You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Historical events influence literature, science and music as they do intellectual thought. Sigmund Freud had been deeply affected by the impact of the First World War, during which his three sons and many of his adherents had been exposed to danger and to potential death. This was reflected in his writings after 1918, and in 1930 he published 'Civilization and its discontents'. In this he wrote 'The existence of this inclination to aggression which we can detect in ourselves and justly assume to be present in others, is the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbours … In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration' (S.E. 21, p. 112). His great discovery of unconscious wishes, drives and fears and his capacity for rational enquiry and analysis enabled Freud to attempt to oppose rational thought and understanding to the maturational forces that led to prejudice and dehumanization of the outsider.
Psychoanalysis based on Freud's careful observation of human behaviour acknowledges the presence of powerful and primitive conscious and unconscious instinctive forces in every human being. The pursuit of the good and of the ideal, the powerful life-forces of Eros, are paralleled by destructive and self-destructive impulses in each individual and each nation. Freud's intellectual ability to confront the fragile nature of civilization and culture enabled him to face the profound truth of his pessimistic statement. His death in 1939 spared him the horrors of a further war and the devastating impact of what had been unthinkable before the Holocaust experience. Many of his younger colleagues were not spared. For, from 1939 onwards, educated man's pursuit of the ideal and rational thought and understanding could not prevail against the more powerful forces of irrationality, violence and narcissistic rage that ravaged the world. The disintegration of European culture ended in ge