The Bible is a sacred text that has guided men and women in life to stay on this path of goodness and selflessness. According to Freud the Bible may be the cause of civilization’s unhappiness. Mankind’s freedom has been stifled because of the restrain society has put on our “primal nature”. Anything that goes against the structure the Bible has made in society has been repelled and ignored because it is no longer something that can be thought of as real or taken seriously. Freud believes that the happiness we cannot attain is due to the freedoms we lack. This belief of lacking in freedom is not correct based on the Bible’s chapters. Mans inability to be happy or remain happy is due to his or her need of having something to prove. This …show more content…
The Bible may have started these rules and regulations that Freud seems to believe makes us unhappy, but they were made due to human failure. When looking at the story of Adam and Eve, the first woman and man of the world you may notice that God did not place any rules on them toward how to act, talk, or think. His one request for Adam and Eve was not to eat an apple from “the tree in the middle of the garden” (Genesis 3:3). This tree becomes the downfall of Adam and Eve because when taking that bite they inflict themselves with knowledge of the world. Prior to this event they “were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25). This apple leads to them telling God “ I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid” (Genesis 3:10). The instant they ate the apple their knowledge of the world caused them to be afraid of what they knew. Their innocence and freedom is lost at this moment because they have placed rules on themselves. Freud’s theory of freedom becomes a problem when it is realized that acting on the instinctual drives he claims we have is not possible without repercussions. When Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden of Eden, they start to determine what constitutes good and evil as well as, what is thought to be appropriate in society. Adam and Eve had no worries, no wants, and no problems in the garden. This paradise is taken away all of a sudden because they
Freud primarily subscribed to the idea that there are two energies that drive human behavior. These two energies are sex – the pleasure principle and aggression. The human mind is comprised of the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Within the realms of the mind, the human personality is controlled by the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is driven by the pleasure principle. The superego is the instinctual moral good, which aims to please the ego ideal, or the magnified moral values. The ego interacts with both the id and the superego and aims to please both components (Connors).
Throughout the rest of the book, Freud addresses the conflict between civilization and the individual. He starts with the fundamental paradox of civilization: we created civilization as a tool to protect ourselves from unhappiness; however it is our largest source of unhappiness. He also points out that contemporary technological advances have been a mixed blessing for human happiness. He also asks what the purpose of civilization is if it is not to satisfy the pleasure principal. He later concedes that civilization has to make compromises of happiness to fulfill its primary goal of bringing people into peaceful relationships with each other, by making them subject to a higher, communal authority.
In his book Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud offers an explanation for why, as individuals, we tend to punish
Freud mainly focuses on human nature and questions the desire, ideas ,and beliefs that shape a human, he then further analyses them. We see in his literature, Civilization and its Disconnect, that he questions religion and the belief in God. He himself does not believe in God, but wants to know why many people follow and trust something that they cannot see. He also questions the concept of human relationships. Knowing that a two person relationship and interaction is inevitable and that it is a part of life, but he does not know if a third relationship, and further on, is necessary. Regardless, human relationships are a part of society, and one of causes of civilizations, which Freud defines as “the whole some of achievement and the regulations which distinguish our lives” (Freud). With one of the achievements
Psychoanalytic criticism originated in the work of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who pioneered the technique of psychoanalysis. Freud developed a language that described, a model that explained, and a theory that encompassed human psychology. His theories are directly and indirectly concerned with the nature of the unconscious mind. Through his multiple case studies, Freud managed to find convincing evidence that most of our actions are motivated by psychological forces over which we have very limited control (Guerin 127). One of Freud’s most important contributions to the study of the psyche is his theory of repression: the unconscious mind is a repository of repressed desires,
Freud examined much of psychoanalysis and trends that were affected by it. Freud disagreed with religion to full extent. He believed that there needed to different tasks accomplished by the individuals that made up the society but in difference will lead to capitalism and the destruction of the social structure.
He is unsatisfied with his life because he finds that life has a lack of meaning for him and finds himself depressed as a result of allowing civilization to suppress his innermost desires or instincts, “like so many others I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct” (Fight Club). Freud asserts that the purpose of human life is the pursuit of what makes one happy (Freud 25), thus Freud implies that our perception of reality is built from the incline toward satisfying our natural instincts. Freud argues that even though civilization was initially developed to protect us it has turned to become one of the major obstacles for the individual to achieve the purpose of life which is satisfaction of natural needs; “our civilization is largely responsible for our misery, and that we should be much happier if we gave it up and returned to primitive conditions (Freud 38).
