60 in 60: #19 – Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (Penguin’s Great Ideas)
This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.
Civilization and Its Discontents
by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Memorable Line (if you can call it that)
“These people make themselves independent of the concurrence of the object of their love by shifting the main emphasis from being loved to their own loving; they protect themselves against the loss of the love object by directing their love not to individuals, but to everyone in equal measure, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by deviating from its sexual aim and transforming the drive into an aim-inhibited impulse.”
The Skinny
Freud’s thoughts on guilt and the self, here expressed in the context of society in general, formed the foundation for psychoanalysis.
Relevance? Argument?
I’ve never been fond of Freud; I am with Nabokov in this, and for similar reasons. But I think it goes further than that. I have a fiction writer’s aversion to psychology precisely because this is part of what we deal in: a kind of displaced therapy through our characters. To engage in therapy and be healed of some wound would be to remove the kernel of discontent from which our prose receives its power. At least, this is part of why I write, and why I became a writer.* So this wariness of Freud is almost work-related–a wish not to be analyzed, to keep my wounds, my issues, and deploy them in my fiction. What I do remember of Freud from college seemed like reading a particularly boring creative writing book on characterization.
In revisiting Freud, I became less suspicious, perhaps because this particular selection operates on a much higher level than what I remember reading 20 years ago. And yet, ultimately, much of what Freud says here is either so well-known today or has so permeated the world through his writings, that it seems overly familiar. (Not to mention, phrases like “turbulent genital-love” can only be described by a modern layperson as silly or fodder for Wayne’s World.)
As an example of this familiarity, a section on the use of drugs to achieve “a fervently desired degree of independence from the external world” includes this somewhat obvious statement: “The effect of intoxicants in the struggle for happiness and in keeping misery at a distance is seen as so great a boon that not only individuals, but whole nations, have accorded them a firm place in the economy of the libido.” In another section, Freud points out that material wealth does not bring happiness. Really?
Everything here is idea, too, with little set-up, and I think this is what ultimately almost drove me mad in reading Freud: almost every paragraph cries out for a firmer foundation first and an expansion afterwards. But already we are moving on to something else. The eye rebels from this approach–it slides away, refuses to engage as fully. Woolf defeated me simply because I did not have sufficient time to devote to it; Freud defeated me because my brain kept telling me it was going to buy a gun and end itself if I didn’t stop reading…and yet I continued on regardless, like some kind of masochist, my protestations nearly Nietzschean in their pomposity.
This isn’t to say the entire book loomed out of the shadows like a dead monument. The true versus “psychical” nature of cities held some interest, with its idea of ghost buildings still existing: “…let us make the fantastic assumption that Rome is not a place where people live, but a psychical entity with a similarly long, rich past, in which nothing that ever took shape has passed away, and in which all previous phases of development exist beside the most recent. For Rome, this would mean that on the Palatine hill the imperial palaces and the Septizonium of Septimius Severus still rose to their original height…” It is the very idea of the layering of a communcal human memory as expressed through architecture, and something Ruskin may well have noted in his writings.
Where Freud also caught my attention, it was mostly with regard to his thoughts on boredom, and the (sometimes self-destructive) ways in which we attempt to cure boredom…even as he continued to bore me. There are echoes of Schopenhauer here, but Freud is much less compelling in his prose. I longed many times for Darwin’s stoic but often colorful plodding while slogging through page after page of a book I know has influenced the very legitimate and useful science of psychology.
* What is this wound? None of your business–look to your own, and keep it secret, too, that you may use it skillfully.
Conclusion
I am not Freud’s ideal reader at this moment in time, under these particular environmental stressors.
Question for Readers
What has Freud meant to you?
Next up, George Orwell’s Why I Write…
January 2, 2009 at 10:07 am
“a wish not to be analyzed, to keep my wounds, my issues, and deploy them in my fiction.”
God, Jeff, that’s some self-important bullshit. Nabokov could get away with something like that because he was well, Nabokov, but come on. You’re not deploying any wounds anywhere. And the very fact that you believe that psychoanalysis would “cure” you of something means that you believe that it WORKS, and therefore Freud is right in his theory of mind and of treatment.
You clearly oppose to psychoanalysis as a practice, but you don’t have to be an analysand to grappe with Freud. You’re not reading a textbook, but Civilization and its Discontents, for one!
And when you say things like “Freud defeated me because my brain kept telling me it was going to buy a gun and end itself if I didn’t stop reading…” makes me wonder why do you engage in such an exercise (reading the 60 books), since it’s clear that you’re not enjoying it. In more ways than one you’re not engaging these texts with the intellectual rigor I would expect from a writer of your stature; sometimes I have the impression I’m reading a teenager’s comments about the big guys like Nietzsche, Freud, etc.
