●
Freud envisioned infants as blobs of delight, enwrapped by libidinal satisfaction (the pleasure
of being tickled and stroked, etc.). He calls this "polymorphous
perversity". As the infant grows, pleasure becomes focused more on the mouth
(orality) and excreting (anal control). Eventually, sexuality gets reduced in puberty to genital
pleasure, limited more or less to the genitalia. Folks are often shocked
by Freud's notions of infant libidinal/sexual pleasure, but that is because
they misinterpret him, projecting adult sexuality back into infant desire
rather than seeing infants as having a very generalized pleasure zone that
covers their whole bodies (which is manifestly true) which, as the infant
matures into a teenager, becomes narrowed and intensified to genitalia more or
less
exclusively.
●
The infant does not distinguish itself from mommy's body--it has no sense of
identity ("I"-ness). But when mommy disappears, the infant develops a
sense of "I" versus "not-I," both physically and psychically.
●
The
separation/return of mommy also bifurcates the mind into a
id/pleasure/libidinal zone versus ego zone that has to learn to accommodate
itself to frustration (mommy's breast is gone). Thus emerges the id/ego
structure.
●
Freud's notion of libidinal energy is one of a closed economy (like plumbing,
in which pressure if it is not released through one valve, will seek to be
released elsewhere). If libido/desire cannot be expressed and satisfied
because of social taboos, it becomes repressed and seeks release elsewhere,
for instance, creative energy or our satisfaction in beauty or our seemingly
non-erotic affections (Freud calls this "sublimation").
●
Although we may not want to embrace Freud's ideas about the development of the
oral stage or anal stage, or fixations on either, such is interesting to
speculate about: the oral fixation = desire to engulf/absorb = male desire for
visual stimulation/pornography; anal fixation leads to neat-freaks, pleasure
in tight control/order. The latter is very reductive, but pause and
wonder: what is the pleasure that those who are obsessively neat take in
symmetry and other forms of an ordered environment outside of the self?
●
Towards the end of his career, Freud speculated that in addition to libidinal
instinct, there is a death instinct: manifested in aggression and the desire
to just become nothing (rather than exerting energy, either in motor force or
psychically, one wants to lapse into pure stillness, as it were).
● When eros/libido and
the aggression instinct fuse together and go outward = sadism.
●
When eros and
aggression goes outward, but curl back = masochism. Many folks think
Freud's ideas are kinky and unscientific, but his idea that
aggression/sexuality fuse in sadism makes sense, at least as a provisional
explanation of aberrant behavior.
● But the latter eros/aggression dynamic also, according to Freud, carves out the super-ego.
Super-ego is not rational: when you feel “guilt” it is irrational, with the
super-ego aggressively being self-punitive.
●
If you don’t
believe in aggression/death instinct: why do you mindlessly destroy ants (or
tear up boxes or clocks or whatever) when young, why burst little plastic
bubbles in mailing plastic wrapping? How do you explain your guilt, in
which you mentally "hit" yourself?
●
That the unconscious DOES likely exist in some form is demonstrable by your
capacity, for instance, to make puns and jokes.
●
A pun is typically
based on the sudden collision of two separate linguistic codes or items; those
good at making puns do not struggle to think them up ... they just "pop out."
●
Example (please excuse the vulgarity--do not read this paragraph if you are
likely to take offensive!): think of former President Clinton and all the
designations for presidential space ... office, white house, Lincoln bedroom,
committee room, oval office (your mind goes thru the "rolodex" of terms).
Now think of Monica ... and, suddenly, "Oral Office" pops out from the punster
rather than "Oval Office." The punster, to make the spontaneous fusion
of Oral/Office/Oval, had to be subconsciously processing all the words for
"office" and all the words for presidential unseemly sexual behavior
simultaneously, until the two subconscious "rolodex" files click together to
produce the pun.
●
Dreams are also
evidence of the unconscious: things/actions you see or do during the day
become lodged in the mind because of associations not known at the time.
Here is a hypothetical, somewhat goofy, example: you take a walk and see a
tree with lush fruit suspended from it while thinking, without
self-consciously taking note that you're thinking, about your mother's recent
death. You don't, at the time, take note consciously of the tree, but in
that night's dream you envision an entity that is simultaneously your mother
(in dreams, images can be fused together in a way the daytime mind would find
categorically impossible) and a leafy plant. In your dream, recalling
infant nurturance, you want to swing from your mother/the tree.
