Civilization and Its Discontents - Sigmund Freud

My initial impression of Civilization and It's Discontents was that it's not dated well.

Essentially it's an discursive essay about how you balance the individual's needs and impulses with civilization. However, it's heavily weighted to the male point of view, and a particularly rational and cold blooded one at that.

Take this bit, for example: 'What is the good of the reduction of infant mortality if it forces us to practise extreme restraint in the procreation of children'. To which the (to me obvious) answer is a) the effect of multiple pregnancies on the woman's body, which if she has any power in the marriage might well lead to restraint in procreation anyway b) not having to go through the grief of losing a child and c) the pain and sickness the child itself doesn't have to suffer.

Besides it struck me that he didn't mean 'procreation of children' but 'recreation of sex' (this may be to do with the translation, or the language that was acceptable in the period in which he was writing, I'm not sure) and in that the book now feels out of date to me, because society has substantially changed, the pill invented, marriage no longer a prerequisite for what is described as 'genital satisfaction' and neuroses can't be blamed on sexual repression in the same way. Having said that, Leo Bersani, who writes one of the prefaces to my Penguin edition, points out that certain groups do still fight and manage to withhold knowledge of contraception, so if this repression was as likely to cause neuroses as Freud suggests, that is still relevant.

The other repressed impulse that causes unhappiness in the individual which Freud identifies here, is aggression.

Enter the concept of a superego, which acts as a conscience and turns your aggressive impulses back on yourself. This isn't a new concept to me but one which I don't think I've ever seen clearly explained before. It also seemed contradicted by a later comment to the effect that people are happy to break rules as long as they're not caught, which made me ponder thus: since the superego is internal surely it would always know and you'd always be caught? But perhaps rather than one individual and one universal behaviour he's talking about a range?

This is where the book really doesn't feel like a modern pop science book, which would have handy engaging case studies to help convince you - instead it all felt very arms length and theoretical.

The introduction of the Oedipal tension - both loving and wanting to kill the father - again seemed a particularly male question, and also not something I wholly believe in. Possibly the changing role of fathers in the last near-90 years has something to do with that too.

Most of all though I felt that the essay was part of an ongoing dialogue that Freud was having and by taking it out of that context, and out of the context of the time it was written in, and possibly also having taken it from the language it was originally written in, I probably wasn't giving it a fair reading. In particular I've not made reference to the first chapters, which sought the origin of an 'oceanic' feeling that Freud has never experienced himself but is assured others have. No conclusion was really reached, and I felt disappointed. I wanted definitive answers, and I don't think that's what Freud set out to provide.

As always thanks to Simon and Karen for running the club where every six months bloggers tackle books from a specific year. You can find more reviews from 1930 by clicking the link below, and list of reviews from other years on their blogs.