Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents*

Every psychoanalyst must welcome each new book that comes from Professor Freud's pen, for they have been, in each of several instances during recent years, not only the matured thoughts and deliberations of the author, but they have gathered up for the purposes of his conclusions the material that has been pouring into the wide field of psychoanalysis from many sources. In addition to that, this material has not merely gone through Professor Freud and been reexpressed, but has been transmuted, changed into new forms, and many new suggestions, some of a very wide reaching nature, have issued therefrom.

The present little book is a series of chapters devoted to the subject of civilization and its discontents and is an effort to follow genetically the story of man's search for happiness as it goes along with the sort of progress which we term civilization.

In the first place the author, after some discussion of the pleasure-principle, says regarding it, “As we see, it is simply the pleasure-principle which draws up the programme of life's purpose. This principle dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the very beginning; there can be no doubt about its efficiency, and yet its programme is in conflict with the whole world, with the macrocosm as much as with the microcosm. It simply cannot be put into execution, the whole constitution of things runs counter to it; one might say the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in the scheme of ‘Creation’.” (P. 27.)

Under the pressure of the various sources from which suffering comes, humanity tends to reduce its demands for happiness (p. 28); the goal of the pleasure-principle is unattainable (p. 39). The three sources from which sufferings come are first, from our own body, and in this field they have been materially reduced through the application of the sciences and art of medicine; second, from the outer world, and here there has been a tremendous revolution in our relations