Freud Civilization and Its Discontents
Humankind strives for happiness, but according to Sigmund Freud, the creation of civilization as a means to further this goal has instead generated unhappiness. In his book Civilization and its Discontents, Freud asserts the happiness of the individual is often sublimated to the need for civilization to establish law and order. People have an instinctual desire for absolute freedom which includes a need to be sexually promiscuous as well as to be violent. To repress these naturally occurring human instincts and create an orderly society, humans have turned to civilization. But in doing so, humans have also created the source of their unhappiness; they are no longer allowed to act in a manner that is instinctually natural. By repressing their natural urges, humans are civilized, but live in a continual state of discontent.

In his analysis of civilization and why so many of its members are unhappy,….

Sigmund Freud
I have chosen to write my I-search paper about Sigmund Freud, known today as the father of psychoanalysis. He has impacted our society a great deal and this is obvious when you simply open up a psychology textbook. This semester I am taking a psychology course and we talk about him a lot. I have learned, not only through my psychology course, but also through my dad who majored in psychology in college, that Freud has influenced how modern day psychologists treat their patients. Some people follow what Freud has said and use his theories and ideas to treat their patients. This is what made me wonder about Sigmund Freud. Who was this person and how has he impacted my decade so much? Has he really contributed as much as people say he has and if so, what exactly did he do? Do his theories even work? With these….

Freud's invention, 'psychoanalysis', wherein the patient would be encouraged by the doctor to talk freely about his varied memories and dreams and associations and thoughts, which became an important part of the psychiatric treatment of patients suffering from mental illnesses, in later years, was, when first introduced in the Vienna of the end of the century, openly ridiculed.
When Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams' was released, there was a commotion as to why these theories could not be accepted. However, Freud's friend and staunch supporter, Adler, saw Freud through the turbulent times, and extended his full and complete support to him, whereby he came to Freud's defense in a medical journal and insisted that Freud's theories be given the attention that they deserved. Gradually, support for Freud did grow, and soon his ideas and theories managed to capture the attention of the rest of Europe, and then the rest of the….

And moreover, the virtues that had been "automatically" accorded to Freud over the years -- "clinical acumen, wisdom in human affairs, dedication to his patients and to the truth" -- are now obscured by the skepticism that has come due to the deep questioning and investigation over time (Kramer, 1998, pp. 199-200). That skepticism among scholars has also been brought on by a lack of "accord" between what Freud posited and "with contemporary opinion about paranoia and post-traumatic stress disorder" (Kramer, 201).
That having been said, contemporary attacks on Freud's character tends to "diminish his work," which may not be fair Kramer continues (201). If estimates of Freud the man are dragged through the mud of unfair criticism and doubt, then Freud's work suffers as well. Kramer wonders, was Freud just a "relentless self-promoter" or do his ideas and theories have value as strong, profoundly honest science? (201).

illiam J. McGrath….

The personal and scientific environments within which Freud grew up therefore represent his primary influences. A further influence came in the form of physics. The second half of the nineteenth century, during which Freud did most of his important work, saw great advances in physics. According to Thornton, the discovery mostly responsible for this was Helmholz's principle of conservation energy. Helmholz held that the total amount of energy in a physical system is constant; that it could be changed but not annihilated; and that when the energy is moved from a part of the system, it would reappear in another part. This principle influenced areas such as thermodynamics, electromagneticism, and nuclear physics. The 19th century therefore saw major discoveries that changed the world.

For Freud, this meant that his field of study was significantly influenced by the principle. At the University of Vienna, for example, Freud's professor, Ernst Brucke published a….

Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche both addressed the concept of human nature and of the society in which human nature are bound by. However due to their different approaches on the matter, they formulated totally different theories for each. This paper endeavours to explore their theories behind human nature, the impact of the world they were living in at the time, religion and approaching utopia through Freud's Civilization and its Discontents and Nietzsche's eyond Good and Evil.
Regarding human nature, Freud was reticent in purporting that we are inherently sinful, but rather that we come in this world full of Id. This wild, instinctive foundation is the basis upon which the infrastructure of the human psyche is erected. We are born into a dangerous world and we endeavor to evade pain and secure pleasure. Freud perceives the Id as a product of our evolutionary progress as Darwin outlined it (e.g. natural….

116). By defining these elements, he constructs a safe model that only applies to his people. Still it was this premise of the potential illness found in the Jewish male that shaped "the discourse of psychoanalysis concerning gender and identity.
The next step in his revolutionary study came with defining his style of psychology. He believed in determination as a construct. This was defined; as one's action is causally determined with consideration that one does not have free will. Freud took this notion a step further and deducted that it is possible to have freedom. This type of conclusion would be typical of Freud's thinking and may seem contradictory and confusing. Deterministic systems by nature are "large closed systems and induce claustrophobia" (Gay, 1990 p. 79). Still he did not believe that people were mere puppets to unknown forces beyond their control. To combat the nature of determination, Freud created….

As a consequence many have thought that the subconscious is some sort of "mystic" area where all the secrets are hidden. These secret parts have also been considered to have negative connotations. Research done in the area after Freud suggests that the subconscious remains "hidden" not because this is its final and fundamental characteristic, but because the individual does not go through with a powerful process of introspection. The mysteries which are hidden in the subconscious remain hidden until the person decides to take a good look inside him, analyze himself and face his fears.
A further critique that can be brought to Freud's theory regarding the interpretation of dreams refers to the powerful sexual dimension which he gives to the symbols in dreams. While the theory is very interesting and many associations can be demonstrated, such is not the case with all of them. Numerous voices have wondered to….

