Chapter 1

In the introductory paragraphs, Freud takes issue with a colleague's account of a socalled "oceanic" feeling - the sense of boundlessness and oneness felt between the
ego and the outside world. He states that this feeling is "a purely subjective fact, not an
article of faith." It does not betoken an allegiance to a specific religion, but instead points
to the source of religious sentiment in human beings. Churches and religious institutions
are adept at channeling this sentiment into particular belief systems, but they do not
themselves create it.
Freud cannot attest to having experienced this "oceanic" feeling, and yet his lack of
identification does not lead him to deny its existence for other human beings. On the
contrary, he attempts to understand the phenomenon scientifically: if the feeling has no
outward physiological signs, there must be a psychoanalytic explanation for it. Freud
proceeds to summarize his previous findings. In general, the ego perceives itself as
maintaining "sharp and clear lines of demarcation" with the outside world. Only when it
is at the height of love does the ego consciously allow that boundary to become more
fluid and permeable without feeling threatened. Otherwise, the tendency of the ego is to
detach from the pain and displeasure associated with the outside world, to throw
feelings of suffering arising from external sources outside of itself. This distinction
between inside and outside is a crucial part of the process of psychological
development, allowing the ego to recognize a "reality" separate from itself. At an earlier
stage of development, the ego had an all-encompassing, almost boundless sense of the
world around it; with maturity comes a "shrunken" sense of reality because the ego has
delimited itself from the outside world.
Freud then asks: is such an inference about the earliest stages of psychological
development sound? In other words, can we describe states of mind that we no longer
inhabit? Yes, explains Freud, because science makes precisely such claims all the time,
for instance, about the evolution of higher species from the lowest forms of life, even
though the intermediate links are materially missing. The mind is exceptional because
infantile and mature feelings continue to co-exist throughout a person's life: once a
memory has been recorded, it is never erased, and can be called to the surface under
the right circumstances. Freud draws another analogy to the field of archeology by
describing the excavation of past ruins under present-day edifices. He takes Rome, the
"Eternal City," as an example, only to conclude that the analogy is insufficient because
the mind cannot ultimately be represented in visual or pictorial terms.
Freud revises his earlier statement about memory: "What is past in mental life may be
preserved and is not necessarily erased." He returns to the question of "oceanic" feeling
with which the chapter commences, dismissing it as an explanation of the source of
religious sentiment in human beings. Instead, according to Freud, it is a longing for
paternal protection in childhood that continues into adult life as a sustained "fear of the
superior power of Fate." Freud reiterates his frustration over the fact that this "sense of
oneness with the universe" is an intangible quantity impervious to traditional scientific
analysis, because it has no physiological basis.

Chapter 2
In Future of an Illusion, Freud laments the common man's preoccupation with the
"enormously exalted father" embodied by God. The whole idea of placating a
supposedly higher being for future recompense strikes Freud as infantile. The reality is,
however, that masses of men persist in this illusion for the duration of their lives.
According to Freud, men exhibit three main coping mechanisms to counter their
experience of suffering in the world: 1) deflection of pain and disappointment (through
planned distractions); 2) substitutive satisfactions (mainly through the replacement of
reality by art); 3) intoxicating substances. Freud concludes that religion cannot be
clearly categorized within this schema.
Reconsidering the subject, Freud avers that religious belief alone can answer the
question of the ultimate purpose of life. Most immediately, men strive to be happy, and
their behavior in the outside world is determined by the pleasure principle. But the
possibilities for happiness and pleasure are limited, and more often we experience
unhappiness from the following three sources: 1) our body; 2) the external world; and 3)
our relations to other men. We employ various strategies to avoid displeasure: by
isolating ourselves voluntarily, becoming members of the human community (i.e.
contributing to a common endeavor), or influencing our own bodies. Intoxication is a
particularly prevalent method of influence. Sometimes we aim to control our instincts
through practices of spiritual meditation. Sublimation of instincts is another method of
influence, involving the "displacement of libido" or re-channeling of energies into other
activities.
The discipline required to influence our internal psyche makes this strategy available to
very few; more commonly, we derive satisfaction from illusions, such as the enjoyment
provided by works of art, which provides temporary relief from the misery of the outside
world. Another strategy, as mentioned previously, is isolation, but reality intrudes far too
forcefully for a solitary illusion to persist. Finally, Freud points to love as a potentially
intense source of happiness, the downside being the vulnerability and defenselessness
of the ego that accompany love for another person.
Freud reflects on the role of beauty in achieving happiness: while undoubtedly a source
of pleasure, beauty has no discernible nature or origin, even if philosophical studies in
aesthetics have succeeded in describing the conditions under which it is experienced.
For its part, psychoanalysis would appear to locate beauty in sexual feeling, since
beauty is often an attribute of the desired sexual object.
It is impossible to reach a state of full happiness. None of the above strategies will work
completely. "Happiness is a problem of the economics of the individual's libido," Freud
states. Each individual must identify the type of happiness most important to him as well
as the capacity of his own mental constitution to experience happiness. Adaptation to
the external environment is also key to a maximum yield of pleasure. Religion reduces
these variables by dictating a simple path to happiness. It thereby spares the masses of
their individual neuroses, but Freud sees little of value in religion beyond this. If the
believer realizes that religion has put such a constraint on the possibilities of his
happiness, his only option becomes to find pleasure in "unconditional submission" to his

