CS 204 lecture – October 16, 2012
Nadia Bou Ali
Repression and Ananke : Freud’s pillars
of modern civilization
Civilization and its Discontents was written by Freud in 1930, nine years before his death in 1939 and after
a long life of research and writing. It is important to keep in mind that this text was written during the
aftermath of World War I which seems to have been a defining experience for Freud and his
contemporaries. It is also important to keep in mind that the first half of the century witnessed the first Great
Depression of world capitalist economy and the rise of more state centered economics. The Enlightenment
value of individual liberty and autonomy was gradually replaced with the realization that individual life in the
modern world is fundamentally decided by large scale economic and political transformations.
Freud had entered the University of Vienna at the age of seventeen and matriculated in the faculty of
medicine. From the onset of his writings, he was interested in offering psychological explanations for
physiological phenomena. He began with publishing Studies on Hysteria (1895) with Josef Breuer. He then
wrote the Interpretation of Dreams (1899) after which he began using the term psychoanalysis. In the
Psychopathology of Everyday life (1901), he argued that the mind was governed by firm rules. By then Frued had
already had a following of physicians and with them he established the Vienna Psyschoanalytic Society. From
1905 until 1930, Freud wrote and published a series of books in which he expanded on psychoanalytic theory:
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, various case studies and
lectures, The Ego and the Id, The Future of an Illusion, and other writings.
Freud’s New Theory of Instincts. Instincts are no longer defined in terms of their origin and organic
function, but they are defined in terms of the determining forces which give life its determining direction and
principles. Thus, instincts are shaped by life and shape it in turn. The animal man becomes human only
through the fundamental transformation of his nature. Central to Freud’s theory of instincts is that there is an
inherent antagonism; a contradiction, between man’s instinct and individual freedom on the one hand, and
the development of civilization on the other.
Scarcity or Ananke. A central concept on which Freud relies in his analysis of the origin of civilization and
which he derives from ancient Greek mythology is ananke : the world is essentially too poor for the
satisfaction of human needs without constant restraint, renunciation, and delay. Ananke for Freud is the rule
and not the exception: even happiness is unattaible due to the scarcity of sources of prolonged pleasure.
Repression and Civilization. Freud supposes that the progression of the human being is analogous to that
of civilization; it is anti-thetical and oppositional. Society has to necessarily repress individuals in order to
ensure order and continuity. Freud argues that the repression of human instinct strengthens social bonds.
However, it is this same repression that threatens civilization’s dissolution. The explanation he gives for the
necessity of this repressiveness is both economic and biological. The history of man is the history of his
repression and the exploration of the history of repression is an exploration into the nature of civilization.
The Pleasure Principle and the Reality Principle. The individual for Freud exists in two different yet not
distinct dimensions, the conscious and the unconscious ones. The unconscious is ruled by the pleasure
principle, it represents “older primary processes” while the reality principle represents the conscious
mechanisms of adaptation to the external world. The two principles : the pleasure principle and the reality
principle govern the tripartite dimensions or layers of the individual: the id, the ego, and the superego. Once
the individual discovers the impossibility of being happy, the biologic aspect is replaced by a mental
functioning. This replacement of the instinct with a mental function is a result of a traumatic experience: the
traumatic realization causes the replacement of the pleasure principle with the reality principle. With this
replacement of instinct with the reality principle, the individual becomes an organized ego. However, this
replacement is not final; the reality principle has to be continuously re-established because the repression of
the pleasure principle is never complete. Civilization does not master and repress nature into oblivion; rather,
repression which had been enacted on the individual by an external reality (namely by a socio-historical
context) is now internalized by the individual.
The Id, Ego, and Super-Ego. The oldest, fundamental, and largest dimension or layer is the Id. It is the
domain of the unconscious where the primary instincts lie. The Id is not affected by time or contradictions; it
“has no values, no good and evil, no morality” (New introductory Lectures, p.105). The Id is not concerned with
self preservation; rather, it only strives for the fulfillment of instinctual needs and in accordance with the
pleasure principle. Under external effects or the sociohistorical context, a part of the Id gradually develops
into the Ego which becomes the mediator between an external world and the Id. The ego emerges from the
experiences of childhood as a structure that mediates the pleasure seeking principle (instinct) and real
constraints in the outside world. The Ego, although appearing autonomous and solitary, is according to Freud
merely a façade, a deception, for the boundaries between it and the Id remain unclear. The ego gradually
moves from an all-embracing structure (one that includes everything) to a “shrunken residue” in which a
distance is forged between the ego and the external world. The ego has to face reality as both a source of
threat as well as gratification and thus has to forge a two-front struggle. From this struggle rises another
mental entity called the Super-Ego. This super-ego is essentially formed by societal and cultural influences
that are introjected into the individual; they become his/her conscience and the source of all guilt. Guilt is felt
because of the Id’s drive to transgress restrictions. The Superego takes the desires of the Id and the guilt
formed by social constraints and parents and turns them into both destructive and socially useful activities.
The Ego here plays the role of repression in the service of the super-ego. Soon after, repression becomes unconscious. The ego and superego are thus fueled with the power of instinctual energy redirected from the Id.
Repression as an unconscious mechanism. This transformation of repression into an unconscious
mechanism is of central importance for the formation of civilization. The reality principle is premised on the
shrinking of the conscious ego by halting the autonomous development of instinct. Adherence to status quo,
and the demands of the super-ego, become internalized and implanted in the instinctual structure of the
individual. Examples: repression of sexual desire brings forth aim-inhibited family love; repression of
infantile helpessness brings about religion, etc.
Development of civilization as communal neurosis. “If the development of civilization has such a far
reaching similarity to the development of the individual and it employs the same methods, may we not be
justified in reaching the diagnosis that … possibly the whole of mankind, have become neurotics?” (CD,
p.110). Freud’s psychology traces the construction of personality in a way that dissolves the individual: the
autonomous personality of the individual appears as the manifestation of all the general repression of
mankind. The ego-individual is shown by Freud to be actually made by the unconscious factors which
precede the individual (whether biological or historical). The danger and forte of Freud’s theory is that it
reveals the power of a long universal historical process that makes the individual. The idea of an autonomous
individual is thus undermined.
Concluding questions:
In discussing the last two chapters of CD in class, you will come to realize that Freud proposes this equation:
domination-rebellion-domination (from the primal Oedipal struggle, to Totem and Taboo, to the high
demands of culture such as artistic practice). Is there any form in which ‘the return of the repressed’ can
break this perpetual cycle?
Does not the excuse of scarcity weaken as man continues to dominate and master nature? Is it not that
certain political and social institutions (and not nature) are responsible for scarcity?
Is not Freud’s theory of civilization—as that which derives from the “natural” disproportion between man’s
desires and his environment—actually an account of mankind’s inability to master its own history?
Finally, what worth is this civilization that has to constantly fend itself against the specter of a world that
could be free?
References:
Norman Brown, Life against Death: the psychoanalytic meaning of history. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University
Press: 1959)
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. and edited by James Strachey (New York: Norton and
Company, 1989)
An Outline of Psychoanalysis, trans. Helena Ragg-Kirkby, (London: Penguin Books, 2003)
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (New York: Garden City Publishing, 1943)
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: Liveright Publishing , 1950)
Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: a philosophical inquiry into Freud. (USA: Beacon Press, 1966)