Civilization and Its Discontents
The book was written in 1929 by Sigmund Freud
The book was first published in
German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur
("The Uneasiness in Culture").
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Contents
In this book, Sigmund Freud enumerates the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction stems from the individual's quest for instinctual freedom and civilization's contrary demand for conformity and instinctual repression. Many of humankind's primitive instincts (for example, the desire to kill and the insatiable craving for sexual gratification) are clearly harmful to the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments if such commandments are broken. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that instills perpetual feelings of discontent in its citizens.
http://ia700301.us.archive.org/34/items/CivilizationAndItsDiscontents/freud_civilization_and_its_discontents.pdf