Freud's "Civilisation and Its Discontents"

Civilisation and Its Discontents is one of my favourite texts, ironically, for the same reasons that cause me problems with so many of the other texts that we read.  I find Freud's arrogance in this work is simply delightful, and the fact that he so fearlessly challenges religion is symbolic of the shift in the role of religion in both the governing sphere and public perception in a post-Darwin world.

Both Darwin and Freud challenged the status quo and revolutionised public thought in ways which we still debate today. Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection changed our perspective of our species; Freud’s model of the mind changed our perspective on ourselves.  They each made immense contributions to a broad range of disciplines based on their eclectic competencies.  Darwin was proficient in the areas of “anatomy, botany, embryology, geology, palaeontology, taxonomy, and zoology”; while Freud was knowledgeable in the areas of “anatomy, neurology, pharmacology, philosophy, physiology, and psychology”.   Both men left their stamp on each of their fields as well many others. 

It helped that they shared many scientific traits: they used their keen powers of observation and their ability to draw conclusions from a wide array of seemingly unrelated subjects enabled them to realise the significance of and synthesize this knowledge into new insights.   As well, they were both prolific writers and exceptional communicators with enthusiastic supporters who championed their message and their work. However, without Darwin’s controversial theories which laid the groundwork and foundation for Freud’s model, Freud’s work would never have found the acceptance that it did as his model of the human mind was greatly influenced and aided both directly by Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as by the scientific and philosophical debates it provoked.

Freud often patterned his ideas of development and maturity to the process of evolution, a fact which is clearly evident in Civilization and Its Discontents.  Freud posits that the basis of civilization is tied directly to the physical evolution of man, specifically to “man’s adopting of an erect posture”.   He suggests that civilization is built on man’s need to co-operate in order to provide for a family, thus ensuring ongoing access to satisfying “genital needs”.  He commonly uses phrases such as “ape-like prehistory” and “primitive man”  as if there were no question of their validity, and he uses this visceral image to encourage readers to visualise and rationalise the primal instincts within. 

Freud himself links his work to Darwin in other, even more direct ways.  He suggested that "Humanity has . . . had to endure . . . [three] great outrages upon its naive self-love”  and detailed these three outrages as follows:  First, he cited the impact of Galileo’s theories and noted the perceived insult to humanity’s self-image “when [humanity] realized that our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly conceivable”.  Second, he claimed that Darwin’s theory of evolution "robbed man of his particular privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him to descent from the animal world".  The third great outrage was, of course, his own work “which robbed humans even of the consolation that we at least possess rational minds”.  

Pure arrogance! By likening himself to great thinkers such as Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin, Freud both elevated his work and sought shelter in their shadow.  Each of these men had faced controversy with their works, which all directly or indirectly questioned God’s all-encompassing powers and the special relationship he had with man.

Less than a century after Darwin opened the doors for a shift in religious ideology to more scientific, evidence based theory of evolution, Freud, a dedicated atheist, opened Civilization and Its Discontents by clearly dismissing the ideas of God, religion and creationism.  Indeed, the first third of the text criticizes the feeling of “religiosity”, likening it to an undeveloped maturity.  He believed this feeling could be traced to a lingering “child’s feeling of helplessness”  and the longing for a missing (non-existent) father, subtly criticising all who believed in a higher power.  A few hundred years earlier, Galileo was imprisoned for life for suggesting ideas that were not in the Christian cannon.  Without Darwin’s careful deployment of his ideas that eventually found scholastic acceptance during the Oxford Evolutionary Debates of 1860, it would not have been possible for Freud to speak his mind so freely.

Works Cited:
Freud, Sigmund.  Civilizations and Its Discontents. Toronto: Penguin Group, 2002.  Print.