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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78221 ***




  Transcriber’s Note
  Italic text displayed as: _italic_




  CIVILIZATION
  AND ITS DISCONTENTS




JONATHAN CAPE AND HARRISON SMITH, INCORPORATED, 139 EAST 46TH STREET,
NEW YORK, N. Y. AND 77 WELLINGTON STREET, WEST, TORONTO, CANADA;
JONATHAN CAPE, LTD., 30 BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON, W. C. 1, ENGLAND




  CIVILIZATION
  AND ITS DISCONTENTS

  SIGMUND FREUD, M.D., LL.D.

  AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION

  BY

  JOAN RIVIERE

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  JONATHAN CAPE & HARRISON SMITH




  COPYRIGHT, 1930
  BY JONATHAN CAPE AND
  HARRISON SMITH, INC.

  FIRST PUBLISHED IN AMERICA. 1930
  SECOND PRINTING OCTOBER. 1930

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
  BY THE DE VINNE-HALLENBECK COMPANY
  AND BOUND BY THE J. F. TAPLEY COMPANY




TRANSLATOR’S NOTE


My grateful thanks are due to Fräulein Anna Freud, Dr. Ernest Jones
and Mr. James Strachey for their careful revision of the MS. of this
translation and the many improvements they made in it, and also to Miss
Ethel Colburn Mayne for her translations of the verse quoted.

  J. R.




I


The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false
standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself and
admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious
things in life. And yet, in making any general judgement of this kind
one is in danger of forgetting the manifold variety of humanity and its
mental life. There are certain men from whom their contemporaries do
not withhold veneration, although their greatness rests on attributes
and achievements which are completely foreign to the aims and ideals of
the multitude. One might well be inclined to suppose that after all it
is only a minority who appreciate these great men, while the majority
cares nothing for them. But the discrepancy between men’s opinions and
their behaviour is so wide and their desires so many-sided that things
are probably not so simple.

One of these exceptional men calls himself my friend in his letters
to me. I had sent him my little book which treats of religion as an
illusion and he answered that he agreed entirely with my views on
religion, but that he was sorry I had not properly appreciated the
ultimate source of religious sentiments. This consists in a peculiar
feeling, which never leaves him personally, which he finds shared by
many others, and which he may suppose millions more also experience. It
is a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of ‘eternity’, a
feeling as of something limitless, unbounded, something ‘oceanic’. It
is, he says, a purely subjective experience, not an article of belief;
it implies no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source
of the religious spirit and is taken hold of by the various Churches
and religious systems, directed by them into definite channels and
also, no doubt, used up in them. One may rightly call oneself religious
on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even though one reject all
beliefs and all illusions.

These views, expressed by my friend whom I so greatly honour and
who himself once in poetry described the magic of illusion, put me
in a difficult position. I cannot discover this ‘oceanic’ feeling
in myself. It is not easy to deal scientifically with feelings. One
may attempt to describe their physiological signs. Where that is
impossible—I am afraid the oceanic feeling, too, will defy this
kind of classification—nothing remains but to turn to the ideational
content which most readily associates itself with the feeling. If I
have understood my friend aright, he means the same thing as that
consolation offered by an original and somewhat unconventional writer
to his hero, contemplating suicide: ‘Out of this world we cannot
fall’.[1] So it is a feeling of indissoluble connection, of belonging
inseparably to the external world as a whole. To me, personally, I may
remark, this seems something more in the nature of an intellectual
judgement, not, it is true, without any accompanying feeling-tone,
but with one of a kind which characterizes other equally far-reaching
reflections as well. I could not in my own person convince myself of
the primary nature of such a feeling. But I cannot on that account deny
that it in fact occurs in other people. One can only wonder whether
it has been correctly interpreted and whether it is entitled to be
acknowledged as the _fons et origo_ of the whole need for religion.

I have nothing to suggest which could effectively settle the solution
of this problem. The idea that man should receive intimation of his
connection with the surrounding world by a direct feeling which aims
from the outset at serving this purpose sounds so strange and is so
incongruous with the structure of our psychology that one is justified
in attempting a psycho-analytic, that is, genetic explanation of such a
feeling. Whereupon the following lines of thought present themselves.
Normally there is nothing we are more certain of than the feeling of
our self, our own ego. It seems to us an independent unitary thing,
sharply outlined against everything else. That this is a deceptive
appearance, and that on the contrary the ego extends inwards without
any sharp delimitation, into an unconscious mental entity which we
call the id and to which it forms a façade, was first discovered
by psycho-analytic research, and the latter still has much to tell
us about the relations of the ego to the id. But towards the outer
world at any rate the ego seems to keep itself clearly and sharply
outlined and delimited. There is only one state of mind in which it
fails to do this—an unusual state, it is true, but not one that can
be judged as pathological. At its height the state of being in love
threatens to obliterate the boundaries between ego and object. Against
all the evidence of his senses the man in love declares that he and
his beloved are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.
A thing that can be temporarily effaced by a physiological function
must also of course be liable to disturbance by morbid processes. From
pathology we have come to know a large number of states in which the
boundary lines between ego and outer world become uncertain, or in
which they are actually incorrectly perceived—cases in which parts of
a man’s own body, even component parts of his own mind, perceptions,
thoughts, feelings, appear to him alien and not belonging to himself;
other cases in which a man ascribes to the external world things that
clearly originate in himself, and that ought to be acknowledged by him.
So the ego’s cognizance of itself is subject to disturbance, and the
boundaries between it and the outer world are not immovable.

Further reflection shows that the adult’s sense of his own ego cannot
have been the same from the beginning. It must have undergone a
development, which naturally cannot be demonstrated, but which admits
of reconstruction with a fair degree of probability.[2] When the
infant at the breast receives stimuli, he cannot as yet distinguish
whether they come from his ego or from the outer world. He learns
it gradually as the result of various exigencies. It must make the
strongest impression on him that many sources of excitation, which
later on he will recognize as his own bodily organs, can provide him
at any time with sensations, whereas others become temporarily out
of his reach—amongst these what he wants most of all, his mother’s
breast—and reappear only as a result of his cries for help. Thus
an ‘object’ first presents itself to the ego as something existing
‘outside’, which is only induced to appear by a particular act. A
further stimulus to the growth and formation of the ego, so that
it becomes something more than a bundle of sensations, _i.e._
recognizes an ‘outside’, the external world, is afforded by the
frequent, unavoidable and manifold pains and unpleasant sensations
which the pleasure-principle, still in unrestricted domination, bids
it abolish or avoid. The tendency arises to dissociate from the ego
everything which can give rise to pain, to cast it out and create a
pure pleasure-ego, in contrast to a threatening ‘outside’, not-self.
The limits of this primitive pleasure-ego cannot escape readjustment
through experience. Much that the individual wants to retain because
it is pleasure-giving is nevertheless part not of the ego but of an
object; and much that he wishes to eject because it torments him yet
proves to be inseparable from the ego, arising from an inner source. He
learns a method by which, through deliberate use of the sensory organs
and suitable muscular movements, he can distinguish between internal
and external—what is part of the ego and what originates in the outer
world—and thus he makes the first step towards the introduction of
the reality-principle which is to control his development further.
This capacity for distinguishing which he learns of course serves a
practical purpose, that of enabling him to defend himself against
painful sensations felt by him or threatening him. Against certain
painful excitations from within the ego has only the same means of
defence as that employed against pain coming from without, and this is
the starting-point of important morbid disturbances.

In this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is
more correct to say: Originally the ego includes everything, later
it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are
aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive
feeling—a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an
inseparable connection of the ego with the external world. If we may
suppose that this primary ego-feeling has been preserved in the minds
of many people—to a greater or lesser extent—it would co-exist like
a sort of counterpart with the narrower and more sharply outlined
ego-feeling of maturity, and the ideational content belonging to it
would be precisely the notion of limitless extension and oneness
with the universe—the same feeling as that described by my friend as
‘oceanic’. But have we any right to assume that the original type of
feeling survives alongside the later one which has developed from it?

Undoubtedly we have: there is nothing unusual in such a phenomenon,
whether in the psychological or in other spheres. Where animals are
concerned we hold the view that the most highly developed have arisen
from the lowest. Yet we still find all the simple forms alive to-day.
The great saurians are extinct and have made way for the mammals, but
a typical representative of them, the crocodile, is still living among
us. The analogy may be too remote, and it is also weakened by the fact
that the surviving lower species are not as a rule the true ancestors
of the present-day more highly developed types. The intermediate
members have mostly died out and are known to us only through
reconstruction. In the realm of mind, on the other hand, the primitive
type is so commonly preserved alongside the transformations which have
developed out of it that it is superfluous to give instances in proof
of it. When this happens, it is usually the result of a bifurcation in
development. One quantitative part of an attitude or an impulse has
survived unchanged while another has undergone further development.

This brings us very close to the more general problem of conservation
in the mind, which has so far hardly been discussed, but is so
interesting and important that we may take the opportunity to pay it
some attention, even though its relevance is not immediate. Since the
time when we recognized the error of supposing that ordinary forgetting
signified destruction or annihilation of the memory-trace, we have
been inclined to the opposite view that nothing once formed in the
mind could ever perish, that everything survives in some way or other,
and is capable under certain conditions of being brought to light
again, as, for instance, when regression extends back far enough. One
might try to picture to oneself what this assumption signifies by a
comparison taken from another field. Let us choose the history of the
Eternal City as an example.[3] Historians tell us that the oldest Rome
of all was the _Roma quadrata_, a fenced settlement on the Palatine.
Then followed the phase of the Septimontium, when the colonies on the
different hills united together; then the town which was bounded by
the Servian wall; and later still, after all the transformations in
the periods of the republic and the early Caesars, the city which the
Emperor Aurelian enclosed by his walls. We will not follow the changes
the city went through any further, but will ask ourselves what traces
of these early stages in its history a visitor to Rome may still find
to-day, if he goes equipped with the most complete historical and
topographical knowledge. Except for a few gaps, he will see the wall of
Aurelian almost unchanged. He can find sections of the Servian rampart
at certain points where it has been excavated and brought to light. If
he knows enough—more than present-day archaeology—he may perhaps trace
out in the structure of the town the whole course of this wall and the
outline of _Roma quadrata_. Of the buildings which once occupied this
ancient ground-plan he will find nothing, or but meagre fragments,
for they exist no longer. With the best information about Rome of the
republican era, the utmost he could achieve would be to indicate the
sites where the temples and public buildings of that period stood.
These places are now occupied by ruins, but the ruins are not those of
the early buildings themselves but of restorations of them in later
times after fires and demolitions. It is hardly necessary to mention
that all these remains of ancient Rome are found woven into the fabric
of a great metropolis which has arisen in the last few centuries since
the Renaissance. There is assuredly much that is ancient still buried
in the soil or under the modern buildings of the town. This is the way
in which we find antiquities surviving in historic cities like Rome.

Now let us make the fantastic supposition that Rome were not a human
dwelling-place, but a mental entity with just as long and varied a
past history: that is, in which nothing once constructed had perished,
and all the earlier stages of development had survived alongside the
latest. This would mean that in Rome the palaces of the Caesars were
still standing on the Palatine and the Septizonium of Septimius Severus
was still towering to its old height; that the beautiful statues were
still standing in the colonnade of the Castle of St. Angelo, as they
were up to its siege by the Goths, and so on. But more still: where
the Palazzo Caffarelli stands there would also be, without this being
removed, the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, not merely in its latest
form, moreover, as the Romans of the Caesars saw it, but also in its
earliest shape, when it still wore an Etruscan design and was adorned
with terra-cotta antifixae. Where the Coliseum stands now we could at
the same time admire Nero’s Golden House; on the Piazza of the Pantheon
we should find not only the Pantheon of to-day as bequeathed to us by
Hadrian, but on the same site also Agrippa’s original edifice; indeed,
the same ground would support the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva
and the old temple over which it was built. And the observer would need
merely to shift the focus of his eyes, perhaps, or change his position,
in order to call up a view of either the one or the other.

There is clearly no object in spinning this fantasy further; it
leads to the inconceivable, or even to absurdities. If we try to
represent historical sequence in spatial terms, it can only be done
by juxtaposition in space; the same space will not hold two contents.
Our attempt seems like an idle game; it has only one justification: it
shows us how far away from mastering the idiosyncrasies of mental life
we are by treating them in terms of visual representation.

There is one objection, though, to which we must pay attention. It
questions our choosing in particular the past history of a _city_ to
liken to the past of the mind. Even for mental life our assumption that
everything past is preserved holds good only on condition that the
organ of the mind remains intact and its structure has not been injured
by traumas or inflammation. Destructive influences comparable to these
morbid agencies are never lacking in the history of any town, even if
it has had a less chequered past than Rome, even if, like London, it
has hardly ever been pillaged by an enemy. Demolitions and the erection
of new buildings in the place of old occur in cities which have had the
most peaceful existence; therefore a town is from the outset unsuited
for the comparison I have made of it with a mental organism.

We admit this objection; we will abandon our search for a striking
effect of contrast and turn to what is after all a closer object of
comparison, the body of an animal or human being. But here, too, we
find the same thing. The early stages of development are in no sense
still extant; they have been absorbed into the later features for
which they supplied the material. The embryo cannot be demonstrated
in the adult; the thymus gland of childhood is replaced after puberty
by connective tissue but no longer exists itself; in the marrow-bone
of a grown man I can, it is true, trace the outline of the childish
bone-structure, but this latter no longer survives in itself—it
lengthened and thickened until it reached its final form. The fact
is that a survival of all the early stages alongside the final form
is only possible in the mind, and that it is impossible for us to
represent a phenomenon of this kind in visual terms.

Perhaps we are going too far with this conclusion. Perhaps we ought
to be content with the assertion that what is past in the mind _can_
survive and need not necessarily perish. It is always possible that
even in the mind much that is old may be so far obliterated or
absorbed—whether normally or by way of exception—that it cannot be
restored or reanimated by any means, of that survival of it is always
connected with certain favourable conditions. It is possible, but we
know nothing about it. We can only be sure that it is more the rule
than the exception for the past to survive in the mind.

Thus we are entirely willing to acknowledge that the ‘oceanic’ feeling
exists in many people, and we are disposed to relate it to an early
stage in ego-feeling; the further question then arises what claim this
feeling has to be regarded as the source of the need for religion.

To me this claim does not seem very forcible. Surely a feeling can
only be a source of energy when it is itself the expression of a
strong need. The derivation of a need for religion from the child’s
feeling of helplessness and the longing it evokes for a father seems
to me incontrovertible, especially since this feeling is not simply
carried on from childhood days but is kept alive perpetually by the
fear of what the superior power of fate will bring. I could not point
to any need in childhood so strong as that for a father’s protection.
Thus the part played by the ‘oceanic’ feeling, which I suppose seeks
to reinstate limitless narcissism, cannot possibly take the first
place. The derivation of the religious attitude can be followed back
in clear outline as far as the child’s feeling of helplessness. There
may be something else behind this, but for the present it is wrapped in
obscurity.

I can imagine that the oceanic feeling could become connected with
religion later on. That feeling of oneness with the universe which
is its ideational content sounds very like a first attempt at the
consolations of religion, like another way taken by the ego of denying
the dangers it sees threatening it in the external world. I must again
confess that I find it very difficult to work with these intangible
quantities. Another friend of mine, whose insatiable scientific
curiosity has impelled him to the most out-of-the-way researches and
to the acquisition of encyclopaedic knowledge, has assured me that the
Yogi by their practices of withdrawal from the world, concentrating
attention on bodily functions, peculiar methods of breathing, actually
are able to produce new sensations and diffused feelings in themselves
which he regards as regressions to primordial, deeply buried mental
states. He sees in them a physiological foundation, so to speak, of
much of the wisdom of mysticism. There would be connections to be made
here with many obscure modifications of mental life, such as trance and
ecstasy. But I am moved to exclaim, in the words of Schiller’s diver:

  Who breathes overhead in the rose-tinted light may be glad!


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Christian Grabbe, _Hannibal_: ‘Ja, aus der Welt werden wir nicht
fallen. Wir sind einmal darin.’

[2] Cf. the considerable volume of work on this topic dating from that
of Ferenczi (‘Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality’, 1913)
up to Federn’s contributions, 1926, 1927 and later.

[3] According to _The Cambridge Ancient History_, vol. vii., 1928,
‘The Founding of Rome’, by Hugh Last.




II


In my _Future of an Illusion_[4] I was concerned much less with the
deepest sources of religious feeling than with what the ordinary man
understands by his religion, that system of doctrines and pledges
that on the one hand explains the riddle of this world to him with an
enviable completeness, and on the other assures him that a solicitous
Providence is watching over him and will make up to him in a future
existence for any shortcomings in this life. The ordinary man cannot
imagine this Providence in any other form but that of a greatly exalted
father, for only such a one could understand the needs of the sons
of men, or be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of
their remorse. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so incongruous
with reality, that to one whose attitude to humanity is friendly it
is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be
able to rise above this view of life. It is even more humiliating to
discover what a large number of those alive to-day, who must see that
this religion is not tenable, yet try to defend it inch by inch, as if
with a series of pitiable rearguard actions. One would like to count
oneself among the believers, so as to admonish the philosophers who try
to preserve the God of religion by substituting for him an impersonal,
shadowy, abstract principle, and say, ‘Thou shalt not take the name of
the Lord thy God in vain!’ Some of the great men of the past did the
same, but that is no justification for us; we know why they had to do
so.

