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.
The following essay engages Freud's German title Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, translated in the psychoanalytic canon as Civilization and Its Discontents (1930[1929]). We know that the pithy title was preceded by another title, and recent research reveals an earlier title whose meaning is the complete reverse of the present title. I argue here that Freud's ultimate decision to use the term Unbehagen reflects more than the intention to emphasize the painful disgruntlement of humankind as it struggles restlessly under the bridle of the superego, as the theme of this book is usually understood. Rather, the title, and the crisis that ensued when it was being translated, was a response to the nearing to consciousness of a cluster of psychological dimensions that fomented conflict throughout Freud's life: the illusory quality of religious belief, anxieties surrounding femininity, motherhood, and death, and uncanny qualities of the realm of the aesthetic. I reinterpret the choice of the term Das Unbehagen as representing the unique depressive “gain” that is the byproduct of the symbolizing function basic to the process of civilization. Mature aesthetic and religious structures and beliefs require and contain the modicum of discontent that is inevitably produced during symbolization.
Originally composed for the Conference “Civilization and Its Discontents: Psychoanalysis, Art, Literature and Culture,” celebrating Freud's 150th birthday, read at the Menahem Begin House, Jerusalem, May 11, 2006, chaired by Prof. Gabriel Shefler, Director of the Sigmund Freud Study Center, Hebrew University. Warm thanks to Prof. Gerhard Fichtner, Institute of Ethics and the History of Medicine, University of Tübingen, and Dr. Cornelius Gropp, Director of Psychiatry, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, for help with the German translations of Freud's correspondences with Fliess, Ferenczi, and Romain Rolland. I appreciate the generous assistance of Dr. Leonard C. Bruno, Scientific Manuscripts Specialist, Sigmund Freud Collection, Library of Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C., for providing facsimiles of Freud's manuscripts. Tom Roberts, Archivist, The Sigmund Freud Copyrights, the Estate of A. W. Freud et al., Paterson Marsh, Ltd., was helpful as usual in granting me permission to reprint the facsimile within. I am especially grateful to Dr. Robert A. King for his personal attention to the earlier version of the manuscript.
The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 63, ed. Robert A. King, Samuel Abrams, A. Scott Dowling, and Paul M. Brinich (Yale University Press, copyright © 2008 by Robert A. King, Samuel Abrams, A. Scott Dowling, and Paul M. Brinich).