Another argument Freud makes is how religion is an attempt to fill in the gaps where civilization and the pursuit of life cannot make individuals happy. "The urge to rectify the shortcomings of civilization which made themselves painfully felt" is fulfilled by religion. (Freud,
They both see the values of society as being a result of and necessary for civilization, rather than natural phenomena. Both theorists see guilt as stemming from a restriction of humanity’s natural urges, Nietzsche believing that it was a tool used by the priests to control the masses. Freud on the other hand thought it developed from a repression of humanity’s aggression towards one another. Equally, Freud and Nietzsche show a similar disdain for religion, the former seeing it as a delusional, infantile way to limit the pain and suffering that existence brings with it and the latter, due to what he sees as the transvaluation of values that the Judeo-Christian religions have brought about and the perceived cultural inaction that stems from this. As well as this, Nietzsche disliked the apparent inherited debt that comes with Christianity and the obligated guilt from Christ’s
In his ground-breaking book Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud postulates that society, despite ostensibly being set up to protect us from unhappiness, has a net negative impact on human happiness. According to Freud, the three most important causes of suffering are the natural world, our own bodies, and our interactions with other people (Freud 44). In addition to identifying these as the main causes of suffering, Freud also states that the suffering that comes from other people is the worst of the three. Given how civilization has changed since Civilization and Its Discontents was published, however, this belief simply no longer holds true. Freud’s belief that interaction with other people in society is the worst cause of human suffering is no longer valid in today’s world because of the net benefits of society’s protection, because of society’s benefits to the human body, and because of advances in society’s ability to satisfy human happiness.
On the other hand, Freud is more concerned with instilling the idea that infancy and childhood is a key role in development, he states, “by the time the child's intellect awakens, the doctrines of religion have already become unassailable,” suggesting that religion is a force that shapes civilization in which people function, as well as form our judgment of human civilization. Hence, the importance of developing successfully as opposed to failing to function in society, whether they are religious or not. Instead, he dubs man as “a creature of weak intelligence who is ruled by his instinctual wishes.”
Depression is defined as, “a mood disorder marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty with thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal thoughts or an attempt to commit suicide” (Merriam Webster). A close friend of mine battles depression and would describe it is, “a debilitating mood that makes it hard to get out of the bed in the morning, a desire to sleep all the time, inability to experience joy, and apathy towards life.” Due to its prevalent occurrence among several people groups throughout history, depression is known as the “common cold of mental illnesses” and has been called “the most widespread, serious,
An example of this is in his other book, Moses and Monotheism, Freud tries to apply his theory to Judaism and Christianity. According to Freud, Moses was an Egyptian who forced his religion upon the Jews. The Jews, in a manic state, kill Moses on the mountain just outside of the Promised Land. This created a large-scale sense of guilt, which created the need for salvation expressed by these religions: ‘Remorse for the murder of Moses provided the stimulus for the wishful fantasy of the Messiah, who was to return and lead his people to redemption.’ Freud also goes on to say in The Future of an Illusion that ‘religion is the collective neurosis of humanity’. He notes that there are similarities to obsessive compulsions in religion. For example, prayers/worship is to be performed exactly, repeated, anxiety if omitted and a sense of relief once ritualised. The sense of guilt if these criteria are not met is parallel to the guilt held from killing the dominant male as primal hordes. Freud claims that religion protects us from developing individual neuroses which may not be accepted by society. Because religion is a part of our culture and therefore accepted, it is not seen as a defect. There is a need for protection from a father figure (infantilism), and in this respect Freud rebrands Feuerbach’s theories of ‘projection’ of the perfect being to ‘wish-fulfilment’, and of desired infantile protection. Freud says that the female counterpart to this
Freud referred to the Hobbes argument that humans are naturally hostile to one another, humans depend on their own man made devices and hostile nature, leading humanity into a war where a man will be against each other (Hobbes 1906, 96). Human civilization is an effort to set up limitations for man’s aggressive
When considering religion, various theories by Sigmund Freud can be quite controversial yet interesting. Some of Freud’s theories and views with regards to religion involve; the origin of religion, the basis of guilt or sin for obedience, and God as a heavenly father a mere projection made by humans based on their needs. Before going into depth on some of the theories of Freud, we can gather from his book Totem and Taboo, that he was in fact of Jewish background and ultimately an atheist as he describes himself as “in his eternal nature a jew with no desire to alter that nature” but also “completely estranged from the religion of his father and any other religion” (Freud 1930). We can also gather that Freud had a reductionist approach, which argues “objects or beliefs, including super human entities, are nothing more than human constructions that can be ‘reduced’ to human basics”. (Nye 2009) Within this approach it continues to also reduce God to “merely what humans want him/her/it to be, a projection of one of more aspects of human behavior.” (Nye