We will now go back to the ordinary man and his religion—the only
religion that ought to bear the name. The well-known words of one of
our great and wise poets come to mind in which he expresses his view of
the relation of religion to art and science. They run:

    He who has Science and has Art,
      Religion, too, has he;
    Who has not Science, has not Art,
      Let him religious be![5]

On the one hand, these words contrast religion with the two highest
achievements of man, and on the other, they declare that in respect
of their value in life they can represent or replace each other. If
we wish to deprive even the ordinary man, too, of his religion, we
shall clearly not have the authority of the poet on our side. We will
seek to get in touch with the meaning of his utterance by a special
way. Life as we find it is too hard for us; it entails too much pain,
too many disappointments, impossible tasks. We cannot do without
palliative remedies. We cannot dispense with auxiliary constructions,
as Theodor Fontane said. There are perhaps three of these means:
powerful diversions of interest, which lead us to care little about our
misery; substitutive gratifications, which lessen it; and intoxicating
substances, which make us insensitive to it. Something of this kind
is indispensable.[6] Voltaire is aiming at a diversion of interest
when he brings his _Candide_ to a close with the advice that people
should cultivate their gardens; scientific work is another deflection
of the same kind. The substitute gratifications, such as art offers,
are illusions in contrast to reality, but none the less satisfying
to the mind on that account, thanks to the place which phantasy has
reserved for herself in mental life. The intoxicating substances affect
our body, alter its chemical processes. It is not so simple to find
the place where religion belongs in this series. We must look further
afield.

The question, ‘What is the purpose of human life?’ has been asked times
without number; it has never received a satisfactory answer; perhaps it
does not admit of such an answer. Many a questioner has added that if
it should appear that life has no purpose, then it would lose all value
for him. But these threats alter nothing. It looks, on the contrary,
as though one had a right to dismiss this question, for it seems to
presuppose that belief in the superiority of the human race with which
we are already so familiar in its other expressions. Nobody asks what
is the purpose of the lives of animals, unless peradventure they are
designed to be of service to man. But this, too, will not hold, for
with many animals man can do nothing—except describe, classify and
study them; and countless species have declined to be put even to this
use, by living and dying and becoming extinct before men had set eyes
upon them. So again, only religion is able to answer the question of
the purpose of life. One can hardly go wrong in concluding that the
idea of a purpose in life stands and falls with the religious system.

We will turn, therefore, to the less ambitious problem, what the
behaviour of men themselves reveals as the purpose and object of their
lives, what they demand of life and wish to attain in it. The answer
to this can hardly be in doubt: they seek happiness, they want to
become happy and to remain so. There are two sides to this striving, a
positive and a negative; it aims on the one hand at eliminating pain
and discomfort, on the other at the experience of intense pleasures. In
its narrower sense the word ‘happiness’ relates only to the last. Thus
human activities branch off in two directions—corresponding to this
double goal—according to which of the two they aim at realizing, either
predominantly or even exclusively.

As we see, it is simply the pleasure-principle which draws up the
programme of life’s purpose. This principle dominates the operation of
the mental apparatus from the very beginning; there can be no doubt
about its efficiency, and yet its programme is in conflict with the
whole world, with the macrocosm as much as with the microcosm. It
simply cannot be put into execution, the whole constitution of things
runs counter to it; one might say the intention that man should be
‘happy’ is not included in the scheme of ‘Creation’. What is called
happiness in its narrowest sense comes from the satisfaction—most often
instantaneous—of pent-up needs which have reached great intensity,
and by its very nature can only be a transitory experience. When any
condition desired by the pleasure-principle is protracted, it results
in a feeling only of mild comfort; we are so constituted that we
can only intensely enjoy contrasts, much less intensely states in
themselves.[7] Our possibilities of happiness are thus limited from
the start by our very constitution. It is much less difficult to be
unhappy. Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body,
which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense
with anxiety and pain as danger-signals; from the outer world, which
can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of
destruction; and finally from our relations with other men. The
unhappiness which has this last origin we find perhaps more painful
than any other; we tend to regard it more or less as a gratuitous
addition, although it cannot be any less an inevitable fate than the
suffering that proceeds from other sources.

It is no wonder if, under the pressure of these possibilities of
suffering, humanity is wont to reduce its demands for happiness,
just as even the pleasure-principle itself changes into the more
accommodating reality-principle under the influence of external
environment; if a man thinks himself happy if he has merely escaped
unhappiness or weathered trouble; if in general the task of avoiding
pain forces that of obtaining pleasure into the background. Reflection
shows that there are very different ways of attempting to perform this
task; and all these ways have been recommended by the various schools
of wisdom in the art of life and put into practice by men. Unbridled
gratification of all desires forces itself into the foreground as the
most alluring guiding principle in life, but it entails preferring
enjoyment to caution and penalizes itself after short indulgence. The
other methods, in which avoidance of pain is the main motive, are
differentiated according to the source of the suffering against which
they are mainly directed. Some of these measures are extreme and some
moderate, some are one-sided and some deal with several aspects of the
matter at once. Voluntary loneliness, isolation from others, is the
readiest safeguard against the unhappiness that may arise out of human
relations. We know what this means: the happiness found along this
path is that of peace. Against the dreaded outer world one can defend
oneself only by turning away in some other direction, if the difficulty
is to be solved single-handed. There is indeed another and a better
way: that of combining with the rest of the human community and taking
up the attack on nature, thus forcing it to obey human will, under the
guidance of science. One is working then with all for the good of all.
But the most interesting methods for averting pain are those which aim
at influencing the organism itself. In the last analysis all pain is
but sensation; it only exists in so far as we feel it, and we feel it
only in consequence of certain characteristics of our organism.

The crudest of these methods of influencing the body, but also the most
effective, is the chemical one: that of intoxication. I do not think
anyone entirely understands their operation, but it is a fact that
there are certain substances foreign to the body which, when present
in the blood or tissues, directly cause us pleasurable sensations,
but also so change the conditions of our perceptivity that we become
insensible of disagreeable sensations. The two effects not only take
place simultaneously, they seem to be closely bound up with each other.
But there must be substances in the chemical composition of our bodies
which can do the same, for we know of at least one morbid state, that
of mania, in which a condition similar to this intoxication arises
without any drug being absorbed. Besides this, our normal mental
life shows variations, according to which pleasure is experienced
with more or less ease, and along with this goes a diminished or
increased sensitivity to pain. It is greatly to be regretted that
this toxic aspect of mental processes has so far eluded scientific
research. The services rendered by intoxicating substances in the
struggle for happiness and in warding off misery rank so highly as a
benefit that both individuals and races have given them an established
position within their libido-economy. It is not merely the immediate
gain in pleasure which one owes to them, but also a measure of that
independence of the outer world which is so sorely craved. Men know
that with the help they can get from ‘drowning their cares’ they can
at any time slip away from the oppression of reality and find a refuge
in a world of their own where painful feelings do not enter. We are
aware that it is just this property which constitutes the danger and
injuriousness of intoxicating substances. In certain circumstances
they are to blame when valuable energies which could have been used to
improve the lot of humanity are uselessly wasted.

The complicated structure of our mental apparatus admits, however,
of a whole series of other kinds of influence. The gratification of
instincts is happiness, but when the outer world lets us starve,
refuses us satisfaction of our needs, they become the cause of very
great suffering. So the hope is born that by influencing these impulses
one may escape some measure of suffering. This type of defence against
pain no longer relates to the sensory apparatus; it seeks to control
the internal sources of our needs themselves. An extreme form of it
consists in annihilation of the instincts, as taught by the wisdom of
the East and practised by the Yogi. When it succeeds, it is true, it
involves giving up all other activities as well (sacrificing the whole
of life), and again, by another path, the only happiness it brings is
that of peace. The same way is taken when the aim is less extreme and
only control of the instincts is sought. When this is so, the higher
mental systems which recognize the reality-principle have the upper
hand. The aim of gratification is by no means abandoned in this case;
a certain degree of protection against suffering is secured, in that
lack of satisfaction causes less pain when the instincts are kept in
check than when they are unbridled. On the other hand, this brings with
it an undeniable reduction in the degree of enjoyment obtainable. The
feeling of happiness produced by indulgence of a wild, untamed craving
is incomparably more intense than is the satisfying of a curbed
desire. The irresistibility of perverted impulses, perhaps the charm of
forbidden things generally, may in this way be explained economically.

Another method of guarding against pain is by using the
libido-displacements that our mental equipment allows of, by
which it gains so greatly in flexibility. The task is then one of
transferring the instinctual aims into such directions that they
cannot be frustrated by the outer world. Sublimation of the instincts
lends an aid in this. Its success is greatest when a man knows how
to heighten sufficiently his capacity for obtaining pleasure from
mental and intellectual work. Fate has little power against him then.
This kind of satisfaction, such as the artist’s joy in creation, in
embodying his phantasies, or the scientist’s in solving problems or
discovering truth, has a special quality which we shall certainly one
day be able to define metapsychologically. Until then we can only
say metaphorically it seems to us ‘higher and finer’, but compared
with that of gratifying gross primitive instincts, its intensity is
tempered and diffused; it does not overwhelm us physically. The weak
point of this method, however, is that it is not generally applicable;
it is only available to the few. It presupposes special gifts and
dispositions which are not very commonly found in a sufficient degree.
And even to these few it does not secure complete protection against
suffering; it gives no invulnerable armour against the arrows of
fate, and it usually fails when a man’s own body becomes a source of
suffering to him.[8]

This behaviour reveals clearly enough its aim—that of making oneself
independent of the external world, by looking for happiness in the
inner things of the mind; in the next method the same features are even
more marked. The connection with reality is looser still; satisfaction
is obtained through illusions, which are recognized as such, without
the discrepancy between them and reality being allowed to interfere
with the pleasure they give. These illusions are derived from the life
of phantasy which, at the time when the sense of reality developed,
was expressly exempted from the demands of the reality-test and set
apart for the purpose of fulfilling wishes which would be very hard to
realize. At the head of these phantasy-pleasures stands the enjoyment
of works of art which through the agency of the artist is opened to
those who cannot themselves create.[9] Those who are sensitive to the
influence of art do not know how to rate it high enough as a source of
happiness and consolation in life. Yet art affects us but as a mild
narcotic and can provide no more than a temporary refuge for us from
the hardships of life; its influence is not strong enough to make us
forget real misery.

Another method operates more energetically and thoroughly; it regards
reality as the source of all suffering, as the one and only enemy,
with whom life is intolerable and with whom therefore all relations
must be broken off if one is to be happy in any way at all. The hermit
turns his back on this world; he will have nothing to do with it. But
one can do more than that; one can try to re-create it, try to build up
another instead, from which the most unbearable features are eliminated
and replaced by others corresponding to one’s own wishes. He who in
his despair and defiance sets out on this path will not as a rule get
very far; reality will be too strong for him. He becomes a madman and
usually finds no one to help him in carrying through his delusion. It
is said, however, that each one of us behaves in some respect like the
paranoiac, substituting a wish-fulfilment for some aspect of the world
which is unbearable to him, and carrying this delusion through into
reality. When a large number of people make this attempt together and
try to obtain assurance of happiness and protection from suffering by a
delusional transformation of reality it acquires special significance.
The religions of humanity, too, must be classified as mass-delusions of
this kind. Needless to say, no one who shares a delusion recognizes it
as such.

I do not suppose that I have enumerated all the methods by which men
strive to win happiness and keep suffering at bay, and I know, too,
that the material might have been arranged differently. One of these
methods I have not yet mentioned at all—not because I had forgotten
it, but because it will interest us in another connection. How would
it be possible to forget this way of all others of practising the art
of life! It is conspicuous for its remarkable capacity to combine
characteristic features. Needless to say, it, too, strives to bring
about independence of fate—as we may best call it—and with this object
it looks for satisfaction within the mind, and uses the capacity for
displacing libido which we mentioned before, but it does not turn
away from the outer world; on the contrary, it takes a firm hold of
its objects and obtains happiness from an emotional relation to them.
Nor is it content to strive for avoidance of pain—that goal of weary
resignation; rather it passes that by heedlessly and holds fast to
the deep-rooted, passionate striving for a positive fulfilment of
happiness. Perhaps it really comes nearer to this goal than any other
method. I am speaking, of course, of that way of life which makes love
the centre of all things and anticipates all happiness from loving and
being loved. This attitude is familiar enough to all of us; one of the
forms in which love manifests itself, sexual love, gives us our most
intense experience of an overwhelming pleasurable sensation and so
furnishes a prototype for our strivings after happiness. What is more
natural than that we should persist in seeking happiness along the path
by which we first encountered it? The weak side of this way of living
is clearly evident; and were it not for this, no human being would ever
have thought of abandoning this path to happiness in favour of any
other. We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love,
never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love-object or its
love. But this does not complete the story of that way of life which
bases happiness on love; there is much more to be said about it.

We may here go on to consider the interesting case in which happiness
in life is sought first and foremost in the enjoyment of beauty,
wherever it is to be found by our senses and our judgement, the beauty
of human forms and movements, of natural objects, of landscapes,
of artistic and even scientific creations. As a goal in life this
aesthetic attitude offers little protection against the menace
of suffering, but it is able to compensate for a great deal. The
enjoyment of beauty produces a particular, mildly intoxicating kind
of sensation. There is no very evident use in beauty; the necessity
of it for cultural purposes is not apparent, and yet civilization
could not do without it. The science of aesthetics investigates the
conditions in which things are regarded as beautiful; it can give no
explanation of the nature or origin of beauty; as usual, its lack of
results is concealed under a flood of resounding and meaningless words.
Unfortunately, psycho-analysis, too, has less to say about beauty than
about most things. Its derivation from the realms of sexual sensation
is all that seems certain; the love of beauty is a perfect example of
a feeling with an inhibited aim. ‘Beauty’ and ‘attraction’ are first
of all the attributes of a sexual object. It is remarkable that the
genitals themselves, the sight of which is always exciting, are hardly
ever regarded as beautiful; the quality of beauty seems, on the other
hand, to attach to certain secondary sexual characters.

In spite of the incompleteness of these considerations, I will venture
on a few remarks in conclusion of this discussion. The goal towards
which the pleasure-principle impels us—of becoming happy—is not
attainable; yet we may not—nay, cannot—give up the effort to come
nearer to realization of it by some means or other. Very different
paths may be taken towards it: some pursue the positive aspect of the
aim, attainment of pleasure; others the negative, avoidance of pain.
By none of these ways can we achieve all that we desire. In that
modified sense in which we have seen it to be attainable, happiness is
a problem of the economics of the libido in each individual. There is
no sovereign recipe in this matter which suits all; each one must find
out for himself by which particular means he may achieve felicity. All
kinds of different factors will operate to influence his choice. It
depends on how much real gratification he is likely to obtain in the
external world, and how far he will find it necessary to make himself
independent of it; finally, too, on the belief he has in himself of his
power to alter it in accordance with his wishes. Even at this stage
the mental constitution of the individual will play a decisive part,
aside from any external considerations. The man who is predominantly
erotic will choose emotional relationships with others before all
else; the narcissistic type, who is more self-sufficient, will seek
his essential satisfactions in the inner workings of his own soul; the
man of action will never abandon the external world in which he can
essay his power. The interests of narcissistic types will be determined
by their particular gifts and the degree of instinctual sublimation
of which they are capable. When any choice is pursued to an extreme
it penalizes itself, in that it exposes the individual to the dangers
accompanying any one exclusive life-interest which may always prove
inadequate. Just as a cautious business-man avoids investing all his
capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not
to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. Success is
never certain; it depends on the co-operation of many factors, perhaps
on none more than the capacity of the mental constitution to adapt
itself to the outer world and then utilize this last for obtaining
pleasure. Anyone who is born with a specially unfavourable instinctual
constitution, and whose libido-components do not go through the
transformation and modification necessary for successful achievement
in later life, will find it hard to obtain happiness from his external
environment, especially if he is faced with the more difficult tasks.
One last possibility of dealing with life remains to such people and
it offers them at least substitute-gratifications; it takes the form
of the flight into neurotic illness, and they mostly adopt it while
they are still young. Those whose efforts to obtain happiness come to
nought in later years still find consolation in the pleasure of chronic
intoxication, or else they embark upon that despairing attempt at
revolt—psychosis.

Religion circumscribes these measures of choice and adaptation by
urging upon everyone alike its single way of achieving happiness and
guarding against pain. Its method consists in decrying the value of
life and promulgating a view of the real world that is distorted like a
delusion, and both of these imply a preliminary intimidating influence
upon intelligence. At such a cost—by the forcible imposition of mental
infantilism and inducing a mass-delusion—religion succeeds in saving
many people from individual neuroses. But little more. There are, as we
have said, many paths by which the happiness attainable for man can be
reached, but none which is certain to take him to it. Nor can religion
keep her promises either. When the faithful find themselves reduced in
the end to speaking of God’s ‘inscrutable decree’, they thereby avow
that all that is left to them in their sufferings is unconditional
submission as a last-remaining consolation and source of happiness. And
if a man is willing to come to this, he could probably have arrived
there by a shorter road.