faith. But Freud remarks that such a self-aware individual could most likely find other,
less arduous paths to happiness.
Analysis of Chapters 1-2
The most intriguing aspect of the introductory chapter consists in Freud's attempt to
compare the enterprise of psychoanalysis to - and simultaneously differentiate it
from - other accepted scientific disciplines.
The analogies to evolutionary science and archeology, far from being self-indulgent
digressions, actually illuminate Freud's conception of the individual and civilization. First
of all, Freud implicitly subscribes to the precepts of Darwinian theory, and therefore
believes fundamentally in the progressive nature of the human species, even if it is
prone to periodic regression and spasms of violence. For Freud, the evolution of human
civilization has reached an impasse because it has conquered nature with ever greater
technological and mechanical force, which has paradoxically made conditions less,
rather than more, livable for the individual. Freud also believes in the necessity of
"adapting" to one's environmenta concept derived from the broader framework of
Darwinian theory and applied to his own theory of psychological development. Put
simply, Freud feels that human beings are biologically unprepared for the altered
conditions of civilized life; we evolved to deal with a primal rather than a civil
environment.
Freud's analogy to archeology illustrates his background in classical literature and
history, but also shows the primacy of Western civilization to his thinking, since Freud
considers ancient Rome as the historical origin of culture and society. The "super-ego,"
as Freud will conjecture toward the end of his essay, is both individual and collective.
We inherit our notion of authority and standards of greatness from past leaders or
figures of imposing personality, such as the Roman emperors Nero, Hadrian, and
Agrippa to whom Freud makes reference in his description of Roman architecture. At
the same time, Freud makes a nod to the influence of Eastern culture and civilization in
discussing the "practices of Yoga" and "the worldly wisdom of the East" as a "peculiar"
and "unusual" method of attaining self-knowledge and control over the impulses of the
ego.
In Chapter Two, Freud expresses his antagonism to organized religion in forthright and
barely diplomatic terms, calling it delusional and infantile. Aggressively secular in his
orientation, Freud takes Goethe's view that science and art can provide - and even
improve upon - the benefits of religion. Freud enacts his own belief in the importance of
the arts by inserting generous citations of poetry and other insights from literary sources
throughout.
According to Freud, the purpose of human life is not redemption in an afterlife, but the
achievement of happiness. His theory of the pleasure principle clashes directly with the
biblical "intention that man should be happy," which Freud notes with irony "is not
included in the plan of Creation."