Response 2: Freud

Freud's statement that the only human purpose is to reproduce does not mean that life is meaningless, but that humans are driven, much like animals, not by higher spiritual motivations as theorized in Judaism and Christianity. Even the idea of God comes from the primal, id-driven need for security in a cruel world, the type of security one desires from one's idealized parents. This not only deflates the importance of God, but also one's parents, as it suggests that one's parents are never entirely good enough to provide complete security and comfort. It also suggests that the need for God is childish as well as primitive, a desire to remain in an infantile state when a person has all of his or her needs fulfilled without real effort. Often, humans feel helpless in the face of their problems, and it is easy to look to a Higher Power….

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents: Why does Freud think life is hard for human beings? people likely to be happier in a civilized or uncivilized state? What are the benefits of order? Why is civilization hostile to sexuality? How does civilization inhibit aggression?
Freud's central paradigm is that the tension between the individual and civilization is historically grounded in the violence of warfare and humanity in the early part of the century. The devastation of the First World War haunted Freud, who presumed that "the basis of [the hostility of civilization] was a deep and long-standing dissatisfaction with the ten existing state of civilization and that on that basis a condemnation of it was built up, occasioned by certain specific historical events." (91) His modified just-so stories of taming the fire and slaying the father transfer to his association of the Erziehung, the Germanic upbringing and education, to both high….

He focused on the progressive replacement of " erotogenic zones in the body by others. This early biological organism of sexuality first looks for oral gratification by sucking at its mother's breast, which later will be replaced by other objects. At first, the infant is not able to recognize the distinction between itself and the breast, but it soon begins to see its mother as its first external love object. Freud would later argue that before the infant reaches this point of understanding, it is able to see its own self as a love object and develop into a narcissistic love of its personhood.
Once the child goes through this oral state during the second year of life, its erotic emphasis transfers to the anus. This is encouraged by the challenges of toilet training. The child's enjoyment from defecating comes into conflict with the need for self-control. The third phase….

Some, such as Carl Jung, reconceived the nature of the unconscious, while others, such as Melanie Klein, replaced drives or instincts with interpersonal ("object") relations as the pivot of the psyche. Others, such as Alfred Adler, placed relatively greater emphasis than Freud did on the ego, while lessening the emphasis on the sexual drives. In Freud's wake, many varieties of talking therapy were created, some ultimately with little connection to the tenets of psychoanalysis, save the notion that people's ways of thinking about their lives, cultivated by their previous experience, may taint their happiness more than do the external events that befall them. Diverse therapies also share the belief that giving expression to one's concerns may both begin to lift the burden they impose and promote self-enlightenment (Freud, Sigmund, 2008, Criticism of…Section, ¶ 3).

Table 1 depicts some of these theorists and how they altered or changed Freud's theories.

Table 1: Changes….

267).
None of the eighteen patients had been aware of being sexually abused prior to being treated by Freud. She quotes him: "…at the bottom of every case of hysteria there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience" that belong to early childhood but are "reproduced through the work of psychoanalysis" (p. 267). The very fact that Freud publicly raised this issue -- "a shocking topic…to many of his contemporaries" -- not only brought it into the public light, it showed that he recognized "the gross power imbalance implicit in such situations." Those power imbalances (a child abused by an adult) held "grave psychological consequences" for the child, he recognized.

Conclusion: To fully understand the pioneering Freud, credited with inventing psychoanalysis, one must read further than just one or two of Freud's essays, and must delve into his work deeply enough to realize his own developmental evolution. By referencing….

Freud's Interpretation Of Dreams
Sigmund Freud's 1908 work, The Interpretation of Dreams, is his attempt to place apply the psychological analysis to the study of dreams. The work relies heavily upon Freud's understanding of how the unconscious and conscious mind control both the meaning and interpretation of dreams. To Freud, the dream is often a means of wish-fulfillment, where the content of dreams represents the unconscious desires (wishes) of the dreamer. Dream content can be understood in terms of both the "manifest" (literal and conscious) meaning, and the "latent" (unconscious and symbolic) meaning. Freud argued that ultimately dreams act as an important window into the unconscious workings of the human mind.

Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams is an important attempt to reconcile the distorted, surreal world of dreams with our conscious lives and scientific understanding. The world of dreams is often distorted and disturbing, and difficult to understand with our rational, conscious….

Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalysis and the Self: Sigmund Freud's Influence in 19th Century Philosophy and Science

Nineteenth century thinking was characterized by the emergence of two revolutionary ideologies that influenced the course of human history for the succeeding centuries: Karl Marx's conflict theory and Sigmund Freud's method of psychoanalysis in psychology. Marx's analysis of the political economy of the capitalist system led to the development of the Socialist movement. Freud's psychoanalytical theory, meanwhile, emphasized the pursuit for self-knowledge and individuality as the key towards personal development.

This paper gives focus on the life of Sigmund Freud, mainly because of his significant contribution towards establishing the kind of contemporary society prevalent in Western societies -- that is, an individualist society, wherein the pursuit of self-knowledge led to social and personal (individual) progress.

orn in the Czech Republic in 1856, Sigmund Freud had led the life of a true scientist and academician. Educated at Vienna University, Freud….