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Freud is often depicted, by his supporters and detractors alike, as the stern, unwavering champion of civilization, indeed as the virtual incarnation of patriarchal authority itself. An examination of a crucial passage (Freud, 1930), however, reveals how skeptical and reticent his pronouncements on the value of civilization could be:
For a wide variety of reasons, it is very far from my intention to express an opinion upon the value of human civilization. I have endeavored to guard myself against the enthusiastic prejudice which holds that our civilization is the most precious thing that we possess or could acquire and that its path will necessarily lead to heights of un-imagined perfection. I can at least listen without indignation
Dr. Whitebook teaches philosophy and psychology at the New School for Social Research and is in private psychoanalytic practice. He is working on a book also entitled Perversion and Utopia for MIT Press.
The author would like to thank Bette Clark for her valuable editorial assistance.
Page 415to the critic who is of the opinion that when one surveys the aims of cultural endeavor and the means it employs, one is bound to come to the conclusion that the whole effort is not worth the trouble, and that the outcome of it can only be a state of affairs which the individual will be unable to tolerate [pp. 114-115].
This reticence is consistent with the thoroughly materialistic, unsentimental, and utilitarian account that Freud (1927) gives of the function of civilization: the fundamental purpose of civilization is the domination of external and internal nature. In the first instance, civilization “includes … all the knowledge and capacity that men have acquired in order to control the forces of nature and extract its wealth for the satisfaction of human needs.” Second, as “every individual is virtually an enemy of civilization”—owing to the instinctual (especially aggressive) character of his inner nature—“civilization has to be defended against the ind