Most surprising is Freud's emphasis on the compensatory value of beauty - the idea
that aesthetically pleasing "human forms and gestures, natural objects and landscapes,
artistic and even scientific creations" can stave off suffering and provide temporary
pleasure. The logical connection between psychoanalysis and beauty is, in the end,
quite tenuous and insufficiently explored. Freud never adequately integrates his interest
in beauty into the broader scheme of the pleasure principle. In discussing the topic of
beauty and aesthetics, he borrows heavily from the theory of Immanuel Kant, a
prominent eighteenth-century German philosopher whose seminal work, The Critique of
Judgment (1790), continues to set the terms of contemporary debate on the definition,
value, and function of beauty. Kant believed, as Freud does, that beauty does not inhere
in the material qualities of the object but is a function of the viewer's receptivity to it.
Chapter 3
Freud begins by defending his "astonishing contention" that civilization is responsible for
our misery: we organize ourselves into civilized society to escape suffering, only to
inflict it back upon ourselves. Freud identifies three key historical events that produced
this disillusionment with human civilization: 1) the victory of Christendom over pagan
religions (Freud notes the low value placed on earthly life in Christian doctrine); 2) the
discovery and conquest of primitive tribes and peoples, who appeared to Europeans to
be living more happily in a state of nature; 3) scientific identification of the mechanism of
neuroses, which are caused by the frustrating demands put on the individual by modern
society. Antagonism toward civilization developed when people concluded that only a
reduction of those demands - in other words, withdrawal from the society that imposed
them - would lead to greater happiness.
Technology also brings the promise of better lives and greater happiness, but Freud
disputes the notion that advances in technology automatically improve our quality of life.
On the other hand, it is difficult to gauge the happiness of man at an earlier era because
"happiness" is an essentially subjective sentiment. People in extreme situations of
unhappiness might also be desensitized to their own suffering.
Civilization can be defined as the whole sum of human achievements and regulations
intended to protect men against nature and "adjust their mutual relations." Technological
advances have enhanced our power against nature, but also our capacities of sensory
perception through such inventions as the telephone and photograph. These inventions
have given man a sense of omnipotence and omniscience formerly attributed only to the
gods. Freud goes so far as to call man a "prosthetic God."
In addition to protection from nature, other expectations of living in a civilized society
include beauty (the aesthetic experience of various forms of art and artistic expression),
cleanliness (both in terms of personal hygiene and public sanitation), order (a principle
introduced by the sciences and learned from our observation of nature). Freud defends
his inclusion of beauty within his list of expectations. According to him, civilization is not
exclusively focused on what is useful. The cultivation of man's higher mental activities is
one of civilization's central aims, and it achieves this aim in part through the production
of art.

As for the regulation of our "mutual relations," a "decisive step" toward civilization lies in
the replacement of the individual's power by that of the community. But this substitution
henceforth restricts the possibilities of individual satisfaction in the interests of law,
order, and justice. Civilized societies place the rule of law over individual instincts. Here
Freud draws an analogy between the evolution of civilization and the libidinal
development of the individual, identifying three parallel stages in which each occurs: 1)
character-formation (acquisition of an identity); 2) sublimation (channeling of primal
energy into other physical or psychological activities); 3) non-satisfaction/renunciation of
instincts (burying of aggressive impulses in the individual; imposition of the rule of law in
society).
Chapter 4
The communal life of human beings has its roots in the compulsion to work (created by
external necessity) and the power of love (or an unwillingness to be deprived of one's
sexual object). Freud conjectures that "genital erotism" spurred the formation of durable
human relationships by making the satisfaction of sexual pleasure the prototype of other
forms of happiness that could be achieved with and through companionship. Given the
risks of love, some people make themselves independent of individual love objects and
instead devote themselves to a universal love for all of mankind, typified by the
Christian saints. Freud calls this phenomenon "love with an inhibited aim."
Even if one of the main purposes of civilization is to bind men "libidinally" to one
another, love and civilization eventually come into conflict with one another. Freud
identifies several different reasons for this later antagonism. For one, family units tend
to isolate themselves and prevent individuals from detaching and maturing on their own.
Women in particular have, according to Freud, a restraining influence on children and
enter into opposition with civilization out of resentment over the intimacy and love that
the requirements of work necessarily takes away from their marital relationships. Along
these lines, civilization saps sexual energy by diverting it into cultural endeavors. It also
restricts love object choices and mutilates our erotic lives. Taboos (against incest, first
and foremost), laws, and customs impose further restrictions. Fear of sexual revolt
leads to precautionary measures beginning in childhood. For Freud, Western European
civilization represents a high water-mark in the regulation of sexuality. Even
heterosexuality, freely practiced and endorsed by society, is forcibly channeled into
monogamy and marriage. Even where society fails to regulate and put an end to
behavior it deems transgressive, it still has a severely impairing effect on the sexual life
of men.
Analysis of Chapters 3-4
A rhetorical maneuver commonly used by Freud is to introduce objections to his line of
thinking from unspecific sources through a formulation such as "But here the voice of
pessimistic criticism makes itself heard..." Freud's style of argumentation takes the form
of a dialogue, like that of the patient-analyst relationship. In truth, Freud is not
responding to an actual critic so much as he is anticipating and accounting for the
possible grounds of opposition even before they are articulated. In the same vein, Freud

