Sigmund's Shorts – Why are we so Miserable? On Freud's 'Civilisation and its Discontents'

so uh good um morning evening afternoon wherever you are in the world and welcome to this uh sigmund's short talk my name is Stefan and I'm one of the learning managers here at the Museum the Freud Museum and I look after the um the schools program here uh my brief was to talk for about 20 minutes on a subject of my choosing and the title I've gone for is uh why are we so miserable okay um and what I'm going to be doing is basically a sort of potted summary of one of Freud's books um called civi

lization and it's discontents and and I thought to do it in the form of a kind of angry rant okay Freud starts the book by um he's opening Gambit in this book civilization and its discontents is to consider something that Romaine roll Arms This French author has uh said to him some comments on what Roland calls the oceanic feeling now the oceanic feeling is uh it's coined by Romaine Roland not Freud and and what Roland is describing there is a sense of Eternity yeah a sense of limitlessness and

Oneness with the universe that he thinks that um gets taken up by the world's religions and then channeled okay so it's like it looks like kind of like the the rolands this Oceanic feeling is a sort of source of all religious sentiments and Freud's reading of it is that it's going to be a kind of relaxation between uh between um the self and the world so relaxation of the boundaries of the ego so what's happening in that Oceanic feeling is that we're experiencing self and worlds in a kind of con

tinuity so most of the time we experience it ourselves as distinct from the outside worlds but the boundary between self and world isn't actually a stable as we might like to think According to Freud and at certain points uh particularly around themes of sex and love the boundary becomes blurred and also Freud wants to point out that our sense of self isn't actually there from the start okay so um it's the result of a process of development okay so for Freud a newborn baby doesn't really disting

uish between me and not me it just experiences a kind of continuity of Sensations so first there's what Freud calls a primary sense of self yeah which exists prior to any recognition of a boundary between self and world and secondly and after that what Freud calls a quote narrower more sharply defined sense of self that kicks in as we grow up and that's going to be links to to things um to terms like identification and separation okay but Freud sort of that said Freud disagrees with Roland's cla

im that the oceanic feeling is the source of all religious feeling before he's going to argue there that actually it's secondary okay and what he thinks is primary is a certain vulnerability a certain helplessness and a certain need for protection and there's a quote that gets shared quite a lot on the Internet it's from this book where Freud says I can't think of a greater need in childhood than that of a father's protection okay which um you can even get it in Father's Day cards I'm going to c

ome back to that in a few minutes so how does Freud build his argument in Civilization and its discontents Freud's starting point is that as a rule we're all miserable and for Freud that's just a basic observation of his psychoalytic Clinic it's one of the strange findings of psychoanalysis that that Beyond appearances no one's happy yeah everyone's misery and for Freud in a very sort of basic simplistic way and religion basically steps in to inject meaning Into The Misery by deluding us into th

inking that life has some kind of a purpose and Freud even goes so far as to suggest that the claim that life has a meaning is fundamentally a religious and fictitious claim so the idea that any of us who've become convinced that life has some sort of a meaning yeah even if we're not religious for Freud we're experiencing a delusion Okay so what kind of purpose do people ascribe to their lives now if you go to the pub and you ask someone in the pub what they think about the purpose of life you a

sk them one of those big questions they're probably going to tell you something pretty boring and you know let's all be happy you're very unlikely to meet someone in the pub who's going to turn around and say well you know life is essentially you know ceaseless blinds suffering and Godless and different universe and that our tragedy as human beings is that we can't help but deceive ourselves into thinking that it means something okay so the in a sense for Freud we're victims of our meaning makin

g apparatus it's our tragedy okay it's a tragedy of our feeble-mindedness that we think we live in a meaningful universe Freud observes that generally speaking in life we strive for happiness and we strive to avoid misery the problem is happiness is actually quite difficult to come by not only that but it's not something we can really sustain as a permanent State of Affairs so so happiness it's always fleeting moments of satisfaction in a human life and it gets worse because not only is happines

s always fleeting and quite hard to come by but also misery is always close at hand um and according to Freud that the three obvious sources of misery in a human life are one are bodies which will Decay and die um but not before causing a significant pain two and the external World which is full of danger and destruction and three um lastly interestingly enough other people um so it's not that we're not pleasure seeking creatures it's just that for Freud most of the time the pests we can manage