FOOTNOTES:

[4] 1927. London: Hogarth Press, 1928.

[5] Goethe, _Zahmen Xenien IX_ (Gedichte aus dem Nachlass).

[6] Wilhelm Busch, in _Die fromme Helene_, says the same thing on a
lower level: ‘The man who has cares has brandy too.’

[7] Goethe even warns us that ‘nothing is so hard to bear as a train of
happy days’. This may be an exaggeration all the same.

[8] When there is no special disposition in a man imperatively
prescribing the direction of his life-interest, the ordinary work
all can do for a livelihood can play the part which Voltaire wisely
advocated it should do in our lives. It is not possible to discuss
the significance of work for the economics of the libido adequately
within the limits of a short survey. Laying stress upon importance
of work has a greater effect than any other technique of living in
the direction of binding the individual more closely to reality; in
his work he is at least securely attached to a part of reality, the
human community. Work is no less valuable for the opportunity it and
the human relations connected with it provide for a very considerable
discharge of libidinal component impulses, narcissistic, aggressive
and even erotic, than because it is indispensable for subsistence
and justifies existence in a society. The daily work of earning a
livelihood affords particular satisfaction when it has been selected by
free choice, _i.e._ when through sublimation it enables use to be made
of existing inclinations, of instinctual impulses that have retained
their strength, or are more intense than usual for constitutional
reasons. And yet as a path to happiness work is not valued very highly
by men. They do not run after it as they do after other opportunities
for gratification. The great majority work only when forced by
necessity, and this natural human aversion to work gives rise to the
most difficult social problems.

[9] Cf. ‘Formulations regarding the Two Principles in Mental
Functioning’ (1911), _Collected Papers_, vol. iv.; and _Introductory
Lectures on Psycho-Analysis_ (1915-17), London, 1922, chapter xxiii.




III


Our discussion of happiness has so far not taught us much that is
not already common knowledge. Nor does the prospect of discovering
anything new seem much greater if we go on with the problem why it
is so hard for mankind to be happy. We gave the answer before, when
we cited the three sources of human sufferings, namely, the superior
force of nature, the disposition to decay of our bodies, and the
inadequacy of our methods of regulating human relations in the family,
the community and the state. In regard to the first two, our judgement
cannot hesitate: it forces us to recognize these sources of suffering
and to submit to the inevitable. We shall never completely subdue
nature; our body, too, is an organism, itself a part of nature, and
will always contain the seeds of dissolution, with its limited powers
of adaptation and achievement. The effect of this recognition is in no
way disheartening; on the contrary, it points out the direction for
our efforts. If we cannot abolish all suffering, yet a great deal of
it we can, and can mitigate more; the experience of several thousand
years has convinced us of this. To the third, the social source of our
distresses, we take up a different attitude. We prefer not to regard
it as one at all; we cannot see why the systems we have ourselves
created should not rather ensure protection and well-being for us all.
To be sure, when we consider how unsuccessful our efforts to safeguard
against suffering in this particular have proved, the suspicion dawns
upon us that a bit of unconquerable nature lurks concealed behind this
difficulty as well—in the shape of our own mental constitution.

When we start to consider this possibility, we come across a point of
view which is so amazing that we will pause over it. According to it,
our so-called civilization itself is to blame for a great part of our
misery, and we should be much happier if we were to give it up and go
back to primitive conditions. I call this amazing because—however one
may define culture—it is undeniable that every means by which we try
to guard ourselves against menaces from the several sources of human
distress is a part of this same culture.

How has it come about that so many people have adopted this strange
attitude of hostility to civilization? In my opinion, it arose from
a background of profound long-standing discontent with the existing
state of civilization, which finally crystallized into this judgement
as a result of certain historical happenings. I believe I can identify
the last two of these; I am not learned enough to trace the links in
the chain back into the history of the human species. At the time when
Christianity conquered the pagan religions some such antagonism to
culture must already have been actively at work. It is closely related
to the low estimation put upon earthly life by Christian doctrine. The
earlier of the last two historical developments was when, as a result
of voyages of discovery, men came into contact with primitive peoples
and races. To the Europeans, who failed to observe them carefully
and misunderstood what they saw, these people seemed to lead simple,
happy lives—wanting for nothing—such as the travellers who visited
them, with all their superior culture, were unable to achieve. Later
experience has corrected this opinion on many points; in several
instances the ease of life was due to the bounty of nature and the
possibilities of ready satisfaction for the great human needs, but it
was erroneously attributed to the absence of the complicated conditions
of civilization. The last of the two historical events is especially
familiar to us; it was when people began to understand the nature of
the neuroses which threaten to undermine the modicum of happiness open
to civilized man. It was found that men become neurotic because they
cannot tolerate the degree of privation that society imposes on them
in virtue of its cultural ideals, and it was supposed that a return to
greater possibilities of happiness would ensue if these standards were
abolished or greatly relaxed.

And there exists an element of disappointment, in addition. In the
last generations man has made extraordinary strides in knowledge
of the natural sciences and technical application of them, and has
established his dominion over nature in a way never before imagined.
The details of this forward progress are universally known: it is
unnecessary to enumerate them. Mankind is proud of its exploits and
has a right to be. But men are beginning to perceive that all this
newly-won power over space and time, this conquest of the forces of
nature, this fulfilment of age-old longings, has not increased the
amount of pleasure they can obtain in life, has not made them feel
any happier. The valid conclusion from this is merely that power over
nature is not the only condition of human happiness, just as it is not
the only goal of civilization’s efforts, and there is no ground for
inferring that its technical progress is worthless from the standpoint
of happiness. It prompts one to exclaim: is it not then a positive
pleasure, an unequivocal gain in happiness, to be able to hear,
whenever I like, the voice of a child living hundreds of miles away, or
to know directly a friend of mine arrives at his destination that he
has come well and safely through the long and troublesome voyage? And
is it nothing that medical science has succeeded in enormously reducing
the mortality of young children, the dangers of infection for women
in childbirth, indeed, in very considerably prolonging the average
length of human life? And there is still a long list one could add
to these benefits that we owe to the much-despised era of scientific
and practical progress—but a critical, pessimistic voice makes itself
heard, saying that most of these advantages follow the model of those
‘cheap pleasures’ in the anecdote. One gets this enjoyment by sticking
one’s bare leg outside the bedclothes on a cold winter’s night and
then drawing it in again. If there were no railway to make light of
distances my child would never have left home and I should not need
the telephone to hear his voice. If there were no vessels crossing the
ocean my friend would never have embarked on his voyage and I should
not need the telegraph to relieve my anxiety about him. What is the
use of reducing the mortality of children when it is precisely this
reduction which imposes the greatest moderation on us in begetting
them, so that taken all round we do not rear more children than in
the days before the reign of hygiene, while at the same time we have
created difficult conditions for sexual life in marriage and probably
counteracted the beneficial effects of natural selection? And what do
we gain by a long life when it is full of hardship and starved of joys
and so wretched that we can only welcome death as our deliverer?

It seems to be certain that our present-day civilization does not
inspire in us a feeling of well-being, but it is very difficult to
form an opinion whether in earlier times people felt any happier and
what part their cultural conditions played in the question. We always
tend to regard trouble objectively, _i.e._ to place ourselves with
our own wants and our own sensibilities in the same conditions, so
as to discover what opportunities for happiness or unhappiness we
should find in them. This method of considering the problem, which
appears to be objective because it ignores the varieties of subjective
sensitivity, is of course the most subjective possible, for by applying
it one substitutes one’s own mental attitude for the unknown attitude
of other men. Happiness, on the contrary, is something essentially
subjective. However we may shrink in horror at the thought of certain
situations, that of the galley-slaves in antiquity, of the peasants in
the Thirty Years’ War, of the victims of the Inquisition, of the Jews
awaiting a pogrom, it is still impossible for us to feel ourselves
into the position of these people, to imagine the differences which
would be brought about by constitutional obtuseness of feeling, gradual
stupefaction, the cessation of all anticipation, and by all the grosser
and more subtle ways in which insensibility to both pleasurable and
painful sensations can be induced. Moreover, on occasions when the
most extreme forms of suffering have to be endured, special mental
protective devices come into operation. It seems to me unprofitable to
follow up this aspect of the problem further.

It is time that we should turn our attention to the nature of this
culture, the value of which is so much disputed from the point of
view of happiness. Until we have learnt something by examining it
for ourselves, we will not look round for formulas which express its
essence in a few words. We will be content to repeat[10] that the word
‘culture’ describes the sum of the achievements and institutions which
differentiate our lives from those of our animal forebears and serve
two purposes, namely, that of protecting humanity against nature and of
regulating the relations of human beings among themselves. In order to
learn more than this, we must bring together the individual features
of culture as they are manifested in human communities. We shall have
no hesitation in allowing ourselves to be guided by the common usages
of language, or as one might say, the _feeling_ of language, confident
that we shall thus take into account inner attitudes which still resist
expression in abstract terms.

The beginning is easy. We recognize as belonging to culture all the
activities and possessions which men use to make the earth serviceable
to them, to protect them against the tyranny of natural forces, and
so on. There is less doubt about this aspect of civilization than
any other. If we go back far enough we find that the first acts of
civilization were the use of tools, the gaining of power over fire,
and the construction of dwellings. Among these the acquisition of
power over fire stands out as a quite exceptional achievement, without
a prototype;[11] while the other two opened up paths which have
ever since been pursued by man, the stimulus towards which is easily
imagined. By means of all his tools, man makes his own organs more
perfect—both the motor and the sensory—or else removes the obstacles
in the way of their activity. Machinery places gigantic power at his
disposal which, like his muscles, he can employ in any direction; ships
and aircraft have the effect that neither air nor water can prevent
his traversing them. With spectacles he corrects the defects of the
lens in his own eyes; with telescopes he looks at far distances; with
the microscope he overcomes the limitations in visibility due to the
structure of his retina. With the photographic camera he has created
an instrument which registers transitory visual impressions, just as
the gramophone does with equally transient auditory ones; both are at
bottom materializations of his own power of memory. With the help of
the telephone he can hear at distances which even fairy-tales would
treat as insuperable; writing to begin with was the voice of the
absent; dwellings were a substitute for the mother’s womb, that first
abode, in which he was safe and felt so content, for which he probably
yearns ever after.

It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of what man
by his science and practical inventions has achieved on this earth,
where he first appeared as a weakly member of the animal kingdom, and
on which each individual of his species must ever again appear as a
helpless infant—O inch of nature!—is a direct fulfilment of all, or of
most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales. All these possessions
he has acquired through culture. Long ago he formed an ideal conception
of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. Whatever
seemed unattainable to his desires—or forbidden to him—he attributed
to these gods. One may say, therefore, that these gods were the ideals
of his culture. Now he has himself approached very near to realizing
this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself. But only, it is true,
in the way that ideals are usually realized in the general experience
of humanity. Not completely; in some respects not at all, in others
only by halves. Man has become a god by means of artificial limbs,
so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with all his accessory
organs; but they do not grow on him and they still give him trouble
at times. However, he is entitled to console himself with the thought
that this evolution will not come to an end in A.D. 1930. Future ages
will produce further great advances in this realm of culture, probably
inconceivable now, and will increase man’s likeness to a god still
more. But with the aim of our study in mind, we will not forget, all
the same, that the human being of to-day is not happy with all his
likeness to a god.

Thus we recognize that a country has attained a high level of
civilization when we find that everything in it that can be helpful in
exploiting the earth for man’s benefit and in protecting him against
nature—everything, in short, that is useful to him—is cultivated
and effectively protected. In such a country the course of rivers
which threaten to overflow their banks is regulated, their waters
guided through canals to places where they are needed. The soil is
industriously cultivated and planted with the vegetation suited to
it; the mineral wealth is brought up assiduously from the depths
and wrought into the implements and utensils that are required. The
means of communication are frequent, rapid and reliable; wild and
dangerous animals have been exterminated, the breeding of tamed and
domesticated ones prospers. But we demand other things besides these of
civilization, and, curiously enough, we expect to find them existing in
the same countries. As if we wished to repudiate the first requisition
we made, we count it also as proof of a high level of civilization
when we see that the industry of the inhabitants is applied as well to
things which are not in the least useful and, on the contrary, seem
to be useless, _e.g._ when the parks and gardens in a town, which
are necessary as playgrounds and air-reservoirs, also bear flowering
plants, or when the windows of dwellings are adorned with flowers.
We soon become aware that the useless thing which we require of
civilization is beauty; we expect a cultured people to revere beauty
where it is found in nature and to create it in their handiwork so
far as they are able. But this is far from exhausting what we require
of civilization. Besides, we expect to see the signs of cleanliness
and order. We do not think highly of the cultural level of an English
country town in the time of Shakespeare when we read that there was
a tall dungheap in front of his father’s house in Stratford; we are
indignant and call it ‘barbarous’, which is the opposite of civilized,
when we find the paths in the Wiener Wald littered with paper. Dirt
of any kind seems to us incompatible with civilization; we extend our
demands for cleanliness to the human body also, and are amazed to hear
what an objectionable odour emanated from the person of the Roi Soleil;
we shake our heads when we are shown the tiny wash-basin on the Isola
Bella which Napoleon used for his daily ablutions. Indeed, we are
not surprised if anyone employs the use of soap as a direct measure
of civilization. It is the same with order, which, like cleanliness,
relates entirely to man’s handiwork. But whereas we cannot expect
cleanliness in nature, order has, on the contrary, been imitated from
nature; man’s observations of the great astronomical periodicities
not only furnished him with a model, but formed the ground-plan of
his first attempts to introduce order into his own life. Order is a
kind of repetition-compulsion by which it is ordained once for all
when, where and how a thing shall be done so that on every similar
occasion doubt and hesitation shall be avoided. The benefits of order
are incontestable: it enables us to use space and time to the best
advantage, while saving expenditure of mental energy. One would be
justified in expecting that it would have ingrained itself from the
start and without opposition into all human activities; and one may
well wonder that this has not happened, and that, on the contrary,
human beings manifest an inborn tendency to negligence, irregularity
and untrustworthiness in their work, and have to be laboriously trained
to imitate the example of their celestial models.

Beauty, cleanliness and order clearly occupy a peculiar position among
the requirements of civilization. No one will maintain that they are as
essential to life as the activities aimed at controlling the forces of
nature and as other factors which we have yet to mention; and yet no
one would willingly relegate them to the background as trivial matters.
Beauty is an instance which plainly shows that culture is not simply
utilitarian in its aims, for the lack of beauty is a thing we cannot
tolerate in civilization. The utilitarian advantages of order are quite
apparent; with regard to cleanliness we have to remember that it is
required of us by hygiene, and we may surmise that even before the
days of scientific prophylaxis the connection between the two was not
altogether unsuspected by mankind. But these aims and endeavours of
culture are not entirely to be explained on utilitarian lines; there
must be something else at work besides.

According to general opinion, however, there is one feature of culture
which characterizes it better than any other, and that is the value it
sets upon the higher mental activities—intellectual, scientific, and
aesthetic achievement—the leading part it concedes to ideas in human
life. First and foremost among these ideas come the religious systems
with their complicated evolution, on which I have elsewhere endeavoured
to throw a light; next to them come philosophical speculations; and
last, the ideals man has formed, his conceptions of the perfection
possible in an individual, in a people, in humanity as a whole, and the
demands he makes on the basis of these conceptions. These creations
of his mind are not independent of each other; on the contrary, they
are closely interwoven, and this complicates the attempt to describe
them, as well as that to trace their psychological derivation. If
we assume as a general hypothesis that the force behind all human
activities is a striving towards the two convergent aims of profit
and pleasure, we must then acknowledge this as valid also for these
other manifestations of culture, although it can be plainly recognized
as true only in respect of science and art. It cannot be doubted,
however, that the remainder, too, correspond to some powerful need in
human beings—perhaps to one which develops fully only in a minority of
people. Nor may we allow ourselves to be misled by our own judgements
concerning the value of any of these religious or philosophical
systems or of these ideals; whether we look upon them as the highest
achievement of the human mind, or whether we deplore them as fallacies,
one must acknowledge that where they exist, and especially where they
are in the ascendant, they testify to a high level of civilization.

We now have to consider the last, and certainly by no means the least
important, of the components of culture, namely, the ways in which
social relations, the relations of one man to another, are regulated,
all that has to do with him as a neighbour, a source of help, a sexual
object to others, a member of a family or of a state. It is especially
difficult in this matter to remain unbiased by any ideal standards
and to ascertain exactly what is specifically cultural here. Perhaps
one might begin with the statement that the first attempt ever made
to regulate these social relations already contained the essential
element of civilization. Had no such attempt been made, these relations
would be subject to the wills of individuals: that is to say, the man
who was physically strongest would decide things in accordance with
his own interests and desires. The situation would remain the same
even though this strong man should in his turn meet with another who
was stronger than he. Human life in communities only becomes possible
when a number of men unite together in strength superior to any single
individual and remain united against all single individuals. The
strength of this united body is then opposed as ‘Right’ against the
strength of any individual, which is condemned as ‘brute force’. This
substitution of the power of a united number for the power of a single
man is the decisive step towards civilization. The essence of it lies
in the circumstance that the members of the community have restricted
their possibilities of gratification, whereas the individual recognized
no such restrictions. The first requisite of culture, therefore, is
justice—that is, the assurance that a law once made will not be broken
in favour of any individual. This implies nothing about the ethical
value of any such law. The further course of cultural development seems
to tend towards ensuring that the law shall no longer represent the
will of any small body—caste, tribe, section of the population—which
may behave like a predatory individual towards other such groups
perhaps containing larger numbers. The end-result would be a state
of law to which all—that is, all who are capable of uniting—have
contributed by making some sacrifice of their own desires, and which
leaves none—again with the same exception—at the mercy of brute force.