uses passive constructions to conceal references to himself and the use of his own
research in the service of his own arguments. "It was discovered that a person becomes
neurotic because he cannot tolerate the amount of frustration society imposes on him"
is one such example of Freud's circular and almost tautological thinking. This particular
"discovery" is clearly the product of the present investigation, which Freud recasts as
external verification of his claims about civilization.
The fluctuation between the first person pronoun and the collective "we" is rhetorically
noteworthy because it blurs the distinction between personal observation and common
knowledge. Freud often makes statements that he feels are intuitive or instinctively
recognized as true or accurate, using the plural voice to present as "common sense"
what is in fact a contestable interpretation or questionable assumption. Rather than
define terms rigorously, he expects the reader to "be guided by linguistic usage or, as it
is also called, linguistic feeling, in the conviction that we shall thus be doing justice to
inner discernments which still defy expression in abstract terms."
In the short Chapter 3, Freud shows this rhetorical slipperiness most clearly. His claims
are freewheeling; Freud offers little empirical evidence while attempting to lend a
scientific veneer to his observations about civilization through the use of biology. His
footnotes, more extensive in this chapter than in others, are replete with speculation on
the social consequences of Homo Sapien assuming an erect posture, of the scent of
excrement and anal erotism, of the fundamentally "bisexual" nature of human sexuality.
The bizarre nature of these reflections is justified as a "digression which will enable us
to fill in a gap which we left in an earlier discussion."
The misogynistic streak of Freud's thinking is in evidence in this chapter. Despite his
disdainful attitude towards them, women play a pivotal and paradoxical role in the
development of civilization, at once enabling its foundation and undermining the
realization of its full potential. Freud's observations on "the primitive family," combined
with those on the place of women in modern society, are lacking in historical
perspective, and falsely assume a continuity in the gender relations undergirding the
structure of the familial unit. On the other hand, Freud also acknowledges the
increasingly repressive regulation of human sexuality in Western civilization. The
conjoined imperatives of marriage and heterosexuality discussed at the end of the
chapter are also viewed as historically recent phenomena.
Chapter 5
Freud notes that civilization's antagonism toward sexuality arises from the necessity
work of building communal bonds based on friendship. If the activity of the libido were
allowed to run rampant, it would likely destroy the monogamous love-relationship of the
couple that society has endorsed as the most stable.
Freud next objects to the commandment "Love thy neighbor" because, contrary to
Biblical teaching, he takes a pessimistic view of fellow man, whose primal instinct Freud
considers to be aggressive, not loving. The biblical commandment runs counter to the
original nature of man, and history is the proof: man has proven time and again that he
will exploit, abuse, humiliate, cause pain, torture and kill other men, from the invasion of

the Huns to the First World War. Civilization is continually threatened with disintegration
because of this inclination to aggression. It invests great energy in restraining these
instincts. The law has tried to refine itself to the point of regulating most forms of
aggression, but it still fails to prevent it.
Freud then turns to socialist thought. Communists claim to find the path to deliverance
through the abolition of private property, which thereby eliminates an economic system
that allows certain individuals to accrue disproportionate wealth and abuse his fellow
men. For Freud, communism is based on a faulty assumption, since it in no way alters
human nature, only one of the motivations by which it operates (i.e. greed). Aggression
predates the ownership of property. It has also served throughout history to bind
communities together against those outside them. The Jews in the Middle Ages were,
for instance, the victims of intolerance by Christians; and in Russia, vilification of the
bourgeois has served as a rallying cry for the communist government.
Freud concludes that civilized man has exchanged the possibility of happiness for
security. But primitive society is not to be envied, since in that context, only the head of
the family enjoyed instinctual freedom at the expense of all others. Some of these
limitations of modern society are surmountable, while others are intrinsic to civilization.
Freud does not specify which limitations on our instinctual freedom fall into which
category. The most dangerous society, according to him, is one in which the leader is
exalted and individuals do not acquire an adequate sense of identity. Freud points to
American society as an example of this danger, but refrains from pursuing his criticism
further.
Chapter 6
Freud quotes Schiller: "hunger and love are what moves the world." At first glance, the
two appear to be driven by opposing instincts. Hunger can be characterized as an egoinstinct or satisfaction of internal needs, whereas love is directed toward objects
external to the ego. "Libido" is another term for this instinct. Freud finds himself forced
to abandon this antithesis when he considers the phenomenon of sadism, which is
technically an object-instinct, but also bound up in the ego and a desire for mastery. The
concept of narcissism elaborated in earlier writings by Freud also presents a
complication to this simple opposition between the ego-instincts and object-instincts, for
in Freud's schema self-love psychologically precedes - and is a necessary condition
of - the love directed towards others.
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud first elaborated the concept of the death drive,
opposed to Eros (the life instinct). The psychoanalytic community found this thesis
highly dubious; however, Freud says, its existence now seems undeniable. Aggression
is "an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man" that "constitutes the
greatest impediment to civilization." The purpose of civilization is to bind men libidinally
to one another into communities; the death drive complicates this process greatly. For
Freud, the entire evolution of civilization can be summed up as a struggle between Eros
and the death drive.