the best we can muster is is to to to to be pain avoiding creatures yeah so for Freud it's really not surprising that we've learned or we're supposed to have learned to manage our expectations when it comes to happiness okay to count ourselves lucky that we're not just in their constant state of pain anguish and and torment yeah well not consciously at least for Freud there's really no one-size-fits-all way to navigate all of this and it's up to each of us to find our own individual ways of copi

ng with the misery of existence and finding some consolation and he lists off very interesting he lists off a few ways to to handle the inevitable misery of existence so here's Freud's list uh one trying to tame our unruly bodily tribes and direct them towards less intense satisfactions okay so you know instead of killing your boss you go home and kick the cat yeah two trying to divert our pleasure seeking instincts into intellectual or artistic or scientific Pursuits okay um so that's what Freu

d calls sublimation okay so you know instead of you know sitting around masturbating all day um you become a contemporary artist yeah three joining a mass movement of people to attempt what Freud calls a delusional reshaping of real so for always talk about a religion but you know you could extend that you know a cult of some kind of conspiracy theory an internet subculture a political movement whatever okay so a delusional reshaping of reality um four turning away from the world and becoming a

Hermit five getting drunk and six becoming ill okay because for Freud neurotic illness is fundamentally linked to an economy of satisfaction yeah people become ill when too much of a sacrifice is imposed on them that's Freud's list now the problem is the methods we use to avoid misery also diminish the possibilities that are available to us for happiness okay because you know kicking the cat yeah while pleasurable is not nearly as pleasurable as killing someone that you don't like so and as long

as our drives are only partially satisfied we're going to end up being irresistibly drawn towards forbidden things and developing all kinds of symptoms and perversions and interestingly enough one factor that Freud singles out is a major source of misery in a human life is quote how much satisfaction one can expect to obtain from the world so how much satisfaction we expect and perhaps that Point's particularly relevant to our times considering that under the conditions of capitalism we're just

bombarded with messages about the abundance of satisfactions available to us which we're supposed to be pursuing like it's some sort of a sacred ethical Duty Freud's contention is that much of our misery is actually caused by Civilization now isn't that counterintuitive don't we usually think of civilization as protecting us from suffering yeah apparently not okay so disillusionment with civilization is pretty widespread and for Freud it's pretty deep rooted now what is civilization Freud comes

up with various definitions he's particularly interested in how civilization functions to bind people together into larger and larger groups and communities and he spends quite a lot of time in that book civilization is discontent speculating about how that process has unfolded over history but he's all also interested in how becoming civilizer civilized hasn't really worked out that well for us at all why hasn't it worked out one thing that Freud sees as a defining feature of civilization is t

he regular regulation of social relations so he argues that as soon as you've got that you've got several civilizations as soon as you've got the regulation of social relations and without that you know you're just being a sort of dog eat dog world where it's survival of the fittest and so on so once you've got regulation of social relations you've got civilization and there's a kind of power shifts and the power shift is that the collective power of the community gets the upper hand over the po

wer of Any Given individual okay so that's the shift and Freud's argument is that the essence of that shift is what he calls renunciation so in other words it's that Civilization Demands a Sacrifice everyone who has the laws of social life imposed on them has had to restrict their possibilities for satisfaction so you know the price we pay for entering into the social order is a loss in the order of satisfaction and given that what Freud says uh you know what he has to say about the misadventure

that is human sexuality the obvious conclusion is that this is inevitable and that the laws of civilization are imposed on us and are ultimately imposed on our very bodies the problem is that the individual's Pursuit of Happiness ends up coming into conflicts with the sacrifices That civilization imposes on the individual okay and Freud sees that as Mankind's great struggle okay to find a livable balance between the demands of civilization and the individuals search for happiness he asks a ques

tion is a Harmony possible so can we envisage a civilization that gets that balance right yeah and the stakes are high in this question because what's at stake is the idea of progress yeah if it's just a matter of finding the right social configuration finding the right balance then we can still preserve the idea of progress we can still think of civilization as gradually progressing towards some you know form of utopia but if that perfect equilibrium that balance is structurally impossible it o

pens up the much more disturbing possibility that the tension between individual and Society is increasing and the possibility that Civilization is on a path to self-destruction now just to recap Freud's argument is um human beings are inhabited by powerful bodily drives that are pushing for satisfaction and that Civilization is built on the sacrifice of those satisfactions his argument isn't just that Civilization demands that we let go of a part of our sexuality it's not only that it's that Ci

