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Topic: Civilization and Its Discontents


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In the News (Sat 12 Dec 09)

  
  Excerpt from Civilization & Its Discontents
We have regarded the difficulties in the development of civilization as part of the general difficulty accompanying all evolution, for we have traced them to the inertia of libido, its disinclination to relinquish an old position in favour of a new one.
Hence its system of methods by which mankind is to be driven to identifications and aim-inhibited love-relationships; hence the restrictions on sexual life; and hence, too, its ideal command to love one's neighbour as oneself, which is really justified by the fact that nothing is so completely at variance with original human nature as this.
Civilization expects to prevent the worst atrocities of brutal violence by taking upon itself the right to employ violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hands on the more discreet and subtle forms in which human aggressions are ex- pressed.
www.writing.upenn.edu /~afilreis/50s/freud-civ.html   (1783 words)

  
 Civilization and Its Discontents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Civilization and Its Discontents is a book written by Sigmund Freud in the decade preceding his death in 1938.
As a result, civilization, or its culture, inhibits man's instinctual drives, which can (and perhaps must) result in guilt and unfulfillment.
Freud bases much of his analysis on the theory of the origins of civilization he first posited in Totem and Taboo and the idea of a death instinct first developed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents   (371 words)

  
 Siggy. CIvilization and its Discontents.
Their primary interest in the excretory function, its organs and products, is changed in the course of their growth into a group of traits that we know well-thriftiness, orderliness and cleanliness-valuable and welcome qualities in themselves, which, however, may be intensified till they visibly dominate the personality and produce what we call the anal character.
Civilization expects to prevent the worst atrocities of brutal violence by taking upon itself the right to employ violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hands on the more discreet and subtle forms in which human aggressions arc expressed....
Civilization therefore obtains the mastery over the dangerous love of aggression in individuals by enfeebling and disarming it and setting up an institution within their minds to keep watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city.
www.cooper.edu /humanities/core/hss3/bak/s_freud.html   (6599 words)

  
 Freud, "Civilization and its Discontents," 1930 (excerpt)
Civilization has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man's aggressive instincts and to hold the manifestations of hem in check by psychical reaction-formations.
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.
In that primal period of civilization, the contrast between a minority who enjoyed the advantages of civilization and a majority who were robbed of those advantages was, therefore, carried to extremes.
www.historyguide.org /europe/freud_discontents.html   (1418 words)

  
 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Civilization itself comes to be defined as a space of conflict, or as an extension into cultural community of the tensions that stigmatize the individual psyche.
Civilization places limitations on sexuality; it not only dictates what forms of sexual expression are "permissible," and censors all others, but it even places strict restrictions on the forms of sexuality it allows.
Civilization also emerges out of totemic culture on the basis of the strategic union of the weaker sons against the power and authority of the father.
courses.washington.edu /freudlit/Civilization.Notes.html   (2462 words)

  
 GradeSaver: Civilization and Its Discontents Essay: Freud's Civilization and its Discontents: A Pragmatic Work?
Civilization and its Discontents, is, in great part, a philosophical treatise, in which Freud tries to replace a metaphysical, idealistic framework with a psychological one.
Civilization and its Discontents is the most philosophical of Freud's works.
Indeed, it seems that he is greatly in favor of society when he states that civilization represents the eternal struggle between Eros and Thanatos, with society attempting to utilize Eros in order to save the human species from the destruction of the aggressive instinct (112).
www.gradesaver.com /classicnotes/titles/civilization/essay1.html   (3100 words)

  
 Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud
The Interpretation focuses on the inner life and development of the individual while Civilization turns away from the individual to the development of the various cultures of the world and eventually points toward the universal world which we seem today to be moving more and more toward.
Civilization is a relationship among individuals in which individuals give up certain aspects of their own ego interests to join with other people in creating social institutions which address the first two dangers, and to some extent the third as well.
Actually this digression is the ground of his entire analysis of civilization and its failures and possibilities.
www.webster.edu /~corbetre/personal/reading/civilization.html   (2465 words)

  
 Modern History Sourcebook: Sigmund Freud: Civilization & Die Weltanschauung, 1918
Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race.
If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity....
The strength of Marxism obviously does not lie in its view of history or in the prophecies about the future which it bases upon that view, but in its clear insight into the determining influence which is exerted by the economic conditions of man upon his intellectual, ethical and artistic reactions.
www.fordham.edu /halsall/mod/1918freud-civwelt.html   (1360 words)

  
 Freud – Civilization and Its Discontents
The aggressive instinct is the main representative of the death instinct and opposes the program of civilization (Eros).
Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind.
In therapy of the individual it’s often necessary to lower the expectations of the super-ego.
www.unnu.com /newhome/attractions/philosophy/Freud_CivilizationDiscontents.htm   (1482 words)

