An Analysis of "Civilization and Its Discontents"

In his book Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud eventually gets around to making a comparison between civilization and the super-ego. He traces the origin of the super-ego back to primitive man, and discusses its destructive role in the modern individual. It seems that we must find a way to tame the super-ego in order to escape repression.

According to Freud, the super-ego is "an agency which has been inferred by us, and conscience is a function which we ascribe, among other functions, to that agency" (100). In other words, the super-ego has the power of making us feel good or bad about the things we do, and even the things we contemplate doing. Before the super-ego developed, an external force, as Freud points out - a father figure, punished individuals for the wrongful acts they committed. Over time a super-ego formed as an interior force. Any aggression felt by the ego toward anything, is superimposed upon that ego by the super-ego, rather than the individual releasing that aggression on the external object for which it was originally intended. The super-ego punishes the individual for the acts that they think of, making it hard for them to actually commit said acts, because "the distinction, moreover, between doing something bad and wishing to do it disappears entirely, since nothing can be hidden from the super-ego, not even thoughts" (86).

However, many of these acts are such that they entice the ego, and so, they must be pleasurable to some degree. If the instincts of the ego are consistently overruled by the super-ego, the individual will experience an unhealthy internal tension. A greater problem arises when the super-ego will not allow the ego any pleasure, propelling the individual into a neurotic state: