ethnic group hating on another ethnic group. If Freud wrote this after world war two, he would've used Hitler as an example. Tribal man had an advantage of the freedom of instinct with no restriction, though only the leader did. With civilization man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security, against nature and other men.
Chapter Six:
This chapter was a short one, its main purpose was only to shallowly describe what Freud characterizes as "Death Instinct".
Freud reintroduces his psycho-analytic theory of instincts, the instincts are split into two: "Ego-instincts and object-instincts". The energy of object-instincts is what is known as Libido. "The antithesis was between the Ego-instincts and the 'libidinal' instincts of love (in its widest sense) which were directed to an object.", sadism is the object-instinct that stands out, freud argues that its aim is far from being "Loved”. Neurosis is the outcome of a battle between the interests of self-preservation (Ego), which are the insterests that civilization pushes us to strive towards, and the demands of the libido. When the Ego won that battle it had to do so at the expense of severe sufferings and renunciations of libidinal instincts as a means to self-preserve. The concept of Narcissism is introduced, where the Ego and the Libido coincide, the Ego becomes the "Home" of the libido. The libido can turn to object-libido but then changes back to narcissistic libido. Jung advocated for this view since ego-insticts too were libidinal it seemed inevitable to join the two. Freud introduced a new instinct that went against Eros, the instinct of death. Everything that seeks to demolish, to destroy belongs to that Instinct. From the previous chapter we introduced aggressiveness, which belongs to the death instinct. Aggressiveness is first aimed outwards, as it becomes tamed and restricted, it becomes directed inwards. Sadism and its counter part, masochism, are the combination of sexual instinct and destructive instinct, one directed outwards and one inwards. This is the role the Devil plays, God's outward destructive instinct. Freud finalizes this chapter by providing the framework by which he analyses the evolution of civilization, the battle of Eros and Death.
Chapter Seven:
The main purpose of this chapter is to explain the origin of the "Super-Ego", and how it affects one's life.
This chapter is arguably the most important of the book, as everything that has been said hitherto isn't any new information. The origin of guilt is discussed in this chapter. Freud's Super-ego is basically what I called "Medium of judgement" in previous blog posts. The civilized man internalizes his aggression as he had to abstain from exerting it on an external object and directs it towards himself, his ego. Hence a conflict between the ego and the super-ego takes place in the form of "Conscience". This conscience exerts a force that necessitates punishment, and hence the feeling of "Guilt", this necessity of punishment first comes from an external authority, usually a parent. Later on as a child gains agency and can disobey their authoritative figure, they develop a super-ego that plays the role of "Conscience", its civilization's voice in one's head. "Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual's dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within him to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city". The difference between the authority as an external one and an internal one is what makes the difference in the form of punishment. An external authority would punish the child physically, after the child has done the action as the outside figure can only be affected by the action but not the thought of the child. The internal authority, the super-ego, judges one based on his thought, on his "intention", not the action. The question to ask now is why does one feel guilty and why is there this tension between the super-ego and the ego on the way of acting? The answer is simply the fear of the loss of love. One may fear the loss of love of a person or society, but typically society as everyone judges everyone else with respect to society. The moral man is now the man with the strongest conscience, where the super-ego always wins the battle. The moral man is the epitome of how civilization would want a man to act, the moral man always acts the same way he ought to; his super-ego is satisfied at the expense of his instincts. Now a paradox happens, as Freud says, in the origin of conscience. Freud has demonstrated so far that a conscience may emerge internally as a result of an external authority internalized. The renunciaton of aggressiveness for the satisfaction of the external authority will result in a child expressing that aggressivity inwards. Now the paradox happens when we think of whether conscience is the result of the renunciaton of instinct, say the aggressive instinct, or that the renunciation of instinct is the result of conscience. Freud asserts that the beginning of conscience arises through the suppression of an impulse and that it is reinforced occasionally by fresh suppressions of the same kind. The authority figure, The father, also plays an important role in the development of the conscience, but an "innate one", that the human feeling of guilt goes back to the killing of the primal father. "Remorse" as Freud calls it is the feeling that one has after committing a misdeed, but the feeling of remorse presupposes the existence of a conscience. Freud believed that the feeling of remorse goes back to the killing of the father, "This remorse was the result of the primordial ambivalence of feeling towards the father. His sons hated him, but loved him too". Once their sons expressed their hatred as a form of aggression by killing their father, their love took the form of super-ego by identification with the father, it gave agency to the father's power. One thing is clear that we are bound to feel guilty, the killing of the father isn't the decisive factor. The father now takes the form of the community, or society.
Chapter Eight:
The main purpose of this chapter is to further discuss super-ego with relation to the culture one lives in, and the super-ego of the community.
Freud represents the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization, and that the price we pay for the advantages of civilization is a heightening sense of guilt. "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all", in a sense that the super-ego tames the id through the actions of the ego. Anxiety is the fear of the super-ego, which makes sense, anxiety is felt when one feels the overwhelming presence of conscience. Neuroticism is the result of the repression of the libidinal instincts for the sastisfaction of the super-ego, as represses his instincts, aggressive components of instincts are exerted inwards and take the form of super-ego [VII]. Every community has its own super-ego, which can be described by the german word "Zeitgest", its the dominating spirit of a certain society. That Zeitgest, or communal super-ego is inseperable from the individual's super-ego, as the individual's super-ego is society's voice in oneself. This last chapter is merely a summary of many points that have been presented in previous chapters, such as the idea of neighborly and christian love, and the effect it has on the degradation of love's worth.
In chapter five, the issue of the communism raised by Freud is of course infantile but it is interesting as it highlights the role of ideology not only in capitalist societies but also communist ones. Freud stresses the necessity of a scapegoat for our aggressivity, here ideology takes place. From a communist perspective, ideology is what makes people think that capitalism is necessary, or rather inevitable. It is the justification people tell themselves to keep the capitalist machine going. That is precisely the function of ideology, it is to maintain order. It encompasses all human actions, we now either exist within ideology or against ideology. To tie it back to Freud, Super-ego is ideology within us.
In chapter seven and eight, Freud said conscience is civilization’s voice in our heads, as I said in the previous paragraph that is also the role of ideology. Ideology is intertwined with conscience, conscience depends on ideology, and ideology functions because of conscience. In my old blogs I’ve said that for a revolution to happen a revolution against our own conscience should take place first, or what I also called “Medium of Judgement”.