vilization appropriates that part of human sexuality for its own purpose of binding communities together in what Freud calls aim inhibited affection so the sexuality That civilization appropriates in that way gets withdrawn from the individual it becomes unavailable so as social beings the idea is that we're marked by a loss of satisfaction and that the other side of that is of course the the individual's sexuality becomes something that's threatening to civilization and civilization has to take

restrictive measures against it for Freud that's one of the reasons that we tend to be hostile towards civilization yeah it's taken something from us and it's also the reason that we tend to be hostile towards one another in Freud's book civilization and its discontents there's a famous discussion about the biblical commandment thou shalts love thy neighbor as thyself yeah and Freud comments why the hell would I want to do that okay why should I love my neighbor first of all my neighbor might n

ot deserve my love and even if he did it would do an injustice to the people that I really love Yeah my close friends and family yeah secondly I put myself in a very vulnerable position by loving my neighbor he might use my love to harm me or to exploit me so according to Freud what that commandment to Love Thy Neighbor screens out is that human beings are not gentle creatures okay my neighbor's not just a potential sort of object of my love but also someone that I might enjoy attacking or explo

iting deceiving abusing robbing humiliating causing pain torturing or killing yeah so so the whole reason that the Commandment to love thy neighbor was there in the first place is because it doesn't come naturally to human beings to love their their neighbors okay what Freud brings into focus is a human tendency towards aggression which constantly threatens society and that's what the Commandments to love thy neighbor is really there to manage so love thy neighbor yeah um but Freud argues that t

he Commandment to Love Thy Neighbor only really works against what he calls the crudest excesses of brutal violence it does nothing to cut to counter what he calls quote the subtler manifestations of human aggression and in a sense it even encourages them now the subtler manifestations of human aggression that's a very interesting concept and it's difficult to know what that might include but then again maybe it's not so difficult I asked a few friends and this is what we came up with here's a f

ew suggestions the subtler manifestations of human aggression racism misogyny xenophobia bullying scapegoating body shaming undermining belittling passive aggression gaslighting microaggressions systemic Injustice structural violence cultures of enablement othering practices road rage mansplaining in a nutshell the whole spectrum of how we compulsively make life miserable for one another and not only that but what Freud calls are more basic brute aggression hasn't really been tamed either so he

calls our aggressive tendencies an indestructible feature of our human nature they're just being inhibited by counter forces yeah like the Commandment to Love Thy Neighbor which diverts them into all those sort of subtle and not so subtle microaggressions but under the right conditions Freud thinks those counter forces evaporate and violence erupts so Freud civilization imposes a sacrifice not only on sexuality but also on aggression we know what happens to the sexuality we sacrifice it gets use

d to bind communities together in relations of aim inhibited affections so fraternal ties to binds together communities that's what happens to the sexuality According to Freud but where does the aggression go or it's quite disturbing answer is it gets turned inwards it gets turned against ourselves more precisely it gets taken over by the superego and used to attack the ego in the form of conscience now his findings about the superego contradicts a lot of popular ideas about conscience for a sta

rt Freud doesn't think human beings have got any kind of built-in moral compass okay the moral values of the superego are not hardwired they've been internalized through development now what creates the superego well Freud's idea is this when we're very small and helpless and very much dependent on our parents we start to form the impression that we'll lose their love and protection if we don't go along with the rules and ideals that they're imposing on us okay so so that quote the Freud writes

I cannot think of any need in childhood as as strong as the need for a father's protection it gets bandied around all the time like you can you know it's in Father's Day cards it's on the internet um I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection is Boyd wrote those words in the context of a discussion about how the need for a father's protection essentially lays the foundation for much of the guilt and self-loathing and self-destructive tendencies that h

aunt us as human beings so so the superego how does it start well it starts out as you know do this don't do that be a good boy be a good girl yeah and at that basic embryonic stage the childhood stage it's basically just a fear of you know the consequences of not doing what we're told it's basically it's a fear of being found out by the authorities a fear of a loss of love but as we move through childhood and we identify with our parents that has the effect of internalizing their Authority so t

