Freud's View Of Civilization example essay topic

Freud's view of civilization emerges from his understanding of the struggle between Eros and Death. Freud expresses the existence of two contrary instincts, Eros and Death, via starting from the speculations on the beginning of life and biological parallels. While Eros preserves the living substance and joins it into larger units, such as societies, Death dissolves these units and brings them back to their primeval state. The death drives appear to be regressive, striving for a return to a less differentiated, less organized state of tensionlessness. In contrast, Eros (which embraces sexual and life-preserving instincts) is progressive in seeking ever more differentiated forms of organized life and even the widening of differences in it as between the organism and its surroundings. Freud explains the life as concurrent or mutually opposing action of, and therefore balance between Eros and death instincts.

Beside this, civilization works with Eros in order to combine individuals to form families, then families to form nations and then great unity of mankind. Actually, the founding of families aroused from the permanent need of male for genital satisfaction. As a result of this, the male wanted his sex object, the female near him, while also the female did not want to leave from her children and had to stay with the stronger male. After that, the sons discovered that a union could be stronger than a single individual by overpowering their father. Because of that, the sons imposed some restrictions to work to each other in order to preserve the new state. Therefore, there are two foundations of the communal life of the human beings: the power of love between man and woman, and woman and her child, and the compulsion to work created by external necessity.

The first one of these foundations is the result of Eros and the other is the result of the death instinct, which serves for Eros to combine individuals. However, in most cases death distinct opposes to civilization because of the results of death instinct. Because the death instinct directs towards the external world and it occurs as an instinct of aggressiveness and destructiveness. In this way the instinct enters the service of Eros, such that the organism destroys other things instead of destroying itself.

However, restriction of these instincts directed towards other things speeds up the process of destroying itself. In civilized society, we have restrained our inclination to aggression through the rule of law and the imposition of authority (both internal and external), to ensure the maximum security and happiness for all. While we originally entered society precisely to be protected from nature, escape the forces of mutual aggression and self-destruction, the necessity to thwart our aggressive instincts has caused great unhappiness and development of guilt. In addition, Freud supports that the civilization is largely responsible for our misery and we should be much happier if we return the primitive conditions. Because the aggressiveness caused by death instinct is tried to repress by the rule of law, imposition of the authority or ongoing result of these, superego. Freud identifies an overwhelming sense of guilt as one of the central problems threatening modern civilization since individuals have consequently begun to rebel against civilization with an aggression that exceeds the level of aggression originally suppressed, threatening the disintegration of society, and attributes it to the operation of the superego, an internal psychical agency that monitors the intentions and actions of the ego, keeping the aggressive instincts of the latter in check.

Essentially, the aggression that was initially directed outside of the self is redirected into the self. A part of the ego separates from the rest to form the superego. Conflict between the ego and superego creates guilt, a need for punishment. Another term for the superego is conscience.

Freud traces the formation of the superego back to the primordial act of rebellion against authority: the killing of the father by his sons, who were left with such a sense of remorse that they internalized the authority formerly represented by their father. The superego often puts severe demands on the individual that he cannot realistically met, causing great unhappiness. Freud also posits the existence of a collective superego, embodied by forceful leaders or men of great achievement, that operates on a larger scale within a given culture or society. The superego is also important in our development because it no longer allows for the renunciation of a wish since we can't hide any thought from it; simply not acting on a wish isn't enough to keep the superego from punishing the ego. We can see the effects of Eros and death instinct in the "Epic of Gilgamesh".

For instance, Enkidu, who the gods created as a match of Gilgamesh, is acquainted with the civilization via the harlot, who is the sex object of Enkidu. Since Enkidu wants his sex object near him, he goes to Uruk, which symbolizes the civilization, with her. This is the effect of Eros that introduces civilization to Enkidu. Since Eros has the power to join individuals in a larger unit via the love between man and woman. While Eros contributes to the civilization by Enkidu, Gilgamesh, who search's for immortality, directs his death instinct to all animates living in his city and so the civilization.

Also the fight of Gilgamesh and Enkidu with Humbaba exhibits the other foundation of the communal life, which is the compulsion to work. They incorporate in order to overcome with Humbaba. Actually, this incorporation is the result of the death instinct, which serves for Eros since it joined two individual for the same aim. Enkidu and Gilgamesh direct their death instinct, towards external world, Humbaba, as aggressiveness and destructiveness via the fight with Humbaba. In addition, as a result of Eros the goddess Ishtar comes to Gilgamesh and offers to become his lover. However, Gilgamesh refuses her.

Ishtar's ego cannot accept this and she sends Bull of Heaven to kill Gilgamesh. This is the result of the aggressiveness of the death instinct that cannot repressed by superego of Ishtar. But Gilgamesh and Enkidu overcome Bull of Heaven by working together arising from Eros. The other example of the death instinct can be seen in the death of Enkidu.

When Enkidu saw his death in his dream, he curses the temple harlot, Sham hat, and the trapper, for introducing him to civilization. Because he sees the cause of his death is civilization and he is regretful about the leave the nature, freedom and coming into civilization which is the cause of misery. Lastly, with the death of Enkidu, Gilgamesh falls in misery and he draws back to his side from the society. As it is seen the effect of death instinct shows itself again. Alphonso Lingis, in his article entitled "Lust", suggests some ways in which Freud may be mistaken. He makes the description of the libido as it is not nostalgia for and pleasure in carnal contact, but it makes the self a representative.

