book data
1193 ratings, 3.69 average rating, 94 reviews
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published
July 6th 1989
(first published 1930)
by W. W. Norton & Company
binding
Paperback, 127 pages
isbn
0393301583
(isbn13: 9780393301588)
description
For the 75th anniversary, a new edition of the seminal work with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Menand.
Civilization and Its Discontents ...more
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avg 3.69
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
anyone laboring under the illusion that they do not love freud
This may come as a surprise considering how much I complain about psychotherapy, but I LOVE SIGMUND FREUD. This is not just transference, and no, he doesn't remind me at all of my father; I believe Freud was a great genius, and far more importantly, that he was a fantastic writer and very interesting person. I also believe that Freud is one of the most unfairly maligned and willfully misinterpreted figures of the past hundred-or-so years.
If you haven't read him (HIM, not his theories), or if...more
If you haven't read him (HIM, not his theories), or if...more
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Read in June, 2008
Much of what Freud has to say in this book would be different had he done his thinking/writing with the knowledge that the field of psychology now possesses. For example, he talks at length about cleanliness and a decrease in the reliance of olfactory cues in sexual relations among humans, although today there is compelling evidence that olfactory cues play a major role in sexual behavior (see Geoffrey Miller's work). Also, Freud's work was coming just at the heels of Darwin's revolutionary th...more
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Read in July, 2008
You wouldn't think that a man you spent years examining as a pompous misogynist could write so thoughtfully about yearning, coping, misery, and love (I think he even mentions yoga). For serious.
A great read when you get to take breaks watching people on long Chicago bus rides home from work.
A great read when you get to take breaks watching people on long Chicago bus rides home from work.
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The price that we pay for the comforts of civilization is our happiness.
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`Civilization and its Discontents' is Freud's miniature opus. It is a superficial masterpiece that stretches further than any of his other works; he is reaching for an explanation for human nature in terms of the id-ego-superego structure of the individual as he exists in civilization. For Freud, human beings are characterized by Eros (Sex Drive) and Thanatos (Death Drive), which remain in opposition to one another. This small book is filled with as many interesting ideas as any work of modern p...more
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[Commissaire:] Adamsberg switched off his phone and spun it round on the table top.
“What am I doing,” he commented, more for himself than for Veyrenc, “in charge of twenty-seven human beings, when I could be just as happy, in fact a thousand times better off, on my own in the mountains, sitting on a stone with my feet in a stream?”
Fred Vargas, “This Night’s Foul Work”
In his introduction to this 2005 edition of Freud’s classic work, Louis Menand writes that, like Mi...more
“What am I doing,” he commented, more for himself than for Veyrenc, “in charge of twenty-seven human beings, when I could be just as happy, in fact a thousand times better off, on my own in the mountains, sitting on a stone with my feet in a stream?”
Fred Vargas, “This Night’s Foul Work”
In his introduction to this 2005 edition of Freud’s classic work, Louis Menand writes that, like Mi...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
anyone with an intrigued reaction to its title
It's impossible to read "Civilization and Its Discontents" and not come away with the impression that Freud is a genius. His ability to trace out cause and effect in human psychology is unparalleled. Most of his conclusions are convincing, and even the ones that aren't are at least thought-provoking.
The main weakness of this book is its desultory style. The first seven of its eight chapters read like an anthology of things Freud was thinking about this week, very loosely themed ...more
The main weakness of this book is its desultory style. The first seven of its eight chapters read like an anthology of things Freud was thinking about this week, very loosely themed ...more
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Read in December, 1968
recommended to erik by:
Edward Ericksonrecommends it for: persons interested in Freud
Many of friends in high school were a couple of years older. One of them, Ed Erickson, was particularly admired for his erudition, radicalism and interesting mother and sister. When he went away to the University of Illinois I, still in high school, was honored to be invited to visit him on what amounted to a first overnight trip to a college.
Taking the Illinois Central downstate was an adventure in itself, another first. So, too, were the experiences of the ugly but enormous campus set i...more
Taking the Illinois Central downstate was an adventure in itself, another first. So, too, were the experiences of the ugly but enormous campus set i...more
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Read in April, 2008
Subway reading-- not sure how this is going to work out.