The liberty of the individual is not a benefit of culture. It was
greatest before any culture, though indeed it had little value at
that time, because the individual was hardly in a position to defend
it. Liberty has undergone restrictions through the evolution of
civilization and justice demands that these restrictions shall apply
to all. The desire for freedom that makes itself felt in a human
community may be a revolt against some existing injustice and so may
prove favourable to a further development of civilization and remain
compatible with it. But it may also have its origin in the primitive
roots of the personality, still unfettered by civilizing influences,
and so become a source of antagonism to culture. Thus the cry for
freedom is directed either against particular forms or demands of
culture or else against culture itself. It does not seem as if man
could be brought by any sort of influence to change his nature into
that of the ants; he will always, one imagines, defend his claim to
individual freedom against the will of the multitude. A great part of
the struggles of mankind centres round the single task of finding some
expedient (_i.e._ satisfying) solution between these individual claims
and those of the civilized community; it is one of the problems of
man’s fate whether this solution can be arrived at in some particular
form of culture or whether the conflict will prove irreconcilable.

We have obtained a clear impression of the general picture presented by
culture through adopting the common view as to which aspects of human
life are to be called cultural; but it is true that so far we have
discovered nothing that is not common knowledge. We have, however, at
the same time guarded ourselves against accepting the misconception
that civilization is synonymous with becoming perfect, is the path by
which man is ordained to reach perfection. But now a certain point
of view presses for consideration; it will lead perhaps in another
direction. The evolution of culture seems to us a peculiar kind of
process passing over humanity, of which several aspects strike us as
familiar. We can describe this process in terms of the modifications
it effects on the known human instinctual dispositions, which it is
the economic task of our lives to satisfy. Some of these instincts
become absorbed, as it were, so that something appears in place of them
which in an individual we call a character-trait. The most remarkable
example of this process is found in respect of the anal erotism of
young human beings. Their primary interest in the excretory function,
its organs and products, is changed in the course of their growth
into a group of traits that we know well—thriftiness, orderliness
and cleanliness—valuable and welcome qualities in themselves, which,
however, may be intensified till they visibly dominate the personality
and produce what we call the anal character. How this happens we do not
know; but there is no doubt about the accuracy of this conclusion.[12]
Now, we have seen that order and cleanliness are essentially
cultural demands, although the necessity of them for survival is not
particularly apparent, any more than their suitability as sources of
pleasure. At this point we must be struck for the first time with the
similarity between the process of cultural development and that of
the libidinal development in an individual. Other instincts have to
be induced to change the conditions of their gratification, to find
it along other paths, a process which is usually identical with what
we know so well as sublimation (of the aim of an instinct), but which
can sometimes be differentiated from this. Sublimation of instinct is
an especially conspicuous feature of cultural evolution; this it is
that makes it possible for the higher mental operations, scientific,
artistic, ideological activities, to play such an important part in
civilized life. If one were to yield to a first impression, one would
be tempted to say that sublimation is a fate which has been forced
upon instincts by culture alone. But it is better to reflect over this
a while longer. Thirdly and lastly, and this seems most important of
all, it is impossible to ignore the extent to which civilization is
built up on renunciation of instinctual gratifications, the degree to
which the existence of civilization presupposes the non-gratification
(suppression, repression or something else?) of powerful instinctual
urgencies. This ‘cultural privation’ dominates the whole field of
social relations between human beings; we know already that it is the
cause of the antagonism against which all civilization has to fight.
It sets hard tasks for our scientific work, too; we have a great deal
to explain here. It is not easy to understand how it can become
possible to withhold satisfaction from an instinct. Nor is it by any
means without risk to do so; if the deprivation is not made good
economically, one may be certain of producing serious disorders.

But now, if we wish to know what use it is to us to have recognized
the evolution of culture as a special process, comparable to the
normal growth of an individual to maturity, we must clearly attack
another problem and put the question: what are the influences to which
the evolution of culture owes its origin, how did it arise and what
determined its course?


FOOTNOTES:

[10] Cf. _The Future of an Illusion_.

[11] Psycho-analytic material, as yet incomplete and not capable of
unequivocal interpretation, nevertheless admits of a surmise—which
sounds fantastic enough—about the origin of this human feat. It is
as if primitive man had had the impulse, when he came in contact
with fire, to gratify an infantile pleasure in respect of it and put
it out with a stream of urine. The legends that we possess leave no
doubt that flames shooting upwards like tongues were originally felt
to have a phallic sense. Putting out fire by urinating—which is also
introduced in the later fables of Gulliver in Lilliput and Rabelais’s
Gargantua—therefore represented a sexual act with a man, an enjoyment
of masculine potency in homosexual rivalry. Whoever was the first to
deny himself this pleasure and spare the fire was able to take it
with him and break it in to his own service. By curbing the fire of
his own sexual passion he was able to tame fire as a force of nature.
This great cultural victory was thus a reward for refraining from
gratification of an instinct. Further, it is as if man had placed woman
by the hearth as the guardian of the fire he had taken captive, because
her anatomy makes it impossible for her to yield to such a temptation.
It is remarkable how regularly analytic findings testify to the close
connection between the ideas of ambition, fire and urethral erotism.

[12] Cf. ‘Character and Anal Erotism’ (1908), _Collected Papers_, vol.
ii.; also numerous contributions to the subject by Ernest Jones and
others.




IV


This task seems too big a one; one may well confess oneself diffident.
Here follows what little I have been able to elicit about it.

Once primitive man had made the discovery that it lay in his own
hands—speaking literally—to improve his lot on earth by working, it
cannot have been a matter of indifference to him whether another
man worked with him or against him. The other acquired the value
of a fellow-worker, and it was advantageous to live with him. Even
earlier, in his ape-like prehistory, man had adopted the habit of
forming families: his first helpers were probably the members of his
family. One may suppose that the founding of families was in some way
connected with the period when the need for genital satisfaction,
no longer appearing like an occasional guest who turns up suddenly
and then vanishes without letting one hear anything of him for long
intervals, had settled down with each man like a permanent lodger. When
this happened, the male acquired a motive for keeping the female, or
rather, his sexual objects, near him; while the female, who wanted
not to be separated from her helpless young, in their interests, too,
had to stay by the stronger male.[13] In this primitive family one
essential feature of culture is lacking; the will of the father, the
head of it, was unfettered. I have endeavoured in _Totem und Tabu_ to
show how the way led from this family-life to the succeeding phase of
communal existence in the form of a band of brothers. By overpowering
the father, the sons had discovered that several men united can be
stronger than a single man. The totemic stage of culture is founded
upon the restrictions that the band were obliged to impose on one
another in order to maintain the new system. These taboos were the
first ‘Right’ or law. The life of human beings in common therefore
had a twofold foundation, _i.e._ the compulsion to work, created by
external necessity, and the power of love, causing the male to wish to
keep his sexual object, the female, near him, and the female to keep
near her that part of herself which has become detached from her, her
child. Eros and Ananke were the parents of human culture, too. The
first result of culture was that a larger number of human beings could
then live together in common. And since the two great powers were here
co-operating together, one might have expected that further cultural
evolution would have proceeded smoothly towards ever greater mastery
over the external world, as well as towards greater extension in the
numbers of men sharing the life in common. Nor is it easy to understand
how this culture can be felt as anything but satisfying by those who
partake of it.

Before we go on to enquire where the disturbances in it arise, we will
let ourselves digress from the point that love was one of the founders
of culture and so fill a gap left in our previous discussion. We
said that man, having found by experience that sexual (genital) love
afforded him his greatest gratification, so that it became in effect a
prototype of all happiness to him, must have been thereby impelled to
seek his happiness further along the path of sexual relations, to make
genital erotism the central point of his life. We went on to say that
in so doing he becomes to a very dangerous degree dependent on a part
of the outer world, namely, on his chosen love-object, and this exposes
him to most painful sufferings if he is rejected by it or loses it
through death or defection. The wise men of all ages have consequently
warned us emphatically against this way of life; but in spite of all it
retains its attraction for a great number of people.

A small minority are enabled by their constitution nevertheless
to find happiness along the path of love; but far-reaching mental
transformations of the erotic function are necessary before this is
possible. These people make themselves independent of their object’s
acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being
loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss
of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all
men equally, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of
genital love by turning away from its sexual aim and modifying the
instinct into an impulse with an _inhibited aim_. The state which they
induce in themselves by this process—an unchangeable, undeviating,
tender attitude—has little superficial likeness to the stormy
vicissitudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived.
It seems that Saint Francis of Assisi may have carried this method of
using love to produce an inner feeling of happiness as far as anyone;
what we are thus characterizing as one of the procedures by which the
pleasure-principle fulfils itself has in fact been linked up in many
ways with religion; the connection between them may lie in those remote
fastnesses of the mind where the distinctions between the ego and
objects and between the various objects become matters of indifference.
From one ethical standpoint, the deeper motivation of which will
later become clear to us, this inclination towards an all-embracing
love of others and of the world at large is regarded as the highest
state of mind of which man is capable. Even at this early stage in the
discussion I will not withhold the two principal objections we have to
raise against this view. A love that does not discriminate seems to
us to lose some of its own value, since it does an injustice to its
object. And secondly, not all men are worthy of love.

The love that instituted the family still retains its power; in its
original form it does not stop short of direct sexual satisfaction, and
in its modified form as aim-inhibited friendliness it influences our
civilization. In both these forms it carries on its task of binding
men and women to one another, and it does this with greater intensity
than can be achieved through the interest of work in common. The casual
and undifferentiated way in which the word ‘love’ is employed by
language has its genetic justification. In general usage the relation
between a man and a woman whose genital desires have led them to found
a family is called love; but the positive attitude of feeling between
parents and children, between brothers and sisters in a family, is
also called love, although to us this relation merits the description
of aim-inhibited love or affection. Love with an inhibited aim was
indeed originally full sensual love and in men’s unconscious minds is
so still. Both of them, the sensual and the aim-inhibited forms, reach
out beyond the family and create new bonds with others who before
were strangers. Genital love leads to the forming of new families;
aim-inhibited love to ‘friendships’, which are valuable culturally
because they do not entail many of the limitations of genital love—for
instance, its exclusiveness. But the interrelations between love and
culture lose their simplicity as development proceeds. On the one hand,
love opposes the interests of culture; on the other, culture menaces
love with grievous restrictions.

This rift between them seems inevitable; the cause of it is not
immediately recognizable. It expresses itself first in a conflict
between the family and the larger community to which the individual
belongs. We have seen already that one of culture’s principal
endeavours is to cement men and women together into larger units. But
the family will not give up the individual. The closer the attachment
between the members of it, the more they often tend to remain aloof
from others, and the harder it is for them to enter into the wider
circle of the world at large. That form of life in common which is
phylogenetically older, and is in childhood its only form, resists
being displaced by the type that becomes acquired later with culture.
Detachment from the family has become a task that awaits every
adolescent, and often society helps him through it with pubertal and
initiatory rites. One gets the impression that these difficulties form
an integral part of every process of mental evolution—and indeed, at
bottom, of every organic development, too.

The next discord is caused by women, who soon become antithetical to
cultural trends and spread around them their conservative influence—the
women who at the beginning laid the foundations of culture by the
appeal of their love. Women represent the interests of the family and
sexual life; the work of civilization has become more and more men’s
business; it confronts them with ever harder tasks, compels them to
sublimations of instinct which women are not easily able to achieve.
Since man has not an unlimited amount of mental energy at his disposal,
he must accomplish his tasks by distributing his libido to the best
advantage. What he employs for cultural purposes he withdraws to a
great extent from women and his sexual life; his constant association
with men and his dependence on his relations with them even estrange
him from his duties as husband and father. Woman finds herself thus
forced into the background by the claims of culture and she adopts an
inimical attitude towards it.

The tendency of culture to set restrictions upon sexual life is no
less evident than its other aim of widening its sphere of operations.
Even the earliest phase of it, the totemic, brought in its train the
prohibition against incestuous object-choice, perhaps the most maiming
wound ever inflicted throughout the ages on the erotic life of man.
Further limitations are laid on it by taboos, laws and customs, which
touch men as well as women. Various types of culture differ in the
lengths to which they carry this; and the material structure of the
social fabric also affects the measure of sexual freedom that remains.
We have seen that culture obeys the laws of psychological economic
necessity in making the restrictions, for it obtains a great part of
the mental energy it needs by subtracting it from sexuality. Culture
behaves towards sexuality in this respect like a tribe or a section
of the population which has gained the upper hand and is exploiting
the rest to its own advantage. Fear of a revolt among the oppressed
then becomes a motive for even stricter regulations. A high-water mark
in this type of development has been reached in our Western European
civilization. Psychologically it is fully justified in beginning by
censuring any manifestations of the sexual life of children, for there
would be no prospect of curbing the sexual desires of adults if the
ground had not been prepared for it in childhood. Nevertheless there
is no sort of justification for the lengths beyond this to which
civilized society goes in actually denying the existence of these
manifestations, which are not merely demonstrable but positively
glaring. Where sexually mature persons are concerned, object-choice is
further narrowed down to the opposite sex and most of the extragenital
forms of satisfaction are interdicted as perversions. The standard
which declares itself in these prohibitions is that of a sexual life
identical for all; it pays no heed to the disparities in the inborn
and acquired sexual constitutions of individuals and cuts off a
considerable number of them from sexual enjoyment, thus becoming a
cause of grievous injustice. The effect of these restrictive measures
might presumably be that all the sexual interest of those who are
normal and not constitutionally handicapped could flow without further
forfeiture into the channel left open to it. But the only outlet not
thus censured, heterosexual genital love, is further circumscribed by
the barriers of legitimacy and monogamy. Present-day civilization gives
us plainly to understand that sexual relations are permitted only on
the basis of a final, indissoluble bond between a man and woman; that
sexuality as a source of enjoyment for its own sake is unacceptable
to it; and that its intention is to tolerate it only as the hitherto
irreplaceable means of multiplying the human race.

This, of course, represents an extreme. Everyone knows that it has
proved impossible to put it into execution, even for short periods.
Only the weaklings have submitted to such comprehensive interference
with their sexual freedom, and stronger natures have done so only
under one compensatory condition, of which mention may be made later.
Civilized society has seen itself obliged to pass over in silence many
transgressions which by its own ordinances it ought to have penalized.
This does not justify anyone, however, in leaning towards the other
side and assuming that, because it does not achieve all it aims at,
such an attitude on the part of society is altogether harmless. The
sexual life of civilized man is seriously disabled, whatever we may
say; it sometimes makes an impression of being a function in process of
becoming atrophied, just as organs like our teeth and our hair seem to
be. One is probably right in supposing that the importance of sexuality
as a source of pleasurable sensations, _i.e._ as a means of fulfilling
the purpose of life, has perceptibly decreased.[14] Sometimes one
imagines one perceives that it is not only the oppression of culture,
but something in the nature of the function itself that denies us full
satisfaction and urges us in other directions. This may be an error;
it is hard to decide.[15]


FOOTNOTES:

[13] The organic periodicity of the sexual process has persisted, it
is true, but its effect on mental sexual excitation has been almost
reversed. This change is connected primarily with the diminishing
importance of the olfactory stimuli by means of which the menstrual
process produced sexual excitement in the mind of the male. Their
function was taken over by visual stimuli, which could operate
permanently, instead of intermittently like the olfactory ones. The
‘taboo of menstruation’ has its origin in this ‘organic repression’,
which acted as a barrier against a phase of development that had been
surpassed; all its other motivations are probably of a secondary
nature. (Cf. C. D. Daly, ‘Hindu-mythologie und Kastrationskomplex’,
_Imago_, Bd. xiii., 1927.) This process is repeated on a different
level when the gods of a foregone cultural epoch are changed into
demons in the next. The diminution in importance of olfactory stimuli
seems itself, however, to be a consequence of man’s erecting himself
from the earth, of his adoption of an upright gait, which made his
genitals, that before had been covered, visible and in need of
protection and so evoked feelings of shame. Man’s erect posture,
therefore, would represent the beginning of the momentous process
of cultural evolution. The chain of development would run from this
onward, through the diminution in the importance of olfactory stimuli
and the isolation of women at their periods to a time when visual
stimuli became paramount, the genitals became visible, further till
sexual excitation became constant and the family was founded, and so to
the threshold of human culture. This is only a theoretical speculation,
but it is important enough to be worth checking carefully by the
conditions obtaining among the animals closely allied to man.