If our libido is a part of ourselves, then the libidinous gesture or movements represents the self. Because the libidinous gesture or move does not transact with another for get pleasure from the sexual gratification, but for another libidinous gesture, which is a representative of another self. Actually, the libidinal encounter is not a transaction with body parts, but with representatives of self, representative's of Oedipal personages, castes, classes, cultures, nations, economies and continents. After that, Lingis criticizes the comprehension of pleasure that is created by Freud.

The intensive pleasure described by Freud is orgasmic pleasure when the desire of the subject is restricted and then abruptly released. Therefore, pleasure consists of two stages: contentment and quiescence of death. However, voluptuous pleasure is not end with the reaching of the sexual objective. It annihilates all purposes and directions and it does not end with the quiescence of death, but with bursting. Lingis mentions from the division of self that is called as multiple personality disorder by Freud. According to Freud, unconscious, infantile self that does not communicate with the public exhibits the multiple personality disorder.

However, the secrecy fragments our social identity. We develop different identities for different situations, such that we decide our physics forces into systems dealing with their own occupations. Also Lingis explains the split in each of us in the point of libidinal representation of self. Libidinous desire in us, which represents the self and make the self a representative, transacts with the representatives of others who are representatives, functions to suppress, control or mask the lustful body.

Therefore, the non-communication between them provides the maintenance of the solidarity and the identity of libidinal representation of self. Furthermore, this can function to establish a division of labor between libidinous desire and lust. In addition, Freud explains the separation in each of us as a result of the repression, which arises from the unconsciousness that occurs with the censorship of the consciousness. But Lingis opposes the description of repression. He supports that in order to repress a representation the censorship would have to present that representation. Thus regression would be a contradiction in terms of an infinite regress.

Lingis's choice of the word 'lust', rather than say 'desire' or 'libido', in his essay is important. 'Desire' and 'libido' are terms with a considerable theoretical burden, often connoting forms of eroticism constituted by and channel led within the parameters of a given culture or libidinal economy. 'Lust' does not carry these theoretical associations, retaining a sense of raw energy, of pure and impure pleasure seeking, of the pornographic, of an unruly and perhaps even ungovernable transgressive force that does not recognise norms of erotic propriety. However, Lingis uses 'lust' in a slightly more technical way. While not providing a definition, in his text the term 'lust' is used to describe the simultaneous confusion and liberation of one culturally constituted libido when it meets another, differently constituted form of eroticism.

For Lingis 'desire' is a form of libido linked to the affirmation and solidification of identity within a given culture, while 'lust' is libido beyond cultural limits and norms which can undermine and liquefy the apparent certainties of who we are as men and women as well as the genders of those we desire. Finally, Lingis states that 'desire' is desire for the absent, for infinity. Gerda Lerner, in "The Creation of Patriarchy", first criticizes the comprehension of Freud about the builders of the civilization. She thinks that men and women built civilization jointly. However, Freud supports that civilization is created via permanent need of male for genital satisfaction and so need of female. Actually, civilization is not only a concept that arouses from the sexual desires between male and female, but also from social interaction between individuals.

In addition, Freud thinks that the civilization has become the business of men, since the task performed are more difficult and women are not capable of doing them. On the other hand, Lerner supports that in the first steps of the civilization while females developed skills and knowledge in order to care their infants, males continued to search for food. Beside this, Freud expresses that women constituted an opposition to civilization since they did not want to be separated from their young child in order to continue the civilization. But Lerner opposes this idea, since the survival of the group or society and continuation of civilization depended on women because of reproductive, nursing and childbearing features of women.

Furthermore, women's skill was as manifold as those of men and women's knowledge was greater since the knowledge of women is necessary for survival. Therefore she thinks that woman was not a sex object of man, but she was man's equal or his superior. Also, Gerda Lerner criticizes the Freud's ideas about separation of the self from the external world. Freud says that for a child the environment consists of mother who is the source of food, warmth, protection and pleasure. Therefore, the infant cannot differentiate self from mother. Whenever its needs are not met, it acknowledges the external world and so it starts to separate self from this external world.

However, modern psychological studies showed that interaction between mother and child, such as mother's body response, her smile, her speech, help to form the child's concept of external world and self. Thus, this interaction provides the infant derive pleasure in its ability to impose its will on the environment, and has crucial importance in the character formation and identity of the individual. This shows that the relationships with others, that is seen as the source of suffering by Freud, necessary to develop self in individual as it is seen in mother-infant relationship. In the Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner supports the ideas of Nancy Chodorow about the difference between ego boundaries in male and female, which are also against the idea of Freud about the separation of the self from the world.

She says that while male separates himself from mother and as well as from external world and creates more rigid ego boundaries, female's experience more flexible ego boundaries and define herself as the continuous of the mother. As a conclusion, Gerda Lerner criticizes the idea of Freud, i. e., women anatomy creates their destiny in the civilization. However, difference between male and female is not about strength and endurance, but about the reproductive differences and the ability to nurse of female. Because of these differences, destiny of female in society was designated by the anatomy of female in the past, but this is no longer valid and nor should it be. If we look at the probable criticisms of Gerda Lerner of about the Alphonso Lingis article, Lust, we can see the main difference between them, which is the point of view about woman. Lingis mentions about woman while he is mentioning about prostitutes in Bangkok.

This means that like Freud, Lingis sees woman as sex object. Furthermore, he degrades women by saying that travesties in the stage of Calypso are women than women. He does not consider the reproductive property of women and therefore he exhibits the tendency towards men. Gerda Lerner might criticize this point of view of Lingis.

Other than that, these two writers do not exhibits big differences since their point of views are different. Gerda Lerner approaches to the topic historically and deal with the subordination of women. On the other hand, Lingis mentions about the representation of self and desire.