Analysis of Chapters 5-6

Whereas in Chapter 3 Freud compared man to a "prosthetic God" on account of his
technological innovations, in Chapter 5 he focuses on the opposite phenomenon: man's
regression into a state of barbarism and animalism. With the Latin expression "Homo
homini lupus" ("Man is a wolf to man"), Freud metaphorically underscores the Darwinian
undertone of his argument about human civilization, viewing man's evolution in the
context of his descent from "lower" species.
Freud's critique of communism from an psychoanalytic perspective is a tour de force.
Without engaging the usual debate about the economic merits or disadvantages of a
state-run government, it pinpoints the faulty assumption behind the abolition of private
property, namely, the inability to reform human nature in such a manner to eliminate all
motivation for the exploitation associated with capitalism.
As a side note, the language of economics already enters into Freud's conception of the
individual to a great degree. (In his discussion of the pleasure principle, Freud regularly
refers to the "economics of the libido.") Indeed, his broader understanding of "economy"
enacts, to a great degree, his objection to communism. Whereas a communist thinks of
economics in terms of the distribution of resources, Freud considers the fundamental
economy to consist of the distribution of libidinal energy. One might abolish inequality in
the realm of finances, but one cannot predict or alter the fundamental libidinal economy,
which inevitably inclines toward erotic desire and destruction.
Interestingly, Freud suggests that the inclination to aggression otherwise so destructive
to civilization has also served to build and reinforce a sense of nationalism among
peoples who then define themselves in opposition to other "foreign" peoples. This
insight can be logically connected back to Freud's extended critique of the biblical
commandment to "Love thy neighbor" at the beginning of this chapter, since it points to
the role of aggression (as well as mutual love) in the process of communal identityformation.
Freud starts with an opposition between ego-instincts and object-instincts. Within the
course of his analysis, he puts into question the validity of this opposition by noting that
both instincts flow from the ego, or more specifically, that our urges toward external
objects are ultimately a function of our own desires (i.e. for mastery, control, pleasure).
This type of self-revision common in Freud's writings is a prototypical act of
deconstructive thought, which consists in demonstrating how each term of an apparent
opposition contains the difference of the other term within it. For example, Freud
realizes that the desires directed toward the outside (so-called object-instincts) in fact
originate in desires coming from within the subject. Similarly, in the following chapter, he
will draw a contrast between the fear of (external) authority and fear of the (internal)
super-ego, only to reveal that the latter flows from the former.
Freud is also not averse to admitting the erroneous nature of his own prior clinical
assumptions. A typical example occurs in this chapter: "I remember my own defensive
attitude when the idea of an instinct of destruction first emerged in psychoanalytic
literature" This is also a type of self-revision, but far from underscoring Freud's

apparent open-mindedness to new ideas, it also serves rhetorically to anticipate and