There is an unmistakable social factor at work in the impulse of
civilization towards cleanliness, which has been subsequently justified
by considerations of hygiene but had nevertheless found expression
before they were appreciated. The impulse towards cleanliness
originates in the striving to get rid of excretions which have become
unpleasant to the sense-perceptions. We know that things are different
in the nursery. Excreta arouse no aversion in children; they seem
precious to them, as being parts of their own bodies which have been
detached from them. The training of children is very energetic in
this particular; its object is to expedite the development that lies
ahead of them, according to which the excreta are to become worthless,
disgusting, horrible and despicable to them. Such a reversal of
values would be almost impossible to bring about, were it not that
these substances expelled from the body are destined by their strong
odours to share the fate that overtook the olfactory stimuli after
man had erected himself from the ground. Anal erotism, therefore, is
from the first subjected to the ‘organic repression’ which opened up
the way to culture. The social factor which has been active in the
further modifications of anal erotism comes into play with the fact
that in spite of all man’s evolutionary progress the smell of his own
excretions is scarcely disagreeable to him yet, but so far only that
of the evacuations of others. The man who is not clean, _i.e._ who
does not eliminate his excretions, therefore offends others, shows no
consideration for them—a fact which is exemplified in the commonest
and most forcible terms of abuse. It would be incomprehensible, too,
that man should use as an abusive epithet the name of his most faithful
friend in the animal world, if dogs did not incur the contempt of men
through two of their characteristics, _i.e._ that they are creatures of
smell and have no horror of excrement, and, secondly, that they are not
ashamed of their sexual functions.

[14] There is a short story, which I valued long ago, by a highly
sensitive writer, the Englishman, John Galsworthy, who to-day enjoys
general recognition; it is called ‘The Apple Tree’. It shows in a very
moving and forcible way how there is no longer any place in present-day
civilized life for a simple natural love between two human beings.

[15] The following considerations would support the view expressed
above. Man, too, is an animal with an unmistakably bisexual
disposition. The individual represents a fusion of two symmetrical
halves, of which, according to many authorities, one is purely male,
the other female. It is equally possible that each half was originally
hermaphroditic. Sex is a biological fact which is hard to evaluate
psychologically, although it is of extraordinary importance in mental
life. We are accustomed to say that every human being displays both
male and female instinctual impulses, needs and attributes, but the
characteristics of what is male and female can only be demonstrated
in anatomy, and not in psychology. Where the latter is concerned, the
antithesis of sex fades away into that of activity and passivity, and
we far too readily identify activity with masculinity and passivity
with femininity, a statement which is by no means universally confirmed
in the animal world. The theory of bisexuality is still very obscure
and in psycho-analysis we must be painfully aware of the disadvantage
we are under as long as it still remains unconnected with the theory of
instincts. However this may be, if we assume it to be a fact that each
individual has both male and female desires which need satisfaction
in his sexual life, we shall be prepared for the possibility that
these needs will not both be gratified on the same object, and that
they will interfere with each other, if they cannot be kept apart so
that each impulse flows into a special channel suited for it. Another
difficulty arises from the circumstance that so often a measure of
direct aggressiveness is coupled with an erotic relationship, over and
above its inherent sadistic components. The love-object does not always
view these complications with the degree of understanding and tolerance
manifested by the peasant woman who complained that her husband did not
love her any more, because he had not beaten her for a week.

The conjecture which leads furthest, however, is that—and here we come
back to the remarks in the footnote on p. 66—the whole of sexuality
and not merely anal erotism is threatened with falling a victim to the
organic repression consequent upon man’s adoption of the erect posture
and the lowering in value of the sense of smell; so that since that
time the sexual function has been associated with a resistance not
susceptible of further explanation, which puts obstacles in the way
of full satisfaction and forces it away from its sexual aim towards
sublimations and displacements of libido. I am aware that Bleuler
(in ‘Der Sexualwiderstand’, _Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen_, Bd. v., 1913) once pointed out the
existence of a fundamental tendency of this kind towards rejecting
sexual life. All neurotics, and many others too, take exception to
the fact that ‘inter urinas et faeces nascimur’. The genitals, too,
excite the olfactory sense strongly in a way that many people cannot
tolerate and which spoils sexual intercourse for them. Thus we should
find, as the deepest root of the sexual repression that marches with
culture, the organic defence of the new form of life that began with
the erect posture against the earliest type of animal existence—a
result of scientific researches that coincides in a curious way with
often expressed vulgar prejudices. At the present time, nevertheless,
these results are but unconfirmed possibilities, not yet scientifically
substantiated. Nor should we forget that, in spite of the undeniable
diminution in the importance of olfactory stimuli, there exist even in
Europe races who prize highly as aphrodisiacs the strong genital odours
so objectionable to us and who will not renounce them. (Cf. the reports
of folkloristic information obtained by Iwan Bloch’s ‘Questionnaire’,
appearing under the title of ‘Über den Geruchssinn in der vita
sexualis’ in various volumes of Friedrich S. Krauss’ _Anthropophyteia_.)




V


Psycho-analytic work has shown that these frustrations in respect of
sexual life are especially unendurable to the so-called neurotics among
us. These persons manufacture substitute-gratifications for themselves
in their symptoms, which, however, are either painful in themselves or
become the cause of suffering owing to the difficulties they create
with the person’s environment and society at large. It is easy to
understand the latter fact, but the former presents us with a new
problem. But culture demands other sacrifices besides that of sexual
gratifications.

We have regarded the difficulties in the development of civilization as
part of the general difficulty accompanying all evolution, for we have
traced them to the inertia of libido, its disinclination to relinquish
an old position in favour of a new one. It is much the same thing if we
say that the conflict between civilization and sexuality is caused by
the circumstance that sexual love is a relationship between two people,
in which a third can only be superfluous or disturbing, whereas
civilization is founded on relations between larger groups of persons.
When a love-relationship is at its height no room is left for any
interest in the surrounding world; the pair of lovers are sufficient
unto themselves, do not even need the child they have in common to make
them happy. In no other case does Eros so plainly betray the core of
his being, his aim of making one out of many; but when he has achieved
it in the proverbial way through the love of two human beings, he is
not willing to go further.

From all this we might well imagine that a civilized community could
consist of pairs of individuals such as this, libidinally satisfied in
each other, and linked to all the others by work and common interests.
If this were so, culture would not need to levy energy from sexuality.
But such a desirable state of things does not exist and never has
existed; in actuality culture is not content with such limited ties as
these; we see that it endeavours to bind the members of the community
to one another by libidinal ties as well, that it makes use of every
means and favours every avenue by which powerful identifications can be
created among them, and that it exacts a heavy toll of aim-inhibited
libido in order to strengthen communities by bonds of friendship
between the members. Restrictions upon sexual life are unavoidable if
this object is to be attained. But we cannot see the necessity that
forces culture along this path and gives rise to its antagonism to
sexuality. It must be due to some disturbing influence not yet detected
by us.

We may find the clue in one of the so-called ideal standards of
civilized society. It runs: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself’. It is world-renowned, undoubtedly older than Christianity
which parades it as its proudest profession, yet certainly not very
old; in historical times men still knew nothing of it. We will adopt
a naïve attitude towards it, as if we were meeting it for the first
time. Thereupon we find ourselves unable to suppress a feeling of
astonishment, as at something unnatural. Why should we do this? What
good is it to us? Above all, how can we do such a thing? How could it
possibly be done? My love seems to me a valuable thing that I have
no right to throw away without reflection. It imposes obligations on
me which I must be prepared to make sacrifices to fulfil. If I love
someone, he must be worthy of it in some way or other. (I am leaving
out of account now the use he may be to me, as well as his possible
significance to me as a sexual object; neither of these two kinds of
relationship between us come into question where the injunction to
love my neighbour is concerned.) He will be worthy of it if he is so
like me in important respects that I can love myself in him; worthy of
it if he is so much more perfect than I that I can love my ideal of
myself in him; I must love him if he is the son of my friend, since the
pain my friend would feel if anything untoward happened to him would be
my pain—I should have to share it. But if he is a stranger to me and
cannot attract me by any value he has in himself or any significance he
may have already acquired in my emotional life, it will be hard for me
to love him. I shall even be doing wrong if I do, for my love is valued
as a privilege by all those belonging to me; it is an injustice to them
if I put a stranger on a level with them. But if I am to love him (with
that kind of universal love) simply because he, too, is a denizen of
the earth, like an insect or an earthworm or a grass-snake, then I fear
that but a small modicum of love will fall to his lot and it would be
impossible for me to give him as much as by all the laws of reason I
am entitled to retain for myself. What is the point of an injunction
promulgated with such solemnity, if reason does not recommend it to us?

When I look more closely I find still further difficulties. Not merely
is this stranger on the whole not worthy of love, but, to be honest,
I must confess he has more claim to my hostility, even to my hatred.
He does not seem to have the least trace of love for me, does not
show me the slightest consideration. If it will do him any good, he
has no hesitation in injuring me, never even asking himself whether
the amount of advantage he gains by it bears any proportion to the
amount of wrong done to me. What is more, he does not even need to
get an advantage from it; if he can merely get a little pleasure out
of it, he thinks nothing of jeering at me, insulting me, slandering
me, showing his power over me; and the more secure he feels himself,
or the more helpless I am, with so much more certainty can I expect
this behaviour from him towards me. If he behaved differently, if he
showed me consideration and did not molest me, I should in any case,
without the aforesaid commandment, be willing to treat him similarly.
If the high-sounding ordinance had run: ‘Love thy neighbour as thy
neighbour loves thee’, I should not take objection to it. And there is
a second commandment that seems to me even more incomprehensible, and
arouses still stronger opposition in me. It is: ‘Love thine enemies’.
When I think it over, however, I am wrong in treating it as a greater
imposition. It is at bottom the same thing.[16]

I imagine now I hear a voice gravely adjuring me: ‘Just because thy
neighbour is not worthy of thy love, is probably full of enmity towards
thee, thou shouldst love him as thyself’. I then perceive the case to
be like that of _Credo quia absurdum_.

Now it is, of course, very probable that my neighbour, when he is
commanded to love me as himself, will answer exactly as I have done
and reject me for the same reasons. I hope he will not have the same
objective grounds for doing so, but he will hope so as well. Even so,
there are variations in men’s behaviour which ethics, disregarding the
fact that they are determined, classifies as ‘good’ and ‘evil’. As long
as these undeniable variations have not been abolished, conformity to
the highest ethical standards constitutes a betrayal of the interests
of culture, for it puts a direct premium on wickedness. One is
irresistibly reminded here of an incident in the French Chamber when
capital punishment was being discussed; the speech of a member who had
passionately supported its abolition was being applauded with loud
acclamation, when suddenly a voice was heard calling out from the back
of the room, ‘_Que messieurs les assassins commencent!_’

The bit of truth behind all this—one so eagerly denied—is that men are
not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend
themselves if they are attacked, but that a powerful measure of
desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual
endowment. The result is that their neighbour is to them not only a
possible helper or sexual object, but also a temptation to them to
gratify their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work
without recompense, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize
his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and
to kill him. _Homo homini lupus_; who has the courage to dispute it
in the face of all the evidence in his own life and in history? This
aggressive cruelty usually lies in wait for some provocation, or else
it steps into the service of some other purpose, the aim of which might
as well have been achieved by milder measures. In circumstances that
favour it, when those forces in the mind which ordinarily inhibit it
cease to operate, it also manifests itself spontaneously and reveals
men as savage beasts to whom the thought of sparing their own kind is
alien. Anyone who calls to mind the atrocities of the early migrations,
of the invasion by the Huns or by the so-called Mongols under Jenghiz
Khan and Tamurlane, of the sack of Jerusalem by the pious Crusaders,
even indeed the horrors of the last world-war, will have to bow his
head humbly before the truth of this view of man.

The existence of this tendency to aggression which we can detect in
ourselves and rightly presume to be present in others is the factor
that disturbs our relations with our neighbours and makes it necessary
for culture to institute its high demands. Civilized society is
perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility
of men towards one another. Their interests in their common work would
not hold them together; the passions of instinct are stronger than
reasoned interests. Culture has to call up every possible reinforcement
in order to erect barriers against the aggressive instincts of men
and hold their manifestations in check by reaction-formations in
men’s minds. Hence its system of methods by which mankind is to be
driven to identifications and aim-inhibited love-relationships; hence
the restrictions on sexual life; and hence, too, its ideal command
to love one’s neighbour as oneself, which is really justified by the
fact that nothing is so completely at variance with original human
nature as this. With all its striving, this endeavour of culture’s has
so far not achieved very much. Civilization expects to prevent the
worst atrocities of brutal violence by taking upon itself the right
to employ violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay
hands on the more discreet and subtle forms in which human aggressions
are expressed. The time comes when every one of us has to abandon
the illusory anticipations with which in our youth we regarded our
fellow-men, and when we realize how much hardship and suffering we
have been caused in life through their ill-will. It would be unfair,
however, to reproach culture with trying to eliminate all disputes
and competition from human concerns. These things are undoubtedly
indispensable; but opposition is not necessarily enmity, only it may be
misused to make an opening for it.

The Communists believe they have found a way of delivering us from this
evil. Man is wholeheartedly good and friendly to his neighbour, they
say, but the system of private property has corrupted his nature.
The possession of private property gives power to the individual and
thence the temptation arises to ill-treat his neighbour; the man who
is excluded from the possession of property is obliged to rebel in
hostility against the oppressor. If private property were abolished,
all valuables held in common and all allowed to share in the enjoyment
of them, ill-will and enmity would disappear from among men. Since all
needs would be satisfied, none would have any reason to regard another
as an enemy; all would willingly undertake the work which is necessary.
I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communistic
system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property
is advantageous and expedient.[17] But I am able to recognize that
psychologically it is founded on an untenable illusion. By abolishing
private property one deprives the human love of aggression of one
of its instruments, a strong one undoubtedly, but assuredly not the
strongest. It in no way alters the individual differences in power
and influence which are turned by aggressiveness to its own use, nor
does it change the nature of the instinct in any way. This instinct
did not arise as the result of property; it reigned almost supreme in
primitive times when possessions were still extremely scanty; it shows
itself already in the nursery when possessions have hardly grown out
of their original anal shape; it is at the bottom of all the relations
of affection and love between human beings—possibly with the single
exception of that of a mother to her male child. Suppose that personal
rights to material goods are done away with, there still remain
prerogatives in sexual relationships, which must arouse the strongest
rancour and most violent enmity among men and women who are otherwise
equal. Let us suppose this were also to be removed by instituting
complete liberty in sexual life, so that the family, the germ-cell of
culture, ceased to exist; one could not, it is true, foresee the new
paths on which cultural development might then proceed, but one thing
one would be bound to expect and that is that the ineffaceable feature
of human nature would follow wherever it led.

Men clearly do not find it easy to do without satisfaction of this
tendency to aggression that is in them; when deprived of satisfaction
of it they are ill at ease. There is an advantage, not to be
undervalued, in the existence of smaller communities, through which the
aggressive instinct can find an outlet in enmity towards those outside
the group. It is always possible to unite considerable numbers of men
in love towards one another, so long as there are still some remaining
as objects for aggressive manifestations. I once interested myself in
the peculiar fact that peoples whose territories are adjacent, and are
otherwise closely related, are always at feud with and ridiculing each
other, as, for instance, the Spaniards and the Portuguese, the North
and South Germans, the English and the Scotch, and so on. I gave it
the name of ‘narcissism in respect of minor differences’, which does
not do much to explain it. One can now see that it is a convenient and
relatively harmless form of satisfaction for aggressive tendencies,
through which cohesion amongst the members of a group is made easier.
The Jewish people, scattered in all directions as they are, have in
this way rendered services which deserve recognition to the development
of culture in the countries where they settled; but unfortunately not
all the massacres of Jews in the Middle Ages sufficed to procure peace
and security for their Christian contemporaries. Once the apostle Paul
had laid down universal love between all men as the foundation of his
Christian community, the inevitable consequence in Christianity was
the utmost intolerance towards all who remained outside of it; the
Romans, who had not founded their state on love, were not given to lack
of religious toleration, although religion was a concern of the state
and the state was permeated through and through with it. Neither was
it an unaccountable chance that the dream of a German world-dominion
evoked a complementary movement towards anti-semitism; and it is quite
intelligible that the attempt to establish a new communistic type of
culture in Russia should find psychological support in the persecution
of the bourgeois. One only wonders, with some concern, however, how
the Soviets will manage when they have exterminated their bourgeois
entirely.

If civilization requires such sacrifices, not only of sexuality but
also of the aggressive tendencies in mankind, we can better understand
why it should be so hard for men to feel happy in it. In actual fact
primitive man was better off in this respect, for he knew nothing
of any restrictions on his instincts. As a set-off against this,
his prospects of enjoying his happiness for any length of time were
very slight. Civilized man has exchanged some part of his chances of
happiness for a measure of security. We will not forget, however, that
in the primal family only the head of it enjoyed this instinctual
freedom; the other members lived in slavish thraldom. The antithesis
between a minority enjoying cultural advantages and a majority who are
robbed of them was therefore most extreme in that primeval period of
culture. With regard to the primitive human types living at the present
time, careful investigation has revealed that their instinctual life is
by no means to be envied on account of its freedom; it is subject to
restrictions of a different kind but perhaps even more rigorous than is
that of modern civilized man.