  
 TAP: Vol 13, Iss. 10. Civilization and its Discontents. Garrett Epps.   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-08)
At a time when the air is full of loose talk about the "clash of civilizations," the game's fascination -- and its own evolution over time -- provides interesting insights into the nature of civilization, and even more interesting views of our own ways of thinking about it.
The historians of the Annales school viewed a civilization as the irrefragable sum total of a geographic region's history, demography, and environment -- one civilization can never become another, they argued, and civilizations that find themselves in proximity to one another are doomed to conflict.
Civilizations that fight their neighbors suffer economic loss and scientific stagnation; watching the enemy chew up your legions and catapults is a graphic reminder that the same time and effort could have produced cathedrals, marketplaces, or aqueducts that could last for hundreds of years.
www.prospect.org /print/V13/10/epps-g.html   (1983 words)

  
 Civilization Essay
Civilization II is the sequel to Civilization, which was first released in 1991 by MicroProse Software.
Civilization was hailed on its release as one of the greatest computer games ever; Civilization II has been similarly honored.
Civilization casts you in the role of the ruler of an entire civilization through many generations, from the founding of the world's first cities 6,000 years in the past to the imminent colonization of space.
www.duke.edu /~tlove/civ.htm   (5938 words)

  
 Religion, civilization, and discontents (from Sigmund Freud) --  Encyclopædia Britannica
More results on "Religion, civilization, and discontents (from Sigmund Freud)" when you join.
Subsequently, vestiges of the civilization were found as far apart as Sutkagen Dor, near the shore of the Arabian Sea 300 miles (480 km) west of Karachi, and Ropar at the...
A thorough understanding of what civilization and culture are requires a knowledge of all the qualities that make up human nature and a full...
www.britannica.com /eb/article-22608   (788 words)

  
 Amazon.ca: Great Ideas Civilization And Its Discontents: Books   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-08)
Perhaps our world would be a better place if all of its inhabitants stop to think of why they do the things they do and what are the effects of their actions.
Don't be fooled by its brevity; this is a deeply complex and wide-ranging examination of Western civilization and its tensions.
This is one of Freud's indispensable texts, and its accessible and absorbing style make it an ideal introduction for those who are seeking to discover this colossal mind for the first time.
www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/0141018992   (1527 words)

  
 The Raw Story | Civilization and its discontents
One of the primary reasons for its delay was, paradoxically, the very reason for its impetus: that Sid Meier’s strategy game Civilization, now in its third incarnation and scheduled to enter a fourth in the near future, is a surreptitiously addictive time-waster of colossal proportions.
Quite simply and without hyperbole, Civilization and its diabolical franchise are the heroin of the video gaming world, voraciously consuming precious hours and thoughts and energy; and in some rare cases rupturing relations and resulting in rather severe symptoms of withdrawal.
Civilization was something I happened upon by chance and, like so many great books and albums I’ve come across in my life, I hated it at first.
www.rawstory.com /exclusives/ianelli/civlization_discontents_civ_III_818.htm   (1232 words)

  
 Civilization and its Discontents--Sigmund Freud
I call this contention astonishing because, in whatever way we may define the concept of civilization, it is a certain fact that all the things with which we seek to protect ourselves against the threats that emanate from the sources of suffering are part of that very civilization.
It was discovered that a person becomes neurotic because he cannot tolerate the amount of frustration which society imposes on him in the service of its cultural ideals, and it was inferred from this that the abolition or reduction of those demands would result in a return to possibilities of happiness.
If the development of civilization has such a far-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'?
www.primitivism.com /discontents.htm   (613 words)

  
 Amazon.com: Civilization and Its Discontents: Books: Sigmund Freud,Peter Gay,James Strachey,Peter Gay   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-08)
Don't be fooled by its brevity; this is a deeply complex and wide-ranging examination of Western civilization and its tensions.
Sigmund Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents," written in 1930, was his attempt at using his theories of psychoanalysis to observe and critique the psychological affect Western civilization had on the human subject.
What Freud theorized, was that in a sense, civilization, had a life of its own and that it had to control and punish the individual's two great primal instincts in order for civilization to survive and flourish (Freud 69).
www.amazon.com /Civilization-Its-Discontents-Sigmund-Freud/dp/0393301583   (2747 words)

  
 Chinese Civilization and its Discontents - thinking-east.net   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-08)
Despite its cosmopolitanism, however, the city is sharply segregated along economic and ethnic fault lines.
Old Kashgar is a labyrinth, mysterious in its life, twisting and turning with centuries of history.
Come back in five years, and this river will sadly flow in an artificial riverbed, deprived of its individuality and life.” Whether the Chinese are motivated by malicious intentions or deluded idealism, the final truth is that their one-size-fits-all policies are devastating Kashgar.
www.thinking-east.net /site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68&Itemid=56   (4123 words)

