These week we are reading a work of Freud's and an essay of Thoreau's. Knowing only the most minimal and banal information about each of these (Freud as psychoanalyst with a fixation on the Oedipus complex and blaming the mother for any difficulties in an individual's life; and Thoreau as a simple-living backwoods philosopher who wrote Walden) I didn't immediately see a connection between the 2.
The book of Freud's we are reading is about Civilization, something I have never spent much time thinking about but, if pressed, would probably have said is a good thing. I had a hard time with the introduction as it plunged me immediately into the deep end of psychoanalytical jargon and concepts, territory unknown to me. I immediately found myself floundering in the murky depths of concepts about the anal eroticism of young human beings, primitive sniffing men on all fours and the repression of olfactory stimulation when mankind evolved from all fours to standing erect, discussions of the id, ego and super-ego, Eros, the totemic phase, and oceanic feelings. I was having a hard time relating this to civilization but once I got into Freud's text itself, I found much there to make me think and reflect.
Freud's discussion was a bit challenging for someone lacking any previous knowledge of his earlier works (this text being written in 1929 and Freud lived from 1856 to 1939). What was interesting to me is what I've been exposed to, via books and media culture (TV, movies etc), during my lifetime of western society's reaction to Freud's findings during the remainder of the 20th century (and now into the 21st century). I found his discussions (about the exigencies of civilization, the role of religion, the conflict between the individual and society) were really thought-provoking and made me want to read more in this area - though what I really wanted to read, being lazy, was a text from some learned person assessing mankind and society in the 21st century in a manner similar to Freud's processes in the late 19th and early 20th century. I was very curious, as I read about sexual repression, the constraints civilization imposes on an individual's appetites or drives, the importance of various innate human drives, about what this now looks like for someone growing up in the 21st century.
Freud writes quite a bit about why mankind may have developed and submitted to civilization. In return for increased security (controlling nature, decreasing risk of physical harm including starvation, exposure to the elements, mitigating against intra-species aggression etc), mankind had to give up or constrain basic human pleasure-seeking drives, most notably for Freud (and according to him, man - though it is not always clear to me when Freud means "Mankind" and when he means "man") the drive for sexual gratification.
[...] Civilization designates the sum totals of those achievements and institutions that distinguish our life from that of our animal ancestors and serve the dual purpose of protecting human beings against nature and regulating their mutual relations. [pg 27]
Communal life becomes possible only when a majority comes together that is stronger than any individual...The replacement of the individual by that of the community is the decisive step towards civilization." "Its essence lies in the fact that the members of the community restrict themselves in their scope for satisfaction [...] The next requirement of civilization is justice. [pg 32]
Much of mankind's struggle is taken up with the task of finding a suitable...accommodation between the claims of the individual and the mass claims of civilization. [pg 33]
What has occurred since Freud wrote this text, is a large body of research on animals, animal behaviour, animal societies, interactions, learning etc - and I'm fascinated by what we have learned about mankind vs the animal kingdoms in the last 100 years.
Freud goes on to discuss civilization and writes on pg 39 how, though women "1st laid the foundations of civilization with the claims of their love," men are set the difficult task of maintaining it and forced to "sublimate their drives," given that women have "little aptitude" for this and indeed soon resent men's distraction from their "duties as a husband and father."
Again, in the year 2013, almost 1/2 century since the early days of 'women's lib', I would really like to read a modern take on this from someone who has studied Freud and his field over the past few decades. One jarring note, from a perspective 100 years later than when Freud was writing, lay in a footnote to Section IV where he notes:
... erotic relations are so often associated with a degree of direct aggression, quite apart from the sadistic component that quite properly belongs to them. Faced with such complications, the love-object will not always be as understanding and tolerant as the farmer's wife who complained that her husband no longer loved her because he had not beaten her for a week.