January 2, 2009 at 10:34 am
There’s a short story by Chekhov in which he describes a doctor who loves humanity as a whole, and loathes each and every client that walks in his door. Also reminds me of the maid in Remembrance of Things Past who cries tears over the thought of abstract misfortune and pain in others, and is a terror to all the under-maids who slave away beneath her. Which I bring up due to your Memorable Line–fascinating insight into an intriguing character type.
Also, I loved this line in your review above: “What I do remember of Freud from college seemed like reading a particularly boring creative writing book on characterization.” Ha!
James Grebmops: Relax, dude! You’re like a stable hand watching Hercules clear out the Augean Stables in a day, and after the man is done comments snidely that it’s all very well and good to attempt the impossible, but that he should have groomed each cow individually while he was at it. If you’re not attempting a similar feat, I’d advise you to ease up on the ridiculous criticism.
January 2, 2009 at 11:23 am
Thanks, Phil. I’ve become, no pun intended, somewhat philosophical about the presence of naysayers. You cannot please everyone all of the time, or even most of the time.
However, James, I’m close to officially designating you a troll at this point–your existence here is tenuous, beginning to become ghost-like as you recede farther into that background labeled “almost spam”. LOL.
You also might make up your mind as to exactly what level of stature I’m suppose to operate at, although I’m not particularly inclined to take the opinion of someone who appears to be a Nazi sympathizer with anything other than a grain or two of salt. Either I’m not capable of engaging a text at the right level or I’m simply underperforming. It’s also not for you to dictate to me the borders of my inner life.
I say none of this with heat, you understand. This is the internet. Everyone is equal and no one is equal, although I think I can say for a fact I’m a lot closer to being Nabokov than you are. So at this point, put up or shut up. Read one of these books each day for 60 days and let’s see how you handle it. I’ve chosen to be honest about my experience with the series. I could easily have tried to pretend otherwise, but this is also about documenting the process. And the fact is, I might well go back to engage either Freud or Nietzsche and find both of them still lacking what I need from them. But what I am telling you with both F and N right now, in real time, is that I am willing to admit uncertainty and vulnerability. What kind of human being attacks that kind of admission?
And isn’t the quest for knowledge supposed to be selfish? We pull from these texts what we can use. We discard the rest, or come back to it later. I still got something out of Freud, even with the limited time frame, with his discussion of the psychic life of cities that will be useful to me in my fiction.
This is the last time I’ll respond to you, James, because I’ve just wasted 15 minutes of my life that could’ve gone into creating something. But behave yourself–which means treat other people the way you would like to be treated. Otherwise, you will be treated the way you are treating others.
January 2, 2009 at 12:26 pm
This is the only Freud work I’ve read; had to read it for a Cultural History of the Early 20th Century class 13 years ago. What I remember most about it is that Freud basically set up a Manichean dualism in his talk about the twin drives of Eros and Thanatos. Thanatos, or the Death Drive, got a lot more coverage, both in the book and in the class, for how Freud tried to represent some of the driving mechanisms of societal interaction and change. Of course, I’m not a dualist, so while I can appreciate some of what Freud was arguing, ultimately I felt, as did you, Jeff, that he should have explained his points better.
I also have another beef with Freud. He and his disciples inspired that odious, half-baked movement to write “psychhistories” of dead historical figures. Robert Waite’s The Psychopathic God, about Hitler, was one of the worst-argued, pathetic, ill-informed pieces of dreck that I’ve ever had the misfortune to read and to review. It failed to use contemporary sources correctly, settling instead for implying developments rather than actually attempting to prove them. I blame Freud for inspiring Waite, who used to be a reputable historian, to write such utter tripe.
Hrmm…I guess a Freudian would point out the psychopathic hatred spewing here? ;)
January 2, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Turbulent Genital Love
awesome band name
January 2, 2009 at 1:32 pm
oh dear, i fear that comment lacked intellectual rigor
January 2, 2009 at 1:33 pm
LOL! Yes, indeed.
January 2, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Felix,
Thanks for reminding me how much Freud inspired my best friend and I, when we were in college, to make up band names. Psychology minors have to do something, right?
But yes, Turbulent Genital Love would not only make for a great band name, but it could describe teen romantic comedies, no?
January 2, 2009 at 8:34 pm
I used Freud’s ‘The Uncanny’ as a theoretical entry point for my Honours thesis, but I’m with you Jeff – I’m not particularly fond Freud either. With the uncanny though, he certainly touched on something that has relevance to fantasy literature, especially more recent and new weird titles.
At any rate, your review here was great – it has a casual tone that, I feel, proves your attempt to be honest with the series. Anyone expecting deep and insightful commentary after one night’s reading is missing the point.
January 3, 2009 at 10:22 am
Thanks, Seth. I took the liberty of going back over Freud again today, and I stand by the “little set up” for his ideas part of my reaction. This really is huge chunks of Idea, and I don’t find it particularly well written or fleshed-out.
Jeff
January 3, 2009 at 6:55 pm
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