In rightly finding fault, as we thus do, with our present state of
civilization for so inadequately providing us with what we require to
make us happy in life, and for the amount of suffering of a probably
avoidable nature it lays us open to—in doing our utmost to lay bare
the roots of its deficiencies by our unsparing criticisms, we are
undoubtedly exercising our just rights and not showing ourselves
enemies of culture. We may expect that in the course of time changes
will be carried out in our civilization so that it becomes more
satisfying to our needs and no longer open to the reproaches we have
made against it. But perhaps we shall also accustom ourselves to the
idea that there are certain difficulties inherent in the very nature
of culture which will not yield to any efforts at reform. Over and
above the obligations of putting restrictions upon our instincts,
which we see to be inevitable, we are imminently threatened with
the dangers of a state one may call ‘_la misère psychologique_’ of
groups. This danger is most menacing where the social forces of
cohesion consist predominantly of identifications of the individuals
in the group with one another, whilst leading personalities fail to
acquire the significance that should fall to them in the process of
group-formation.[18] The state of civilization in America at the
present day offers a good opportunity for studying this injurious
effect of civilization which we have reason to dread. But I will resist
the temptation to enter upon a criticism of American culture; I have
no desire to give the impression that I would employ American methods
myself.


FOOTNOTES:

[16] A great poet may permit himself, at least in jest, to give
utterance to psychological truths that are heavily censured. Thus
Heine: ‘Mine is the most peaceable disposition. My wishes are a humble
dwelling with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, milk and
butter of the freshest, flowers at my windows, some fine tall trees
before my door; and if the good God wants to make me completely happy,
he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies
hanging from these trees. With my heart full of deep emotion I shall
forgive them before they die all the wrong they did me in their
lifetime—true, one must forgive one’s enemies, but not until they are
brought to execution.’ (Heine, _Gedanken und Einfälle_.)

[17] Anyone who has been through the misery of poverty in his youth,
and has endured the indifference and arrogance of those who have
possessions, should be exempt from the suspicion that he has no
understanding of or goodwill towards the endeavours made to fight the
economic inequality of men and all that it leads to. To be sure, if an
attempt is made to base this fight upon an abstract demand for equality
for all in the name of justice, there is a very obvious objection to
be made, namely, that nature began the injustice by the highly unequal
way in which she endows individuals physically and mentally, for which
there is no help.

[18] Cf. _Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego_ (1921).
London: Hogarth Press, 1922.




VI


Never before in any of my previous writings have I had the feeling so
strongly as I have now that what I am describing is common knowledge,
that I am requisitioning paper and ink, and in due course the labour of
compositors and printers, in order to expound things that in themselves
are obvious. For this reason, if it should appear that the recognition
of a special independent instinct of aggression would entail a
modification of the psycho-analytical theory of instincts, I should be
glad enough to seize upon the idea.

We shall see that this is not so, that it is merely a matter of coming
to closer quarters with a conclusion to which we long ago committed
ourselves and following it out to its logical consequences. The whole
of analytic theory has evolved gradually enough, but the theory of
instincts has groped its way forward under greater difficulties
than any other part of it. And yet a theory of instincts was so
indispensable for the rest that something had to be adopted in
place of it. In my utter perplexity at the beginning, I took as my
starting-point the poet-philosopher Schiller’s aphorism, that hunger
and love make the world go round. Hunger would serve to represent those
instincts which aim at preservation of the individual; love seeks for
objects: its chief function, which is favoured in every way by nature,
is preservation of the species. Thus first arose the contrast between
ego instincts and object instincts. For the energy of the latter
instincts and exclusively for them I introduced the term libido; an
antithesis was thus formed between the ego instincts and the libidinal
instincts directed towards objects, _i.e._ love in its widest sense.
One of these object instincts, the sadistic, certainly stood out from
the rest in that its aim was so very unloving; moreover, it clearly
allied itself in many of its aspects with the ego instincts, and its
close kinship with instincts of mastery without any libidinal purpose
could not be concealed, but these ambiguities could be overcome; in
spite of them, sadism plainly belonged to sexual life—the game of
cruelty could take the place of the game of love. Neurosis appeared as
the outcome of a struggle between the interests of self-preservation
and the claims of libido, a struggle in which the ego was victorious,
but at the price of great suffering and renunciations.

Every analyst will admit that none of this even now reads like
a statement long since recognized as erroneous. All the same,
modifications had to be made as our researches advanced from the
repressed to the repressing, from the object instincts to the ego. A
cardinal point in this advance was the introduction of the concept of
narcissism, _i.e._ the idea that libido cathects the ego itself, that
its first dwelling-place was in the ego, and that the latter remains
to some extent its permanent headquarters. This narcissistic libido
turns in the direction of objects, thus becoming object-libido, and
can transform itself back into narcissistic libido. The concept of
narcissism made it possible to consider the traumatic neuroses, as
well as many diseases bordering on the psychoses, and also the latter
themselves, from the psycho-analytic angle. It was not necessary to
abandon the view that the transference-neuroses are attempts on the
part of the ego to guard itself against sexuality, but the concept of
the libido was jeopardized. Since the ego-instincts were found to be
libidinal as well, it seemed for a time inevitable that libido should
become synonymous with instinctual energy in general, as C. G. Jung
had previously advocated. Yet there still remained in me a kind of
conviction, for which as yet there were no grounds, that the instincts
could not all be of the same nature. I made the next step in _Beyond
the Pleasure Principle_ (1920), when the repetition-compulsion and the
conservative character of instinctual life first struck me. On the
basis of speculations concerning the origin of life and of biological
parallels, I drew the conclusion that, beside the instinct preserving
the organic substance and binding it into ever larger units,[19] there
must exist another in antithesis to this, which would seek to dissolve
these units and reinstate their antecedent inorganic state. That is to
say, a death instinct as well as Eros; the phenomena of life would then
be explicable from the interplay of the two and their counteracting
effects on each other. It was not easy, however, to demonstrate the
working of this hypothetical death instinct. The manifestations of
Eros were conspicuous and audible enough; one might assume that
the death instinct worked silently within the organism towards its
disintegration, but that, of course, was no proof. The idea that part
of the instinct became directed towards the outer world and then showed
itself as an instinct of aggression and destruction carried us a step
further. The instinct would thus itself have been pressed into the
service of Eros, in that the organism would be destroying something
animate or inanimate outside itself instead of itself. Conversely, any
cessation of this flow outwards must have the effect of intensifying
the self-destruction which in any case would always be going on
within. From this example one could then surmise that the two kinds of
instincts seldom—perhaps never—appear in isolation, but always mingle
with each other in different, very varying proportions, and so make
themselves unrecognizable to us. Sadism, long since known to us as a
component-instinct of sexuality, would represent a particularly strong
admixture of the instinct of destruction into the love impulse; while
its counterpart, masochism, would be an alliance between sexuality and
the destruction at work within the self, in consequence of which the
otherwise imperceptible destructive trend became directly evident and
palpable.

The assumption of the existence of a death instinct or a destruction
instinct has roused opposition even in analytical circles; I know
that there is a great tendency to ascribe all that is dangerous and
hostile in love rather to a fundamental bipolarity in its own nature.
The conceptions I have summarized here I first put forward only
tentatively, but in the course of time they have won such a hold
over me that I can no longer think in any other way. To my mind they
are theoretically far more fruitful than any others it is possible
to employ; they provide us with that simplification, without either
ignoring or doing violence to the facts, which is what we strive after
in scientific work. I know that we have always had before our eyes
manifestations of the destruction instinct fused with erotism, directed
outwards and inwards in sadism and masochism; but I can no longer
understand how we could have overlooked the universality of non-erotic
aggression and destruction, and could have omitted to give it its
due significance in our interpretation of life. (It is true that the
destructive trend that is directed inwards, when it is not erotically
tinged, usually eludes our perceptions.) I can remember my own
defensive attitude when the idea of an instinct of destruction first
made its appearance in psycho-analytical literature and how long it
took until I became accessible to it. That others should have shown the
same resistance, and still show it, surprises me less. Those who love
fairy-tales do not like it when people speak of the innate tendencies
in mankind towards aggression, destruction and, in addition, cruelty.
For God has made them in his own image, with his own perfections; no
one wants to be reminded how hard it is to reconcile the undeniable
existence—in spite of all the protestations of Christian Science—of
evil with His omnipotence and supreme goodness. The devil is, in fact,
the best way out in acquittal of God; he can be used to play the same
economic rôle of outlet as Jews in the world of Aryan ideals. But even
so, one can just as well hold God responsible for the existence of the
devil as for the evil he personifies. In view of these difficulties,
it is expedient for every man to make humble obeisance on suitable
occasions in honour of the high-minded nature of men; it will assist
him to become universally beloved and much shall be forgiven unto him
on account of it.[20]

The name libido can again be used to denote the manifestations of
the power of Eros in contradistinction to the energy of the death
instinct.[21] We must confess that it is more difficult for us to
detect the latter, and to a great extent we can merely conjecture its
existence as a background to Eros, also that it eludes us wherever
it is not betrayed by a fusion with Eros. In sadism, where it bends
the erotic aim to its own will and yet at the same time gratifies the
sexual craving completely, we can obtain the clearest insight into its
nature and its relation to Eros. But even where it shows itself without
any sexual purpose, even in the blindest frenzy of destructiveness, one
cannot ignore the fact that satisfaction of it is accompanied by an
extraordinarily intense narcissistic enjoyment, due to the fulfilment
it brings to the ego of its oldest omnipotence-wishes. The instinct
of destruction, when tempered and harnessed (as it were, inhibited in
its aim) and directed towards objects, is compelled to provide the
ego with satisfaction of its needs and with power over nature. Since
the assumption of its existence is based essentially on theoretical
grounds, it must be confessed that it is not entirely proof against
theoretical objections. But this is how things appear to us now in the
present state of our knowledge; future research and reflection will
undoubtedly bring further light which will decide the question.

In all that follows I take up the standpoint that the tendency to
aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man,
and I come back now to the statement that it constitutes the most
powerful obstacle to culture. At one point in the course of this
discussion the idea took possession of us that culture was a peculiar
process passing over human life and we are still under the influence
of this idea. We may add to this that the process proves to be in
the service of Eros, which aims at binding together single human
individuals, then families, then tribes, races, nations, into one great
unity, that of humanity. Why this has to be done we do not know; it
is simply the work of Eros. These masses of men must be bound to one
another libidinally; necessity alone, the advantages of common work,
would not hold them together. The natural instinct of aggressiveness in
man, the hostility of each one against all and of all against each one,
opposes this programme of civilization. This instinct of aggression is
the derivative and main representative of the death instinct we have
found alongside of Eros, sharing his rule over the earth. And now,
it seems to me, the meaning of the evolution of culture is no longer
a riddle to us. It must present to us the struggle between Eros and
Death, between the instincts of life and the instincts of destruction,
as it works itself out in the human species. This struggle is what
all life essentially consists of and so the evolution of civilization
may be simply described as the struggle of the human species for
existence.[22] And it is this battle of the Titans that our nurses and
governesses try to compose with their lullaby-song of Heaven!


FOOTNOTES:

[19] The contradiction between the tireless tendency of Eros to spread
ever further and the general conservative nature of the instincts
here becomes very noticeable; it would serve as the starting-point of
enquiries into further problems.

[20] In Goethe’s Mephistopheles we have a quite exceptionally
striking identification of the principle of evil with the instinct of
destruction:

  ‘All entities that be
  Deserve their end—nonentity.’

         *       *       *       *       *

  ‘So all that you name sin, destruction—
  Wickedness, briefly—proves to be
  The native element for me.’

As his adversary, the devil himself cites not what is holy and good,
but the power in nature working towards the creation and renewal of
life—that is, Eros.

  ‘From air, from water, germs in thousands,
  As from the soil, break forth, break free,
  Dry, wet, warm, cold—a pullulation!
  Had I not laid on flame a reservation,
  Nothing were set apart for me.’


[21] Our present point of view can be roughly expressed in the
statement that libido participates in every instinctual manifestation,
but that not everything in that manifestation is libido.

[22] And we may probably add more precisely that its form was
necessarily determined after some definite event which still remains to
be discovered.




VII


Why do the animals, kin to ourselves, not manifest any such cultural
struggle? Oh, we don’t know. Very probably certain of them, bees, ants,
termites, had to strive for thousands of centuries before they found
the way to those state institutions, that division of functions, those
restrictions upon individuals, which we admire them for to-day. It is
characteristic of our present state that we know by our own feelings
that we should not think ourselves happy in any of these communities of
the animal world, or in any of the rôles they delegate to individuals.
With other animal species it may be that a temporary deadlock has been
reached between the influences of their environment and the instincts
contending within them, so that a cessation of development has taken
place. In primitive man a fresh access of libido may have kindled a new
spurt of energy on the part of the instinct of destruction. There are a
great many questions in all this to which as yet we have no answer.

Another question concerns us more closely now. What means does
civilization make use of to hold in check the aggressiveness that
opposes it, to make it harmless, perhaps to get rid of it? Some of
these measures we have already come to know, though not yet the one
that is apparently the most important. We can study it in the evolution
of the individual. What happens in him to render his craving for
aggression innocuous? Something very curious, that we should never
have guessed and that yet seems simple enough. The aggressiveness is
introjected, ‘internalized’; in fact, it is sent back where it came
from, _i.e._ directed against the ego. It is there taken over by a part
of the ego that distinguishes itself from the rest as a super-ego,
and now, in the form of ‘conscience’, exercises the same propensity
to harsh aggressiveness against the ego that the ego would have liked
to enjoy against others. The tension between the strict super-ego and
the subordinate ego we call the sense of guilt; it manifests itself as
the need for punishment. Civilization therefore obtains the mastery
over the dangerous love of aggression in individuals by enfeebling and
disarming it and setting up an institution within their minds to keep
watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city.

As to the origin of the sense of guilt, analysts have different
views from those of the psychologists; nor is it easy for analysts to
explain it either. First of all, when one asks how a sense of guilt
arises in anyone, one is told something one cannot dispute: people feel
guilty (pious people call it ‘sinful’) when they have done something
they know to be ‘bad’. But then one sees how little this answer tells
one. Perhaps after some hesitation one will add that a person who has
not actually committed a bad act, but has merely become aware of the
intention to do so, can also hold himself guilty; and then one will ask
why in this case the intention is counted as equivalent to the deed. In
both cases, however, one is presupposing that wickedness has already
been recognized as reprehensible, as something that ought not to be
put into execution. How is this judgement arrived at? One may reject
the suggestion of an original—as one might say, natural—capacity for
discriminating between good and evil. Evil is often not at all that
which would injure or endanger the ego; on the contrary, it can also be
something that it desires, that would give it pleasure. An extraneous
influence is evidently at work; it is this that decides what is to
be called good and bad. Since their own feelings would not have led
men along the same path, they must have had a motive for obeying this
extraneous influence. It is easy to discover this motive in man’s
helplessness and dependence upon others; it can best be designated the
dread of losing love. If he loses the love of others on whom he is
dependent, he will forfeit also their protection against many dangers,
and above all he runs the risk that this stronger person will show his
superiority in the form of punishing him. What is bad is, therefore, to
begin with, whatever causes one to be threatened with a loss of love;
because of the dread of this loss, one must desist from it. That is why
it makes little difference whether one has already committed the bad
deed or only intends to do so; in either case the danger begins only
when the authority has found it out, and the latter would behave in the
same way in both cases.

We call this state of mind a ‘bad conscience’ but actually it does not
deserve this name, for at this stage the sense of guilt is obviously
only the dread of losing love, ‘social’ anxiety. In a little child
it can never be anything else, but in many adults too it has only
changed in so far as the larger human community takes the place of
the father or of both parents. Consequently such people habitually
permit themselves to do any bad deed that procures them something they
want, if only they are sure that no authority will discover it or make
them suffer for it; their anxiety relates only to the possibility
of detection.[23] Present-day society has to take into account the
prevalence of this state of mind.

A great change takes place as soon as the authority has been
internalized by the development of a super-ego. The manifestations of
conscience are then raised to a new level; to be accurate, one should
not call them conscience and sense of guilt before this.[24] At this
point the dread of discovery ceases to operate and also once for all
any difference between doing evil and wishing to do it, since nothing
is hidden from the super-ego, not even thoughts. The real seriousness
of the situation has vanished, it is true: for the new authority, the
super-ego, has no motive, as far as we know, for ill-treating the
ego with which it is itself closely bound up. But the influence of
the genetic derivation of these things, which causes what has been
outlived and surmounted to be re-lived, manifests itself so that on
the whole things remain as they were at the beginning. The super-ego
torments the sinful ego with the same feelings of dread and watches for
opportunities whereby the outer world can be made to punish it.