Freud looks at several tactics mankind has experimented with to try and cope with the realities of civilization. I found it interesting to read his opinion of communism, given that we read The Communist Manifesto just last week. Freud writes about communism and the contention that mankind's "nature has been corrupted by the institution of private property." [pg 49] He contrasts this with Christianity's grandiose and, Freud maintains, impossible commandment to 'Love thy neighbour as thy neighbour loves thee.' Freud states that communism's attempt to redress inequality by abolishing private property rights and rights of inheritance don't take into account the 'natural' inequalities that will always occur due to varying genetic physical attributes and innate and unequal mental abilities. Freud writes that:
Aggression was not created by property; it prevailed with almost no restriction in primitive times, when property was very scanty. [pg 50]Freud considers aggression "an indestructible feature of human nature."
It was also interesting, on pg 50, to read Freud's comments about one outlet for mankind's natural aggression which is found within small tight cultural units, where aggression is directed outwards to outsiders. Freud calls this the 'narcissism of small differences.' pg 51
As a scientist I enjoyed Freud's simple description of the goal of science.
...What we strive for in scientific work - a simple answer that neither neglects nor does violence to the facts.In Part VII Freud speaks about internal controls that civilization instills to curb mankind's innate aggression, such as guilt and the need for punishment. I'm sure I could pick up almost any book from the pantheon of literature and find this as one of the themes in the book.
Professor Zaslove sent along various extracts to consider as we read Freud this week. One of these contained some responses Freud had communicated to Theodor Reik in 1926, when asked by Judge Emil Desenheimer of a Germanic Supreme Provincial Court for his views on capital punishment. Freud raised the issue of 'talion' as an early legal principle, a term I'd never heard of.
According to Britannica Online Encyclopaedia: Talion: A talion is a legal principle originating back in Babylonian times and in Palestine, based on the "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" concept. The law makers in those times, and extending through the early Roman times and occasionally resurfacing in the middle ages, felt that the punishment should more literally match the crime. Eventually the injured party could also choose to be compensated financially instead. The Latin term was lex talionis.
Reading about it in Britanica Online, it made me think of my recent trip a couple of weeks ago to Todos Santos Cuchumatan, in northwestern Guatemala. I've been there yearly since 2009, working on a canine population and rabies control project for Veterinarians Without Borders Canada. It's a Mayan community which has been able to maintain a strong sense of identity and culture and resist the pace of change experienced elsewhere in the last century. Though I'm seeing changes even in just 4 years, due to the availability of cellphones and the internet, it is still quite traditional. This year we had one team member interviewing some of the people in the community. One interesting thing to come out was a different concept of justice. I knew that the municipal leaders spend much of their time mediating property disputes and other areas of conflict but one woman's story really brought it home to me. Most of the dogs in Todos Santos, owned or otherwise, run loose in the community. One woman told us that her dog, while running loose, had got into her neighbour's house and had eaten some of the neighbour's food. The neighbour complained to the municipality and asked to be compensated for her loss. The decision, and this was not deemed unusual by the community, was that the dog-owning woman had to either poison her dog or else pay a significant amount to the neighbour to make up for the lost food. Being poor, the woman had to poison her own dog, something she is still heart-broken over months later. This to me is an odd way of dispensing justice but it seems to fit with the ancient concept of 'talion'.
Freud seems to have a pessimistic tone in his book. Having recently experienced WWI in the decade prior to this book being published, Freud must have been disillusioned about the earlier bright promise of civilization and the industrial revolution. The aggression, territorialism, brutality and carnage that occurred during the war would have seemed an enormous fall from the civilized heights promised by the advances of the 19th century. In this book Freud proposes that mankind may
gradually carry out such modifications in our civilization as will better satisfy our ... demand for a form of life that will make us happy with[out] allowing so much suffering, which could probably be avoided. [pg 52]
In the year 2013, I'm finding it hard to judge whether civilization/culture or society have advanced in a desirable way from where we were at the beginning of the 20th century or whether we have lost our way. This is probably a significant factor in my decision to embark upon this Master's program and explore the works of bright people over the preceding centuries and up until today. I'll see if I'm able to come to any decisive conclusion 4 years hence.
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