Civilization and Its DiscontentsCivilization and Its Discontents may be Sigmund Freud's best-known work. Originally published in 1930, it seeks to answer ultimate questions: What influences led to the creation of civilization? How did it come to be? What determines its course? In this seminal volume of twentieth-century thought, Freud elucidates the contest between aggression, indeed the death drive, and its adversary eros. He speaks to issues of human creativity and fulfillment, the place of beauty in culture, and the effects of repression. Louis Menand, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Metaphysical Club, contributor to The New Yorker, and professor of English at Harvard University, reflects on the importance of this work in intellectual thought and why it has become such a landmark book for the history of ideas. Not available in hardcover for decades, this beautifully rendered anniversary edition will be a welcome addition to readers' shelves |
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achieved aggressive instinct analysis animal anxiety authority become called cathect civi conscience course cultural death death instinct death-drive demands destruction Discontents drives Ernest Jones Eros ethical existence external world fact father fear feeling Freudian function genital happiness hostility human hysteria idea ilization inclination to aggression individual influence instinctual impulses instinctual renunciation Jung kind Lacan later libidinal libido lization London Louis Menand man's mankind means Melanie Klein ment mental mind Moses and Monotheism nature neighbour neurosis object Oedipus complex once organism original path pleasure principle possible primal problem psychical psycho psychoanalysis psychology punishment reality Reich relation religion remorse renunciation of instinct repression restrictions Sandor Ferenczi satisfaction scientific seems sense of guilt Servian wall sexual SIGMUND FREUD society species suffering super-ego theory things tion Totem and Taboo Trans Trilling Trilling's uncon unconscious unpleasure vidual Vienna