overcome in advance the reader's resistance to the concept (in this case, of the death
drive) that Freud is putting forward. Freud's style of argumentation is, in other words,
very similar to the psychoanalytic framework he is elaborating in that it already has the
concept of resistance built into it.
In Chapter 6, Freud's reliance on literature and poetry as empirical evidence of instincts
is particularly striking. Freud appears to integrate seamlessly his clinical experience with
allusions to Goethe and Schiller, according the two equal weight in his research. In a
footnote, he cites a passage from Faust in which the description of evil coincides with
the "destructive instinct" that Freud labels the death drive in Beyond the Pleasure
Principle. It is interesting to observe how Freud treats literature as an authoritative
source of knowledge about human nature, without seeing a conflict in its
epistemological status as fiction, as something which might accurately describe a
psychological feeling or condition, but which is not at all the same as a patient's
account.
Chapter 7
One of the primary functions of society is to restrain our aggressive impulses. It
achieves this goal by installing within the individual a sort of watchdog, which Freud
calls the "super-ego," to master our desire for aggression. Freud speculates that the
individual, once forbidden from expressing this desire externally, subdues excess
aggression by redirecting it towards his own ego. The super-ego regulates the actions
of the ego in the form of a "conscience" and consequently imposes a sense of guilt and
need for self-punishment on the individual.
Freud attempts to account for the root cause of guilt, concluding that it arises from doing
something or intending to do something "bad." Whether or not the action or intention is
bad in absolute moral terms is irrelevant; it is sufficient for the ego to deem it as such.
Freud goes further, however, in rejecting the existence of a "natural" capacity to
distinguish between good and bad. What is considered bad often feels good or is
otherwise desirable to the ego. For Freud, the only thing "bad" in this sense is the threat
of the loss of love. In children, this fear is acute and involves losing parents; in adults,
the community takes the place of the parental figure.
With the establishment of the super-ego comes a sense of bad conscience. Because it
is internalized, the super-ego omnisciently regulates both our thoughts and deeds,
whereas prior to its installation, individuals only had to submit themselves to a higher
authority for punishment (such as parents) in the case of fully accomplished acts. Those
who have carried saintliness to an extreme are paradoxically the most likely to feel
sinful. External frustration also enhances the power of conscience to reproach and
impose punishment on the ego. Whole peoples have behaved this way: the Jews
interpreted their misfortune as the consequence of their own sinfulness and created a
set of overly strict commandments in reaction to their fate.
There are two sources of guilt: 1) fear of authority and 2) fear of the super-ego. In the
latter case, instinct renunciation no longer liberates the individual from the sense of

internal guilt that the super-ego continues to perpetuate. By extension, in order to

maintain its own order and stability, civilization reinforces the sense of guilt to regulate
and accommodate the ever-increasing numbers of relationships between men. As time
goes on, it becomes a more repressive force that individuals find increasingly difficult to
tolerate.
Chapter 8
Freud apologizes for the "detours" to which his essay has been prone. He elevates his
discussion of the increasing sense of guilt taken up in the last chapter to the "most
important problem in the development of civilization." In his view, civilization takes an
enormous toll on the happiness of individuals. In the case of obsessive neurotics, guilt
makes itself heard noisily within the conscience, but often it operates in more
surreptitious ways. Freud classifies guilt as a particular form of anxiety. In his clinical
view, anxiety is behind every symptom, whether consciously or unconsciously
expressed. While the collective level of anxiety within civilization has increased, it
remains largely undiagnosed, and manifests itself as a widespread and vague malaise
to which people attach other causes. Religions claim to redeem mankind from guilt,
through rituals of sacrificial death or martyrdom (i.e. the assumption of collective guilt by
an individual).
Freud devotes a few pages to introducing definitional clarity into his seemingly
interchangeable use of the following terms: the "super-ego" is an internal agency whose
existence has been inferred; "conscience" is one of the functions ascribed to the superego, to keep watch over the intentions and actions of the ego; "sense of guilt"
designates the perception that the ego has of being surveyed and arises from the
tension between its own strivings and the (often overly severe) demands of the superego. It can be felt prior to the execution of the guilty act, whereas "remorse" refers
exclusively to the reaction after the act of aggression has been carried out.
Earlier, Freud had claimed that thwarted instincts in general lead to a heightened sense
of guilt. Here he specifies that only aggressive instincts are transformed into a sense of
guilt via the regulating action of the super-ego. Freud applies the same revision to his
understanding of symptoms, which are "in their essence substitutive satisfactions for
unfulfilled sexual wishes." Not all repressed instincts, however, manifest themselves as
symptoms. Some translate more specifically into a sense of guilt.
Freud's earlier analogy between the development of civilization and the libidinal
maturation of the individual also undergoes a final revision. The program of the pleasure
principle, which consists in finding and achieving happiness, is retained as the central
aim of individual psychological development; however, in the context of civilization,
personal happiness is dispensed with in favor of unity and social cohesion. In joining a
larger community, the individual oscillates between the poles of egoism and altruism,
between the urge toward personal happiness and the urge toward union. This struggle
is completely internal, a function of the ebb and flow of the libido, not to be confused
with the struggle between Eros and the death drive outlined elsewhere in Freud's essay.