● Still, even with the
mysteries of pun or dream production (both of which Freud wrote about), you
might not be persuaded that the unconscious exists.
● Maybe we just have a higher
language/culture brain structure enwrapped around a lower mammal brain, in
turn wrapped around a lizard-like purely appetitive (instinctual brain).
It would make sense, from a Darwinian perspective, that we have vestiges of
brain structures from much lower animals. The higher language/culture
brain functions would constrict the instinctual impulses of the, as it were,
reptilian brain. You could reject Freud's theory of the subconscious,
and yet still find his ideas of conflict between impulse and control, based on
the strictly biological structure of the brain, compelling.
OVERVIEW OF FREUD'S CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENT
It is important to emphasize that Freud's
Civilization and its Discontent is broadly speculative in the fields of
anthropology, ethics, cultural evolution, sociology, and so on as well as
psychology per se. As he proceeds from chapter to chapter, he habitually and
agilely complicates what he seems to have settled upon in the previous
chapter.
The shifts can get very confusing. And, sometimes, he assumes familiarity with
his own psychoanalytical
theory that can make his writing seem, if you are not prepared, rather
esoteric. Nonetheless, his short book was intended to reach a general,
educated audience; and even if you do not accept his argument in part or in
whole, or the theory of the subconscious and repression/ sublimation, there are
innumerable profound and provocative speculations along the way.
At the
minimum, you should recognize that Freud contributes to a pervasive
philosophical/social thought tradition in the Western world of brooding
about a peculiarly Western/modern malaise. It begins with Rousseau, goes
through the Romantics and Karl Marx, whose basic point is about unsatisfactory
labor pleasure for the masses of workers in a capitalist economy/culture, and
on through 20th-century existentialists (Sartre, Camus, Heidegger)
who moan and groan about modern "being" (Sartre's big philosophy
treatise--800+pages--is called Being and Nothingness, sounds fun eh!).
Come
to think about it: the vast bulk of 20th-century philosophy/social thinking
essentially asks the question: are we happy? and if not, why not?
INTERPRETATION OF FREUD'S CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENT
For an interesting, although partial,
interpretation of Freud's book, go to this site:
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/freud.htm
ROADMAP OF FREUD'S CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENT
CHAPTER
I: YOU'LL NEVER FEEL AS GOOD AS YOU DID IN THE WOMB
--"oceanic" sensation in the womb, then ego/external reality
split
CHAPTER 2: TO SOME EXTENT,
HOWEVER, YOU CAN AVOID PAIN
--defines purpose of life as "programme of the pleasure
principle"
--reviews several ways we can avoid unpleasurable sensations
--dismisses religion as an "unconditional submission"
CHAPTER 3: AND, TO BE SURE,
CIVILIZATION HAS ITS VIRTUES EVEN IF REPRESSIVE
--reviews attributes of civilization or culture
--reviews relationship of individual liberty to the law
CHAPTER 4: WHAT IS THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL LIBIDO AND COMMUNITY?
--families established when sex no longer periodic
--explains how "aim-inhibited affection" functions to expand community
--cultural development requires an "expedient distribution of the libido"
--civilization requires that we curb sexual drive
CHAPTER 5: WHY IS SO MUCH
AIM-INHIBITED AFFECTION NEEDED TO BOND US COMMUNALLY?
--asks why society must "summon up aim-inhibited libido on the
largest scale so as to strengthen the communal bond by relations of
friendship," which requires an "antagonism to sexuality"
--introduces aggression instinct
--critiques communism for naivete
--summarizes: "Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities for
happiness for a portion of security"
CHAPTER 6: WHERE DOES THE
AGGRESSION INSTINCT COME FROM?
--introduces death instinct as force of dissolution within the
organism
--some of the death instinct is "diverted towards the external world" as
aggression
--primary evidence of death instinct is when it mixes with libido: sadism and
masochism
--aggression when "inhibited in its aim" provides the ego with the
satisfaction of controlling nature
CHAPTER 7: HOW CAN WE REALLY KEEP AGGRESSION IN CHECK?
--aggressiveness is "introjected"/directed back to the ego:
thus the "super-ego" develops, "which now, in the form of 'conscience', is
ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that
the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other, extraneous individuals"
--tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego is called "guilt; it
expresses itself as a need for punishment"
--we learn from parents (who threaten us with a loss of love) how to
distinguish "bad" from "good"