here's a movement from outside to inside and that's where things start to get out of hand how do things get out of hand well first of all because with this internalization with the superego our conscience is never clear even if we act according to moral ideals the superego can read our thoughts and intentions so even after we've given up on a forbidden satisfaction the superego still has access to that layer of our history where we hadn't given up on it and it never lets up so so the superego co

nsiders the ego to be essentially sinful and it never passes up an opportunity to incriminate us to steer us into situations where it's all have grounds for attacking us or to expose us to punishment second feature of the superego that's very disturbing the superego isn't really concerned with whether we're psychologically capable of meeting its demands and you almost get the impression that it's deliberately unreasonable in its demands that it's setting traps for us in the form of impossible de

mands in order to to discharge its aggression onto US third disturbing feature is that the superego is turbocharged it's supercharged by what Freud calls the Death Drive and the death drive that's not a drop just a drive that aims at causing pain and suffering it aims at total Destruction yeah and in the life of the organism it always wins fourth disturbing thing is that the Supreme ghost got a very peculiar and counter-intuitive character characteristic it becomes the more severe the more we ac

t morally yeah so so at first there's the imposition of rules that Force us to sort of give up on some satisfactions but once the superego develops it becomes the other way around yeah Freud writes every renunciation of the drives now becomes a fresh source of conscience every fresh renunciation reinforces its severity so what happens is that a kind of psychological feedback loop emerges the superego sets up an impossible moral ideal that compels us to renounce our aggressive tendencies and then

it takes control of those aggressive tendencies that we've renounced and uses them to attack us and it attacks us with a kind of ferocious energy that's usually completely out of proportion to the apparent transgression yeah if you think of you know the example of the phenomenon of the guilt trip yeah and that's that's how the Noose tightens that's how conscience works for human beings so so that's superego it's not a benign agency it's not that angel that sits on your shoulder and tells you to

do the right thing like it is in the textbooks yeah the superhero is not an angel It's a sadist yeah and what does it thrive on it thrives on the ideals of civilization and by the way I think that's a clue as to why freudians are sometimes suspicious of forms of therapy that seek to adapt people to the ideals and expectations and standards of civilization which we see so much of today of all this the superego puts human beings into a state of what Freud calls permanence internal unhappiness in

the form of attention between the ego and its ideals and perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of the superego is that for the most part all of that happens outside our conscious awareness okay Freud discovers that superego is at work all the time and not just when we're consciously feeling guilty it's not just in the guilt trip so a very common human experience is to have a split second attack of hatred and aggression when someone mildly inconveniences us okay so think about road rage yeah

or if you've ever been on public transport and there's like a tourist standing in the wrong place and it blocks your way and and for a split second you have a murderous thought towards them yeah and then a split second later you forget it and then you know um and you walk off thinking that you're not that person but you know the fact is you had a murderous impulse well for Freud what's happening there is that for a split second for a fleeting moment where redirecting onto someone else what's in

fact a constant invisible pressure on our own selves so when Freud says when Freud says human beings are not gentle creatures of course he's right but in a certain sense he's also tragically wrong yeah he's tragically wrong because thanks to the effects of civilization a lot of the time we do succeed in being gentle and kind towards one another but only in so far as we managed to divert our vast capacity for aggression inwards towards ourselves because civilization follows the principle of what

Freud calls Eros yeah of binding human beings together into into large groups it can only achieve that that goal that binding by reinforcing the superego to a degree that becomes increasingly impossible to endure final disturbing characteristic of the superego is that for the most part we don't consciously experience the superego's devastating cruelty as guilts what we experience instead is just a strange sense of malaise a strange kind of uneasiness of things not being quite right yeah of thin

gs being somehow out of joints yeah and that is what Freud calls the discontent in Civilization According to Freud we've got to reckon with the possibility that that tension is going to increase until it becomes unbearable okay and so we're no longer able to endure the sacrifices That civilization imposes on us or the vast superegoic pressure that accompanies them the question becomes what then well what then we can infer from Freud's work by the way which was written in the 1930s yeah that the

most likely outcome would be something like this the erosion of social bonds yeah so libido that was formally invested in the social Bond withdraws and when it withdraws it floods the ego throwing the ego into a narcissistic paranoid State massive outbursts of aggression and then either the principle of Eros steps in to restore a fragile equilibrium which Freud thinks um might happen but his thinking about that is a bit forced or it doesn't and Society disintegrates and that is the basic argumen

t of Freud's book civilization and its discontents thank you