At this second stage of development, conscience exhibits a peculiarity
which was absent in the first and is not very easy to account for.
That is, the more righteous a man is the stricter and more suspicious
will his conscience be, so that ultimately it is precisely those
people who have carried holiness farthest who reproach themselves
with the deepest sinfulness. This means that virtue forfeits some of
her promised reward; the submissive and abstemious ego does not enjoy
the trust and confidence of its mentor, and, as it seems, strives in
vain to earn it. Now, to this some people will be ready to object
that these difficulties are artificialities. A relatively strict and
vigilant conscience is the very sign of a virtuous man, and though
saints may proclaim themselves sinners, they are not so wrong, in view
of the temptations of instinctual gratifications to which they are
peculiarly liable—since, as we know, temptations do but increase under
constant privation, whereas they subside, at any rate temporarily,
if they are sometimes gratified. The field of ethics is rich in
problems, and another of the facts we find here is that misfortune,
_i.e._ external deprivation, greatly intensifies the strength of
conscience in the super-ego. As long as things go well with a man, his
conscience is lenient and lets the ego do all kinds of things; when
some calamity befalls, he holds an inquisition within, discovers his
sin, heightens the standards of his conscience, imposes abstinences
on himself and punishes himself with penances.[25] Whole peoples have
acted in this way and still do so. But this is easily explained from
the original infantile stage of conscience which, as we thus see, is
not abandoned after the introjection into the super-ego, but persists
alongside and behind the latter. Fate is felt to be a substitute for
the agency of the parents: adversity means that one is no longer loved
by this highest power of all, and, threatened by this loss of love,
one humbles oneself again before the representative of the parents in
the super-ego which in happier days one had tried to disregard. This
becomes especially clear when destiny is looked upon in the strictly
religious sense as the expression of God’s will and nothing else. The
people of Israel believed themselves to be God’s favourite child, and
when the great Father hurled visitation after visitation upon them, it
still never shook them in this belief or caused them to doubt His power
and His justice; they proceeded instead to bring their prophets into
the world to declare their sinfulness to them and out of their sense
of guilt they constructed the stringent commandments of their priestly
religion. It is curious how differently a savage behaves! If he has had
bad fortune, he does not throw the blame on himself, but on his fetish,
who has plainly not done his duty by him, and he belabours it instead
of punishing himself.

Hence we know of two sources for feelings of guilt: that arising
from the dread of authority and the later one from the dread of
the super-ego. The first one compels us to renounce instinctual
gratification; the other presses over and above this towards
punishment, since the persistence of forbidden wishes cannot be
concealed from the super-ego. We have also heard how the severity of
the super-ego, the rigour of conscience, is to be explained. It simply
carries on the severity of external authority which it has succeeded
and to some extent replaced. We see now how renunciation of instinctual
gratification is related to the sense of guilt. Originally, it is
true, renunciation is the consequence of a dread of external authority;
one gives up pleasures so as not to lose its love. Having made this
renunciation, one is quits with authority, so to speak; no feeling of
guilt should remain. But with the dread of the super-ego the case is
different. Renunciation of gratification does not suffice here, for the
wish persists and is not capable of being hidden from the super-ego. In
spite of the renunciations made, feelings of guilt will be experienced
and this is a great disadvantage economically of the erection of
the super-ego, or, as one may say, of the formation of conscience.
Renunciation no longer has a completely absolving effect; virtuous
restraint is no longer rewarded by the assurance of love; a threatened
external unhappiness—loss of love and punishment meted out by external
authority—has been exchanged for a lasting inner unhappiness, the
tension of a sense of guilt.

These interrelations are so complicated and at the same time so
important that, in spite of the dangers of repetition, I will consider
them again from another angle. The chronological sequence would
thus be as follows: first, instinct-renunciation due to dread of an
aggression by external authority—this is, of course, tantamount to
the dread of loss of love, for love is a protection against these
punitive aggressions. Then follows the erection of an internal
authority, and instinctual renunciation due to dread of it—that is,
dread of conscience. In the second case, there is the equivalence of
wicked acts and wicked intentions; hence comes the sense of guilt,
the need for punishment. The aggressiveness of conscience carries
on the aggressiveness of authority. Thus far all seems to be clear;
but how can we find a place in this scheme for the effect produced
by misfortune (_i.e._ renunciations externally imposed), for the
effect it has of increasing the rigour of conscience? how account
for the exceptional stringency of conscience in the best men, those
least given to rebel against it? We have already explained both these
peculiarities of conscience, but probably we still have an impression
that these explanations do not go to the root of the matter, and that
they leave something still unexplained. And here at last comes in an
idea which is quite peculiar to psycho-analysis and alien to ordinary
ways of thinking. Its nature enables us to understand why the whole
matter necessarily seemed so confused and obscure to us. It tells us
this: in the beginning conscience (more correctly, the anxiety which
later became conscience) was the cause of instinctual renunciation,
but later this relation is reversed. Every renunciation then becomes a
dynamic fount of conscience; every fresh abandonment of gratification
increases its severity and intolerance; and if we could only bring it
better into harmony with what we already know about the development
of conscience, we should be tempted to make the following paradoxical
statement: Conscience is the result of instinctual renunciation, or:
Renunciation (externally imposed) gives rise to conscience, which then
demands further renunciations.

The contradiction between this proposition and our previous knowledge
about the genesis of conscience is not in actual fact so very great and
we can see a way in which it may be still further reduced. In order
to state the problem more easily, let us select the example of the
instinct of aggression, and let us suppose that the renunciation in
question is always a renunciation of aggression. This is, of course,
merely a provisional assumption. The effect of instinctual renunciation
on conscience then operates as follows: every impulse of aggression
which we omit to gratify is taken over by the super-ego and goes to
heighten its aggressiveness (against the ego). It does not fit in
well with this that the original aggressiveness of conscience should
represent a continuance of the rigour of external authority, and so
have nothing to do with renunciation. But we can get rid of this
discrepancy if we presume a different origin for the first quantum of
aggressiveness with which the super-ego was endowed. When authority
prevented the child from enjoying the first but most important
gratifications of all, aggressive impulses of considerable intensity
must have been evoked in it, irrespective of the particular nature of
the instinctual deprivations concerned. The child must necessarily have
had to give up the satisfaction of these revengeful aggressive wishes.
In this situation, in which it is economically so hard pressed, it
has recourse to certain mechanisms well known to us; by the process
of identification it absorbs into itself the invulnerable authority,
which then becomes the super-ego and comes into possession of all the
aggressiveness which the child would gladly have exercised against it.
The child’s ego has to content itself with the unhappy rôle of the
authority—the father—who has been thus degraded. It is, as so often,
a reversal of the original situation, ‘If I were father and you my
child, I would treat _you_ badly’. The relation between super-ego and
ego is a reproduction, distorted by a wish, of the real relations
between the ego, before it was subdivided, and an external object.
That is also typical. The essential difference, however, is that the
original severity of the super-ego does not—or not so much—represent
the severity which has been experienced or anticipated from the object,
but expresses the child’s own aggressiveness towards the latter. If
this is correct, one could truly assert that conscience is formed
in the beginning from the suppression of an aggressive impulse and
strengthened as time goes on by each fresh suppression of the kind.

Now, which of these two theories is the true one? The earlier, which
seemed genetically so unassailable, or the new one, which rounds
off our theories in such a welcome manner? Clearly, they are both
justified, and by the evidence, too, of direct observation; they do not
contradict each other, and even coincide at one point, for the child’s
revengeful aggressiveness will be in part provoked by the amount of
punishing aggression that it anticipates from the father. Experience
has shown, however, that the severity which a child’s super-ego
develops in no way corresponds to the severity of the treatment it has
itself experienced.[26] It seems to be independent of the latter; a
child which has been very leniently treated can acquire a very strict
conscience. But it would also be wrong to exaggerate this independence;
it is not difficult to assure oneself that strict upbringing also has
a strong influence on the formation of a child’s super-ego. It comes
to this, that the formation of the super-ego and the development of
conscience are determined in part by innate constitutional factors and
in part by the influence of the actual environment; and that is in
no way surprising—on the contrary, it is the invariable aetiological
condition of all such processes.[27]

It may also be said that when a child reacts to the first great
instinctual deprivations with an excessive aggressiveness and a
corresponding strictness of its super-ego, it is thereby following a
phylogenetic prototype, unheedful of what reaction would in reality be
justified; for the father of primitive times was certainly terrifying,
and one may safely attribute the utmost degree of aggressiveness
to him. The differences between the two theories of the genesis of
conscience are thus still further diminished if one passes from
individual to phylogenetic development. But then, on the other hand,
we find a new important difference between the two processes. We cannot
disregard the conclusion that man’s sense of guilt has its origin in
the Oedipus complex and was acquired when the father was killed by
the association of the brothers. At that time the aggression was not
suppressed but carried out, and it is this same act of aggression whose
suppression in the child we regard as the source of feelings of guilt.
Now, I should not be surprised if a reader were to cry out angrily:
‘So it makes no difference whether one does kill one’s father or does
not, one gets a feeling of guilt in either case! Here I should think
one may be allowed some doubts. Either it is not true that guilt is
evoked by suppressed aggressiveness or else the whole story about the
father-murder is a romance, and primeval man did not kill his father
any more often than people do nowadays. Besides this, if it is not a
romance but a plausible piece of history, it would only be an instance
of what we all expect to happen, namely, that one feels guilty because
one has really done something which cannot be justified. And what we
are all waiting for is for psycho-analysis to give us an explanation of
this reaction, which at any rate is something that happens every day.’

This is true, and we must make good the omission. There is no great
mystery about it either. When one has feelings of guilt after one
has committed some crime and because of it, this feeling should more
properly be called _remorse_. It relates only to the one act, and
clearly it presupposes that _conscience_, the capacity for feelings of
guilt, was already in existence before the deed. Remorse of this kind
can, therefore, never help us to find out the source of conscience and
feelings of guilt in general. In these everyday instances the course
of events is usually as follows: an instinctual need acquires the
strength to achieve fulfilment in spite of conscience, the strength
of which also has its limits, whereupon the inevitable reduction of
the need after satisfaction restores the earlier balance of forces.
Psycho-analysis is quite justified, therefore, in excluding the case
of a sense of guilt through remorse from this discussion, however
frequently it may occur and however great its importance may be
practically.

But if man’s sense of guilt goes back to the murder of the father, that
was undoubtedly an instance of ‘remorse’, and yet are we to suppose
that there were no conscience and feelings of guilt before the act
on that occasion? If so, where did the remorse come from then? This
instance must explain to us the riddle of the sense of guilt and so
make an end of our difficulties. And it will do so, as I believe.
This remorse was the result of the very earliest primal ambivalence
of feelings towards the father: the sons hated him, but they loved
him too; after their hate against him had been satisfied by their
aggressive acts, their love came to expression in their remorse about
the deed, set up the super-ego by identification with the father, gave
it the father’s power to punish as he would have done the aggression
they had performed, and created the restrictions which should prevent a
repetition of the deed. And since impulses to aggressions against the
father were repeated in the next generations, the feelings of guilt,
too, persisted, and were further reinforced every time an aggression
was suppressed anew and made over to the super-ego. At this point, it
seems to me, we can at last clearly perceive the part played by love
in the origin of conscience and the fatal inevitableness of the sense
of guilt. It is not really a decisive matter whether one has killed
one’s father or abstained from the deed; one must feel guilty in either
case, for guilt is the expression of the conflict of ambivalence, the
eternal struggle between Eros and the destructive or death instinct.
This conflict is engendered as soon as man is confronted with the
task of living with his fellows; as long as he knows no other form of
life in common but that of the family, it must express itself in the
Oedipus complex, cause the development of conscience and create the
first feelings of guilt. When mankind tries to institute wider forms of
communal life, the same conflict continues to arise—in forms derived
from the past—and intensified so that a further reinforcement of the
sense of guilt results. Since culture obeys an inner erotic impulse
which bids it bind mankind into a closely-knit mass, it can achieve
this aim only by means of its vigilance in fomenting an ever-increasing
sense of guilt. That which began in relation to the father ends in
relation to the community. If civilization is an inevitable course of
development from the group of the family to the group of humanity as a
whole, then an intensification of the sense of guilt—resulting from the
innate conflict of ambivalence, from the eternal struggle between the
love and the death trends—will be inextricably bound up with it, until
perhaps the sense of guilt may swell to a magnitude that individuals
can hardly support. One is reminded of the telling accusation made by
the great poet against the ‘heavenly forces’:

    Ye set our feet on this life’s road,
    Ye watch our guilty, erring courses,
    Then leave us, bowed beneath our load,
    For earth its every debt enforces.[28]

And one may heave a sigh at the thought that it is vouchsafed to a
few, with hardly an effort, to salve from the whirlpool of their own
emotions the deepest truths, to which we others have to force our way,
ceaselessly groping amid torturing uncertainties.


FOOTNOTES:

[23] One is reminded of Rousseau’s famous mandarin!

[24] Every reasonable person will understand and take into account that
in this descriptive survey things that in reality occur by gradual
transitions are sharply differentiated and that the mere existence of
a super-ego is not the only factor concerned, but also its relative
strength and sphere of influence. All that has been said above in
regard to conscience and guilt, moreover, is common knowledge and
practically undisputed.

[25] This increased sensitivity of morals in consequence of ill-luck
has been illustrated by Mark Twain in a delicious little story: _The
First Melon I ever Stole_. This melon, as it happened, was unripe. I
heard Mark Twain tell the story himself in one of his lectures. After
he had given out the title, he stopped and asked himself in a doubtful
way: ‘Was it the first?’ This was the whole story.

[26] As has rightly been emphasized by Melanie Klein and other English
writers.

[27] In his _Psychoanalyse der Gesamtpersönlichkeit_, 1927, Franz
Alexander has, in connection with Aichhorn’s study of dissocial
behaviour in children, discussed the two main types of pathogenic
methods of training, that of excessive severity and of spoiling. The
‘unduly lenient and indulgent’ father fosters the development of an
over-strict super-ego because, in face of the love which is showered on
it, the child has no other way of disposing of its aggressiveness than
to turn it inwards. In neglected children who grow up without any love
the tension between ego and super-ego is lacking; their aggressions can
be directed externally. Apart from any constitutional factor which may
be present, therefore, one may say that a strict conscience arises from
the co-operation of two factors in the environment: the deprivation of
instinctual gratification which evokes the child’s aggressiveness, and
the love it receives which turns this aggressiveness inwards, where it
is taken over by the super-ego.

[28] Goethe, _Wilhelm Meister_. The Song of the Harper.




VIII


On reaching the end of such a journey as this, the author must beg his
readers to pardon him for not having been a more skilful guide, not
sparing them bleak stretches of country at times and laborious detours
at others. There is no doubt that it could have been done better. I
will now try to make some amends.

First of all, I suspect the reader feels that the discussion about
the sense of guilt oversteps its proper boundaries in this essay and
takes up too much space, so that the rest of the subject-matter, which
is not always closely connected with it, gets pushed on one side.
This may have spoilt the composition of the work; but it faithfully
corresponds to my intention to represent the sense of guilt as the
most important problem in the evolution of culture, and to convey that
the price of progress in civilization is paid in forfeiting happiness
through the heightening of the sense of guilt.[29] What sounds
puzzling in this statement, which is the final conclusion of our whole
investigation, is probably due to the quite peculiar relation—as yet
completely unexplained—the sense of guilt has to our consciousness. In
the common cases of remorse which we think normal it becomes clearly
perceptible to consciousness; indeed, we often speak of ‘consciousness
of guilt’ instead of sense of guilt. In our study of the neuroses,
in which we have found invaluable clues towards an understanding of
normal people, we find some very contradictory states of affairs in
this respect. In one of these maladies, the obsessional neurosis, the
sense of guilt makes itself loudly heard in consciousness; it dominates
the clinical picture as well as the patient’s life and lets hardly
anything else appear alongside of it. But in most of the other types
and forms of neurosis it remains completely unconscious, without its
effect being any less great, however. Our patients do not believe us
when we ascribe an ‘unconscious sense of guilt’ to them; in order to
become even moderately intelligible to them we have to explain that
the sense of guilt expresses itself in an unconscious seeking for
punishment. But its connection with the form of the neurosis is not to
be over-estimated; even in the obsessional neurosis there are people
who are not aware of their sense of guilt or who perceive it only as
a tormenting uneasiness or kind of anxiety and then not until they
are prevented from carrying out certain actions. We ought some day to
be able at last to understand these things; as yet we cannot. Here
perhaps is the place to remark that at bottom the sense of guilt is
nothing but a topographical variety of anxiety, and that in its later
phases it coincides completely with the dread of the super-ego. The
relation of anxiety to consciousness, moreover, is characterized by
the same extraordinary variations. Somewhere or other there is always
anxiety hidden behind all symptoms; at one moment, however, it sweeps
into consciousness, drowning everything else with its clamour, and at
the next it secretes itself so completely that we are forced to speak
of unconscious anxiety—or if we want to have a cleaner conscience
psychologically, since anxiety is after all only a perception—of
possibilities of anxiety. Consequently it is very likely that the sense
of guilt produced by culture is not perceived as such and remains
to a great extent unconscious, or comes to expression as a sort of
uneasiness or discontent for which other motivations are sought.
The different religions at any rate have never overlooked the part
played by the sense of guilt in civilization. What is more, they come
forward with a claim, which I have not considered elsewhere,[30] to
save mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin. We indeed
have drawn our conclusions, from the way in which in Christianity this
salvation is won—the sacrificial death of one who therewith takes
the whole of the common guilt of all upon himself—about the occasion
on which this primal sense of guilt was first acquired, that is, the
occasion which was also the inception of culture.[31]

It will not be very important, but it may be just as well to go more
precisely into the meaning of certain words like super-ego, conscience,
sense of guilt, need for punishment, remorse, which we have perhaps
often used too loosely and in place of one another. They all relate
to the same situation, but they denote different aspects of it. The
super-ego is an agency or institution in the mind whose existence we
have inferred: conscience is a function we ascribe, among others, to
the super-ego; it consists of watching over and judging the actions and
intentions of the ego, exercising the functions of a censor. The sense
of guilt, the severity of the super-ego, is therefore the same thing as
the rigour of conscience; it is the perception the ego has that it is
watched in this way, the ego’s appreciation of the tension between its
strivings and the standards of the super-ego; and the anxiety that lies
behind all these relations, the dread of that critical institution,
the need for punishment, is an instinctual manifestation on the part
of the ego, which has become masochistic under the influence of the
sadistic super-ego, _i.e._ which has brought a part of the instinct
of destruction at work within itself into the service of an erotic
attachment to the super-ego. We ought not to speak of conscience
before a super-ego is demonstrable; as to consciousness of guilt, we
must admit that it comes into being before the super-ego, therefore
before conscience. At that time it is the direct expression of the
dread of external authority, the recognition of the tension between
the ego and this latter; it is the direct derivative of the conflict
between the need for parental love and the urgency towards instinctual
gratification, and it is the thwarting of this urgency that provokes
the tendency to aggression. It is because these two different versions
of the sense of guilt—one arising from dread of the external and the
other from dread of the inner authority—are superimposed one on the
other that our insight into the relations of conscience has been
hampered in so many ways. Remorse is a general term denoting the ego’s
reaction under a special form of the sense of guilt; it includes the
almost unaltered sensory material belonging to the anxiety that is
at work behind the sense of guilt; it is itself a punishment and may
include the need for punishment; it too, therefore, may occur before
conscience has developed.