Freud extends this analogy to the concept of the super-ego, positing the existence of a
cultural super-ego formed by the personalities of great leaders or by martyred figures
representing humanity at its most downtrodden, notably that of Jesus Christ. In society,
the cultural super-ego operates under the heading of "ethics," whose main purpose in
Freud's view is to reign in the "constitutional impulse" of men to act aggressively toward
one another. Like the individual super-ego, it makes overbearing demands that cannot
be realistically met. Freud remarks that the cultural imperative to restrain aggressive
behavior might in the end cause greater psychological unhappiness than aggression
that has been fully acted out.
Pushing the analogy between the individual and civilization still further, Freud wonders
whether it would be possible to characterize certain epochs of civilization as "neurotic."
The problem is that diagnoses of neurosis are based on a relative definition of individual
psychological normality, and would be difficult to apply to entire groups, let alone
segments of civilization.
Finally, Freud emphasizes the instinct of aggression and self-destruction as the single
greatest problem facing civilization, as manifested in "the present time": he asks, which
force - "eternal Eros" or his potent adversary, the death drive - will prove stronger?
Analysis of Chapters 7 and 8
Freud's religious background permeates his discourse at almost every turn. Scholars
are in disagreement about the extent to which Judaism influences Freud's conception of
psychoanalysis. Certainly, his interpretations of the religion and its core beliefs have
often been at odds with mainstream Jewish tradition. The frequent references to Jewish
history and culture throughout the essay paradoxically points up the importance of
religion to Freud's thought at the same time that Freud categorically rejects the practice
and institution of organized religion as infantile and delusional.
The phenomenon of guilt, for example, is integral to Freud's understanding of the
formation of the super-ego, and traced back to the historical experience of the Jews,
who "produced the prophets, who held up their sinfulness before them; and out of their
sense of guilt they created the overstrict commandments of their priestly religion."
Similarly, Freud cites the persecution of the Jews as a manifestation of the "inclination
to aggression" that sometimes serves as a cohesive force behind identity-formation.
That Freud should use the term "detours" at the beginning of Chapter 8 to describe
metaphorically the meanderings of his paper is no coincidence, given his protracted
reflection at the beginning of the essay on the inadequacy of pictorial or visual
metaphors in describing the complexity of the mind, and more specifically, the
simultaneous existence of infantile and mature feelings. It is interesting that Freud
should conceive of his own thought patterns through the metaphor of a road map, which
is an essentially spatial metaphor similar to the one Freud rejected in the first chapter.
The structure of Freud's discussion calls to mind the etymological meaning of "essay,"
which at its origin designated an experiment, a tentative and often speculative
proceeding that emphasized process over result, and consequently involved many

"detours" from the stated topic of discussion. In terms of genre, the essay was derived
from the scientific principle of an experiment, but its structure was elastic enough to
accommodate both empirical and theoretical evidence, both relevant and digressive
considerations. Freud, by integrating references to literature and other disciplines
(politics and economics, for example), stays true to the interdisciplinary origins of the
essay, as well as to its experimental nature.
If we examine the rhetorical strategy in Chapter 8, Freud's point of departure is the
analysis of the individual and his symptoms. He proceeds to build a more extended
analogy between the development of the individual and the evolution of civilization, until
that analogy no longer seems sustainable for two main reasons. First, unlike the clinical
manifestations of the individual super-ego that allows Freud to infer its existence
(namely, symptoms of anxiety, fear, and guilt), there can be no empirical evidence of a
"cultural super-ego," even if such a concept can be logically deduced from the value
that a culture places on certain leaders or individuals. Second, to characterize an entire
epoch of civilization as "neurotic," as it is possible to diagnose an individual, the
existence of a collective pathology would have to be referenced against a normative
psychological state of being. Freud warns us that "we are only dealing with analogies
and that it is dangerous," since they ultimately have only logical, but not necessarily
clinical or empirical, validity.
It is significant that the last line of the essay, added later in the 1931 edition of
Civilization and Its Discontents, takes the form of a question. Instead of concluding with
a definitive statement about the prevailing force within human civilization, Freud leaves
his deliberately inquiry open-ended and amenable to speculation. His interest lies not in
casting a judgment or making a prediction (which the course of history would prove or
disprove), but in identifying the underlying impulses and trends within the broader
culture and civilization.