  
 Civilization and Its Discontents: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-08)
Power was its own excuse, as it has been in so many of the terrible movements Berman describes and the ones he ignores.
It's now generally accepted that the war of the triple alliance was started or provoked by Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
In the 1860s, secession and the Civil War that followed threatened to destroy democracy because the force of arms was used to resist the rule of law for over four years.
www.j-bradford-delong.net /movable_type/2003_archives/002962.html   (9446 words)

  
 Lecture Two: Civilization and its Discontents   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-08)
Thus it behooved primitive man to keep his woman around and she stayed with him for the sake of protection and for the sake of her young.
Civilization is based on the subjugation of the instincts.
Civilization inhibits aggression, so it is internalized and used against the self as super-ego or conscience.
eee.uci.edu /programs/humcore/LN/wk6ln2sf.htm   (360 words)

  
 Dowling College: PHL 002: Sigmund Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
The work of civilization has become increasingly the business of men, it confronts them with ever more difficult tasks and compels them to carry out instinctual sublimations of which women are little capable.
He acknowledges that it is necessary for a civilized society to have some restrictions on people’s sexual behavior for its own good: for example, he says that we should curb children’s sexual behavior, because if we don’t, they will grow up to be unable to control their own sexual behavior.
Thus the more civilized a society is, the more its members will suffer from guilt and anxiety, or to use Freud’s phrase, "permanent internal unhappiness." (324.) Human happiness is incompatible with civilized life.
www.angelfire.com /ms/perring/freud.html   (2655 words)

  
 The Rugged Elegance World Marketplace | Books : Civilization and Its Discontents
Civilization and Its Discontents may be Sigmund Freud's best-known work.
In this seminal volume of twentieth-century thought, Freud elucidates the contest between aggression, indeed the death drive, and its adversary eros.
So the Destructive and Death- bringing aspect of human character and human civilization are very much on his mind when he writes this work.
www.ruggedelegantliving.com /cgi-bin/amazon/amazon_products_feed.cgi?Operation=ItemLookup&ItemId=0393301583   (695 words)

  
 Gaming Civilization and Its Discontents
Yesterday, the arcade nearest to my house officially sold its soul—not to the devil, the government, or even a special interest group with some less diabolical agenda.
No, it sold out to the thirteen year old mall crowd and their perceived need for franchise-like arcade huts and the seemingly infinite series of genre clones that go along with them.
The one by my house that I mentioned earlier just traded its fully functional Galaga and Mappy machines to make way for another (this is the third) fishing simulator.
www.gamesfirst.com /articles/discontents/gaming_civilization_and_its_disc.htm   (636 words)

  
 The Question of God . Civilization and Its Discontents | PBS
I do not think that anyone completely understands its mechanism, but it is a fact that there are foreign substances which, when present in the blood or tissues, directly cause us pleasurable sensations; and they also so alter the conditions governing our sensibility that we become incapable of receiving unpleasurable impulses.
Its success is never certain, for that depends 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.
Its technique consists in depressing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world in a delusional manner — which presupposes an intimidation of the intelligence.
www.pbs.org /wgbh/questionofgod/ownwords/civ1.html   (4033 words)

  
 Civilization and Its Discontents: Freud Meets Cooper on The Prairie
If a principal "secret charm" of living outside civilization is the freedom to claim one's Plantation anywhere, as Esther Bush has argued, then the Indians of the Plains must be fortunate indeed in that they have wholly escaped the claims of civilization that would repress their freedom to fly at will over the plains.
Thus the Indians of the Prairie have escaped from the malaise of cultivation and civilization.
Inez represents the highest form of civilization depicted in the novel: daughter of a Spanish aristocrat seeking a familial alliance with the new United States through permitting her marriage to Duncan, Inez literally embodies the luxuriant beauty and grace of a civilization become over-ripe and effete.
external.oneonta.edu /cooper/articles/suny/2001suny-schachterle.html   (9172 words)

  
 Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-08)
Plato witnessed the civil war in which the Greek states destroyed each other, in which the controlling forces of the group had failed miserably to make men act in civilized ways.
But there's a sense that if we are to established civilized life properly, then the first thing we must attend to is the individual's sense of his or her own psychological and therefore moral makeup.
In many respects, Civilization and Its Discontents is very much a post-World War I book, facing up to the gloomy recognition that some of the most fundamental requirements of civilized life seem to be beyond human beings much of the time and that the social environment offers no hope for radical improvement.
www.mala.bc.ca /~johnstoi/introser/freud.htm   (2059 words)

  
 Civilization and Its Discontents (Main Page)
It is both witness and tribute to the late theory of mind—the so-called structural theory, with its stress on aggression, indeed the death drive, as the pitiless adversary of eros.
Civilization and Its Discontents is one of the last of Freud's books, written in the decade before his death and first published in German in 1929.
In it he states his views on the broad question of man's place in the world, a place Freud defines in terms of ceaseless conflict between the individual's quest for freedom and society's demand for conformity.
www2.wwnorton.com /catalog/fall94/030158.htm   (308 words)

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