Update:
Outside of a classroom setting, I'm not sure how much one could expect to get out of this book, particularly without any background in psychology (as was the case with me). It is very short, and therefore easily read, at least superficially. On the other hand, the reader might be better served to have a working familiarity with some of Freud's building blocks, like the ego, the super ego, the various stages of children's d...more
Update:
Outside of a classroom setting, I'm not sure how much one could expect to get out of this book, particularly without any background in psychology (as was the case with me). It is very short, and therefore easily read, at least superficially. On the other hand, the reader might be better served to have a working familiarity with some of Freud's building blocks, like the ego, the super ego, the various stages of children's d...more
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Freud exposes himself for the reactionary that he was. It is not so much this book itself that pisses me off, but the tendency of so called liberals (and even feminists--you know--especially in the fields of literary and film criticism) to not see the right wing elements within this text. Others, perhaps more familiar with the work of Freud, do understand the reactionary element, and yet choose to completely ignore it. These people use psychoanalysis is such fields as art, literature, and fil...more
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Pretty much my favorite Freud, favorite social theory book ever. I had to read this book 3 or 4 times at NYU and I'm so proud at how marked up my copy is in various different color pens.
In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud explicates the tensions and mechanisms of living in social civilization. He posits the individual as being inherently and firstly aggressive towards other beings, an instinct that needs to be repressed in order for the individual to participate in civilization. "...more
In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud explicates the tensions and mechanisms of living in social civilization. He posits the individual as being inherently and firstly aggressive towards other beings, an instinct that needs to be repressed in order for the individual to participate in civilization. "...more
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I struggle with this rating. My relationship to Freud is complex. I love-hate him. He is interested in all the things I am intersted in, but he takes a view that I no longer hold, a view expressed by his rhetorical Q, "And finally, what good is a long life to us if it is hard, joyless, and so full of suffering that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?" (pp.26-27). Cynicism (as distinguished from pessimism), I have come to realize, is defensive romanticism. And my relationship...more
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Read in June, 2008
I cannot say I fully stand Freud. But, what I get from this book is a perspective of someone who holds to an Atheistic-Evolutionary theory trying to deal w/ problem of guilt and aggression. When we take away the theistic worldview, we still have to deal w/ the problem of sin and guilt. And since the atheist rejects the idea of divine command theory, he needs to come up w/ a whole new paradigm for labeling such and dealing w/ morality. As a person who holds to a theistic worldview, I thought ...more
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Read in August, 2008
recommended to chris by:
Kat
I would say that there's no real reason to read Freud these days except under the umbrella of things you read to see where thought in the modern age comes from. He alternates between seemingly very obvious and broad statements about society (everyone is driven by a desire for agression, society confines this aggression and therefore we have unhappiness with society, etc.) and somewhat ludicrous statements about everything else (women are unable to sublimate their emotions, etc.). It's not a ve...more
I've only read selections from this, and I hope one day to read it all. When watching a show, such as Deadwood, that deals with how a society comes to be, this book is a tremendous look at the psychology behind the human need for order. Mind you, this is a vulgar summary, if that.
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"As we have learned, neurotic symptoms are, in their essence, substitutive satisfactions for unfilled sexual wishes."
"It almost seems as if the creation of a great human community would be most successful if no attention had to be paid to the happiness of the individual."
Freud manages to simplify life and society into my fuck/kill instincts vs. the fuck/kill instincts that are against me that society helps to ward off by internalizing aggression and guilt. Since he ha...more
"It almost seems as if the creation of a great human community would be most successful if no attention had to be paid to the happiness of the individual."
Freud manages to simplify life and society into my fuck/kill instincts vs. the fuck/kill instincts that are against me that society helps to ward off by internalizing aggression and guilt. Since he ha...more
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How this book manages to be so popular, I'll never know. Then again, I have the same problem with Marx's polemics cum evangelical tracts. Like "The Future of an Illusion", this is basically a faux-dialog between Freud and an absurdly credulous strawman. I recommend comparing his fascinating (but unintentionally hilarious) "Moses & Monotheism" with Emile Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life" if you want some actual insight into the same topic.
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Read in November, 2008
Freud posits that the downfall of civilization is that our instinctual urges are repressed, which leads to a fundamental trait of human nature: aggression.
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Read in January, 2008
fuck Fraud (I'm aware) and his whole project, but the format has its appeals and I appreciate trying real, real hard. It's short and the overall argument of civilization decreasing the ability to be happy is pretty well-constructed. But you can't escape the generalizations (like people are inclined to aggression and Oedipus complexes) and his really does have a hard time connected the arguments about unconscious guilt to the insightful earlier chapters (which he points out, actually.).
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