![]() ![]() This work should be also understood in context of contemporary events: First World War (1914-1918) and Adolf Hitler's rise to power have undoubtedly influenced Freud and impacted his central observation about the tension between the individual and civilization. Other important concepts of this book is the human instinct of aggression towards each other, dichotomy of Eros vs. ![]() In order to live in a civilized society, humans must take their aggression and turn it on themselves in the form of a conscience (or super-ego) which takes the place of the father as the child matures. ![]() That love for all of humanity is far from an inherent state of the human mind. In this book, Freud maintains that human beings are inherently aggressive. 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. As a result, civilization, or its culture, inhibits man's instinctual drives, which can (and perhaps must) result in guilt and unfulfillment. In this book he states his views on the question of man's place in the world, a place Freud describes as being on the fulcrum between the individual's quest for freedom and society's demand for conformity. ![]()
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