Further, it will do no harm for us to review once more the
contradictions which have confused us at times during our enquiries.
The sense of guilt, we said at one point, was the consequence of
uncommitted aggressions; but another time and in particular in the
case of its historical beginning, the murder of the father, it was the
consequence of an aggression that was carried out. We also found a way
out of this difficulty. The development of the inner authority, the
super-ego, was precisely what radically altered the whole situation.
Before this, the sense of guilt coincided with remorse; we observe, in
saying this, that the term remorse is to be reserved for the reaction
after an actual performance of an aggressive deed. After this, the
omniscience of the super-ego robbed the distinction between intended
aggressions and aggressions committed of its significance; a mere
intention to commit an act of violence could then evoke a sense of
guilt—as psycho-analysis has found—as well as one which has actually
been committed—as all the world knows. The conflict of ambivalence
between the two primal instincts leaves the same impress on the
psychological situation, irrespective of the change that has taken
place in this. A temptation arises to look here for an explanation of
the mystery of the varying relation between the sense of guilt and
consciousness. The sense of guilt which is due to remorse for an evil
deed must always have been conscious; that due to a perception of an
evil impulse could have remained unconscious. But it cannot be as
simple as that: the obsessional neurosis contradicts it emphatically.
The second contradiction was that the aggressive energy with which
one imagined the super-ego to be endowed was, according to one view,
merely a continuation of the punitive energy belonging to external
authority, preserved within the mind; whereas according to another view
it consisted, on the contrary, of aggressive energy originating in
the self, levelled against this inhibiting authority but not allowed
to discharge itself in actions. The first view seemed to accord
better with the history of the sense of guilt, the second with the
theory of it. More searching reflection has resolved this apparently
irreconcilable contradiction almost too completely; what remained as
essential and common to both was that in both cases we were dealing
with an aggression that had been turned inward. Clinical observation,
moreover, really permits us to distinguish two sources for the
aggressiveness we ascribe to the super-ego, each of which in any given
case may be operating predominantly, but which usually are both at work
together.

This, I think, is the place to suggest that a proposal which I
previously put forward as a provisional assumption should be taken
in earnest. In the latest analytical literature[32] a predilection
has been shown for the view that any kind of privation, any thwarted
instinctual gratification, results in a heightening of the sense of
guilt, or may do so. I believe one obtains a great simplification
of theory if one regards this as valid _only_ for the aggressive
instincts, and that little will be found to contradict this assumption.
How then is it to be explained dynamically and economically that
a heightening of the sense of guilt should appear in place of
an unfulfilled erotic desire? This can surely only happen in a
roundabout way: the thwarting of the erotic gratification provokes an
access of aggressiveness against the person who interfered with the
gratification, and then this tendency to aggression in its turn has
itself to be suppressed. So then it is, after all, only the aggression
which is changed into guilt, by being suppressed and made over to
the super-ego. I am convinced that very many processes will admit of
much simpler and clearer explanation if we restrict the findings of
psycho-analysis in respect of the origin of the sense of guilt to the
aggressive instincts. Reference to the clinical material here gives
us no unequivocal answer, because, according to our own hypothesis,
the two kinds of instincts hardly ever appear in a pure form, unmixed
with each other; but the investigation of extreme cases would probably
point in the direction I anticipate. I am tempted to extract our
first advantage from this narrower conception by applying it to the
repression-process. The symptoms of neurosis, as we have learnt, are
essentially substitutive gratifications for unfulfilled sexual wishes.
In the course of our analytic work we have found to our surprise that
perhaps every neurosis masks a certain amount of unconscious sense of
guilt, which in its turn reinforces the symptoms by exploiting them as
punishment. One is now inclined to suggest the following statement as a
possible formulation: when an instinctual trend undergoes repression,
its libidinal elements are transformed into symptoms and its aggressive
components into a sense of guilt. Even if this statement is only
accurate as an approximation it merits our interest.

Some readers of this essay, too, may be under the impression that the
formula of the struggle between Eros and the death instinct has been
reiterated too often. It is supposed to characterize the cultural
process which evolves in humanity; but it has been related also to
the development of the individual, and besides this, is supposed
to have revealed the secret of organic life in general. It becomes
necessary for us to examine the relation of these three processes to
one another. Now, the repetition of the same formula is vindicated by
the consideration that the cultural processes both in humanity and in
the development of an individual are life-processes; consequently they
must both partake of the most universal characteristic of life. On the
other hand, evidence of the presence of this universal characteristic
does not help us to discriminate, unless it is further narrowed down
by special qualifications. We can therefore set our minds at rest only
if we say that the cultural process is the particular modification
undergone by the life-process under the influence of the task set
before it by Eros and stimulated by Ananke, external necessity; and
this task is that of uniting single human beings into a larger unity
with libidinal attachments between them. When, however, we compare
the cultural process in humanity with the process of development or
upbringing in an individual human being, we shall conclude without much
hesitation that the two are very similar in nature, if not in fact the
same process applied to a different kind of object. The civilizing
process in the human species is naturally more of an abstraction than
the development of an individual, and therefore harder to apprehend
in concrete terms, nor should the discovery of analogies be pushed
to extremes; but in view of the similar character of the aims of the
two processes—in one the incorporation of an individual as a member
of a group and in the other the creation of a single group out of
many individuals—the similarity of the means employed and of the
results obtained in the two cases is not surprising. In view of its
exceptional importance, we must no longer postpone mention of one
feature differentiating the two processes. The development of the
individual is ordered according to the programme laid down by the
pleasure-principle, namely, the attainment of happiness, and to this
main objective it holds firmly; the incorporation of the individual as
a member of a community, or his adaptation to it, seems like an almost
unavoidable condition which has to be filled before he can attain this
objective of happiness. If he could achieve it without fulfilling this
condition it would perhaps be better. To express it differently, we may
say: individual development seems to us a product of the interplay of
two trends, the striving for happiness, generally called ‘egoistic’,
and the impulse towards merging with others in the community, which
we call ‘altruistic’. Neither of these descriptions goes far beneath
the surface. In individual development, as we have said, the main
accent falls on the egoistic trend, the striving for happiness; while
the other tendency, which may be called the ‘cultural’ one, usually
contents itself with instituting restrictions. But things are different
in the development of culture: here far the most important aim is
that of creating a single unity out of individual men and women, while
the objective of happiness, though still present, is pushed into the
background; it almost seems as if humanity could be most successfully
united into one great whole if there were no need to trouble about the
happiness of individuals. The process of development in individuals
must therefore be admitted to have its special features which are not
repeated in the cultural evolution of humanity; the two processes only
necessarily coincide in so far as the first also includes the aim of
incorporation into the community.

Just as a planet circles round its central body while at the same time
rotating on its own axis, so the individual man takes his part in the
course of humanity’s development as he goes on his way through life.
But to our dull eyes the play of forces in the heavens seems set fast
in a never-varying scheme, though in organic life we can still see how
the forces contend with one another and the results of the conflict
change from day to day. So in every individual the two trends, one
towards personal happiness and the other towards unity with the rest of
humanity, must contend with each other; so must the two processes of
individual and of cultural development oppose each other and dispute
the ground against each other. This struggle between individual and
society, however, is not derived from the antagonism of the primal
instincts, Eros and Death, which are probably irreconcilable; it is a
dissension in the camp of the libido itself, comparable to the contest
between the ego and its objects for a share of the libido; and it
does eventually admit of a solution in the individual, as we may hope
it will also do in the future of civilization—however greatly it may
oppress the lives of individuals at the present time.

The analogy between the process of cultural evolution and the path of
individual development may be carried further in an important respect.
It can be maintained that the community, too, develops a super-ego,
under whose influence cultural evolution proceeds. It would be an
enticing task for an authority on human systems of culture to work
out this analogy in specific cases. I will confine myself to pointing
out certain striking details. The super-ego of any given epoch of
civilization originates in the same way as that of an individual;
it is based on the impression left behind them by great leading
personalities, men of outstanding force of mind, or men in whom some
one human tendency has developed in unusual strength and purity, often
for that reason very disproportionately. In many instances the analogy
goes still further, in that during their lives—often enough, even if
not always—such persons are ridiculed by others, ill-used or even
cruelly done to death, just as happened with the primal father who also
rose again to become a deity long after his death by violence. The most
striking example of this double fate is the figure of Jesus Christ, if
indeed it does not itself belong to the realm of mythology which called
it into being out of a dim memory of that primordial event. Another
point of agreement is that the cultural super-ego, just like that of
an individual, sets up high ideals and standards, and that failure to
fulfil them is punished by both with ‘anxiety of conscience’. In this
particular, indeed, we come across the remarkable circumstance that the
mental processes concerned here are actually more familiar to us and
more accessible to consciousness when they proceed from the group than
they can be in the individual. In the latter, when tension arises, the
aggressions of the super-ego voicing its noisy reproaches are all that
is perceived, while its injunctions themselves often remain unconscious
in the background. If we bring them to the knowledge of consciousness
we find that they coincide with the demands of the prevailing cultural
super-ego. At this point the two processes, that of the evolution of
the group and the development of the individual, are always firmly
mortised together, so to speak. Consequently many of the effects and
properties of the super-ego can be more easily detected through its
operations in the group than in the individual.

The cultural super-ego has elaborated its ideals and erected its
standards. Those of its demands which deal with the relations of
human beings to one another are comprised under the name of ethics.
The greatest value has at all times been set upon systems of ethics,
as if men had expected them in particular to achieve something
especially important. And ethics does in fact deal predominantly with
the point which is easily seen to be the sorest of all in any scheme
of civilization. Ethics must be regarded therefore as a therapeutic
effort: as an endeavour to achieve something through the standards
imposed by the super-ego which had not been attained by the work of
civilization in other ways. We already know—it is what we have been
discussing—that the question is how to dislodge the greatest obstacle
to civilization, the constitutional tendency in men to aggressions
against one another; and for that very reason the commandment to
love one’s neighbour as oneself—probably the most recent of the
cultural super-ego’s demands—is especially interesting to us. In our
investigations and our therapy of the neuroses we cannot avoid finding
fault with the super-ego of the individual on two counts: in commanding
and prohibiting with such severity it troubles too little about the
happiness of the ego, and it fails to take into account sufficiently
the difficulties in the way of obeying it—the strength of instinctual
cravings in the id and the hardships of external environment.
Consequently in our therapy we often find ourselves obliged to do
battle with the super-ego and work to moderate its demands. Exactly
the same objections can be made against the ethical standards of the
cultural super-ego. It, too, does not trouble enough about the mental
constitution of human beings; it enjoins a command and never asks
whether or not it is possible for them to obey it. It presumes, on the
contrary, that a man’s ego is psychologically capable of anything that
is required of it—that his ego has unlimited power over his id. This is
an error; even in so-called normal people the power of controlling the
id cannot be increased beyond certain limits. If one asks more of them,
one produces revolt or neurosis in individuals or makes them unhappy.
The command to love our neighbours as ourselves is the strongest
defence there is against human aggressiveness and it is a superlative
example of the unpsychological attitude of the cultural super-ego.
The command is impossible to fulfil; such an enormous inflation of
love can only lower its value and not remedy the evil. Civilization
pays no heed to all this; it merely prates that the harder it is to
obey the more laudable the obedience. The fact remains that anyone
who follows such preaching in the present state of civilization only
puts himself at a disadvantage beside all those who set it at naught.
What an overwhelming obstacle to civilization aggression must be if
the defence against it can cause as much misery as aggression itself!
‘Natural’ ethics, as it is called, has nothing to offer here beyond the
narcissistic satisfaction of thinking oneself better than others. The
variety of ethics that links itself with religion brings in at this
point its promises of a better future life. I should imagine that as
long as virtue is not rewarded in this life ethics will preach in vain.
I too think it unquestionable that an actual change in men’s attitude
to property would be of more help in this direction than any ethical
commands; but among the Socialists this proposal is obscured by new
idealistic expectations disregarding human nature, which detract from
its value in actual practice.

It seems to me that the point of view which seeks to follow the
phenomena of cultural evolution as manifestations of a super-ego
promises to yield still further discoveries. I am coming quickly to
an end. There is one question, however, which I can hardly ignore. If
the evolution of civilization has such a far-reaching similarity with
the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed
in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of
civilization—or epochs of it—possibly even the whole of humanity—have
become ‘neurotic’ under the pressure of the civilizing trends? To
analytic dissection of these neuroses therapeutic recommendations might
follow which could claim a great practical interest. I would not say
that such an attempt to apply psycho-analysis to civilized society
would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness. But it behoves us to be
very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with
analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with
concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and
have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be
confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual
we can use as a starting-point the contrast presented to us between
the patient and his environment which we assume to be ‘normal’. No
such background as this would be available for any society similarly
affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And with
regard to any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be
the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one
possesses power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? In spite
of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will
venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities.

For various reasons, it is very far from my intention to express any
opinion concerning the value of human civilization. I have endeavoured
to guard myself against the enthusiastic partiality which believes our
civilization to be the most precious thing that we possess or could
acquire, and thinks it must inevitably lead us to undreamt-of heights
of perfection. I can at any rate listen without taking umbrage to those
critics who aver that when one surveys the aims of civilization and the
means it employs, one is bound to conclude that the whole thing is not
worth the effort and that in the end it can only produce a state of
things which no individual will be able to bear. My impartiality is
all the easier to me since I know very little about these things and am
sure only of one thing, that the judgements of value made by mankind
are immediately determined by their desires for happiness: in other
words, that those judgements are attempts to prop up their illusions
with arguments. I could understand it very well if anyone were to point
to the inevitable nature of the process of cultural development and
say, for instance, that the tendency to institute restrictions upon
sexual life or to carry humanitarian ideals into effect at the cost of
natural selection are developmental trends which it is impossible to
avert or divert, and to which it is best for us to submit as though
they were natural necessities. I know, too, the objection that can
be raised against this: that tendencies such as these, which are
believed to have insuperable power behind them, have often in the
history of man been thrown aside and replaced by others. My courage
fails me, therefore, at the thought of rising up as a prophet before
my fellow-men, and I bow to their reproach that I have no consolation
to offer them; for at bottom this is what they all demand—the frenzied
revolutionary as passionately as the most pious believer.

The fateful question of the human species seems to me to be whether
and to what extent the cultural process developed in it will succeed
in mastering the derangements of communal life caused by the human
instinct of aggression and self-destruction. In this connection,
perhaps the phase through which we are at this moment passing deserves
special interest. Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces
of nature to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily
exterminate one another to the last man. They know this—hence arises
a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of
apprehension. And now it may be expected that the other of the two
‘heavenly forces’, eternal Eros, will put forth his strength so as to
maintain himself alongside of his equally immortal adversary.


FOOTNOTES:

[29] ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all....’

That the upbringing of young people at the present day conceals from
them the part sexuality will play in their lives is not the only
reproach we are obliged to bring against it. It offends too in not
preparing them for the aggressions of which they are destined to
become the objects. Sending the young out into life with such a false
psychological orientation is as if one were to equip people going on a
Polar expedition with summer clothing and maps of the Italian lakes.
One can clearly see that ethical standards are being misused in a way.
The strictness of these standards would not do much harm if education
were to say: ‘This is how men ought to be in order to be happy and make
others happy, but you have to reckon with their not being so.’ Instead
of this the young are made to believe that everyone else conforms to
the standard of ethics, _i.e._ that everyone else is good. And then on
this is based the demand that the young shall be so too.

[30] I mean in _The Future of an Illusion_.

[31] _Totem und Tabu_ (1912).

[32] In particular, in contributions by Ernest Jones, Susan Isaacs,
Melanie Klein; also, as I understand, in those of Reik and Alexander.




  Transcriber’s Notes

  pg 138 Changed: the development of the indivudual
              To: the development of the individual

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