Freud is the most famous psychologist of all time and although many of his theories are now discredited or seem wildly implausible, I thought it’d be interesting to listen to him to try and understand why it sounded plausible in the first place.
At times Freud is insightful and engaging; at other times, he falls into psychoanalytic lingo in such a way that I couldn’t follow what he was trying to say. I suppose I can see why people might have assumed that the fault was with their failure to understand.
It’s a short read, so if you’re curious, there isn’t that much cost to going ahead and reading it, but this is one of those rare cases where you can really understand the core of what he was getting at from the summary on Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents)
Since Wikipedia has a summary, I’ll just add a few small remarks. This book focuses on a key paradox; our utter dependence on it for anything more than the most basic survival; but how it requires us to repress our own wants and desires so as to fit in with an ordered society. I find this to be an interesting answer to the question of why there is so much misery despite our material prosperity.
It’s interesting to re-examine this in light of the modern context. Society is much more liberal than it was in Freud’s time, but in recent years people have become more scared of speaking their minds. Repression still exists, it is just off a different form. If Freud is to be believed, we should expect this repression to result in all kinds of be psychological effects, many of which won’t appear linked on the surface.
Further thoughts: - I liked his chapter on methods humans deal suffering and their limitations as it contained what seemed to be found evaluations. He points out that that the path of a yogi is at best the happiness of quietness, that love cannot be guaranteed to last, that sublimation through art is available only to a few and is even then only of limited strength, ect. He just didn’t think there was any good solution to this problem. - Freud was sceptical of theories like communism because he didn’t believe that human nature could really change. He argued that aggression existed in the nursery and before the existence of property. He didn’t doubt that we could suppress urges, but he seemed to believe that it was much more costly than other people realised, and even then that it would likely come out in some other form - Freud proposed his theory of the Narcissism of Small Differences, that the people who we hate most not those with values completely foreign to our own, but this who we are in close proximity to. He describes this as a form of narcissism since these conflicts can flare up over the most minor of differences. - Freud suggested that those who struggled the most with temptation were saints, since their self-denial led to the constant frustration of their desires - Freud noted how absurd, ” Love your neighbour as yourself” would sound to someone hearing it for the first time. He imagines that we’d skepticalky ask questions, “Why should I care about them just as much as my family?” and “Why should I love them if they are bad people or don’t love me?”. He actually goes further and argues that “a love that does not discriminate does injustice to its object”
Book Review: Civilization and its discontents
Freud is the most famous psychologist of all time and although many of his theories are now discredited or seem wildly implausible, I thought it’d be interesting to listen to him to try and understand why it sounded plausible in the first place.
At times Freud is insightful and engaging; at other times, he falls into psychoanalytic lingo in such a way that I couldn’t follow what he was trying to say. I suppose I can see why people might have assumed that the fault was with their failure to understand.
It’s a short read, so if you’re curious, there isn’t that much cost to going ahead and reading it, but this is one of those rare cases where you can really understand the core of what he was getting at from the summary on Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents)
Since Wikipedia has a summary, I’ll just add a few small remarks. This book focuses on a key paradox; our utter dependence on it for anything more than the most basic survival; but how it requires us to repress our own wants and desires so as to fit in with an ordered society. I find this to be an interesting answer to the question of why there is so much misery despite our material prosperity.
It’s interesting to re-examine this in light of the modern context. Society is much more liberal than it was in Freud’s time, but in recent years people have become more scared of speaking their minds. Repression still exists, it is just off a different form. If Freud is to be believed, we should expect this repression to result in all kinds of be psychological effects, many of which won’t appear linked on the surface.
Further thoughts:
- I liked his chapter on methods humans deal suffering and their limitations as it contained what seemed to be found evaluations. He points out that that the path of a yogi is at best the happiness of quietness, that love cannot be guaranteed to last, that sublimation through art is available only to a few and is even then only of limited strength, ect. He just didn’t think there was any good solution to this problem.
- Freud was sceptical of theories like communism because he didn’t believe that human nature could really change. He argued that aggression existed in the nursery and before the existence of property. He didn’t doubt that we could suppress urges, but he seemed to believe that it was much more costly than other people realised, and even then that it would likely come out in some other form
- Freud proposed his theory of the Narcissism of Small Differences, that the people who we hate most not those with values completely foreign to our own, but this who we are in close proximity to. He describes this as a form of narcissism since these conflicts can flare up over the most minor of differences.
- Freud suggested that those who struggled the most with temptation were saints, since their self-denial led to the constant frustration of their desires
- Freud noted how absurd, ” Love your neighbour as yourself” would sound to someone hearing it for the first time. He imagines that we’d skepticalky ask questions, “Why should I care about them just as much as my family?” and “Why should I love them if they are bad people or don’t love me?”. He actually goes further and argues that “a love that does not discriminate does injustice to its object”