Happiness for Freud
None of us desire to suffer from misery. What we all want is to become happy and to remain so. But is it possible to get real happiness? As Freud illustrates in the book Civilization and Its Discontents, it seems to be impossible.
On Freud’s opinion, “the programmer of the pleasure principle” (Freud 43) which shows our demand of happiness is the purpose of life. However, under the restriction of the unhappiness from “our own body”, “the external world” and “our relation to others” (44), it’s impossible to fulfill this principle; we have to moderate the claims of happiness to the “more modest reality principle” that seeks for the way “to escape unhappiness or to have survived his suffering” (44). And for protecting ourselves from unhappiness, we create civilization. However, it also seems to be the largest source of unhappiness. Social neurosis and misery derives from the creation of civilization. People become “neurotic” because they “cannot tolerate the frustration which society imposes in the service of its cultural ideals” (59). Civilization leads to “a sublimation of instincts” (74) and “a renunciation of instincts” (75).
With the development of culture, we join higher physical activities which sublimate our instincts. For example, “by channeling our sexual instincts toward a new nonsexual aim, we can perform valued tasks such as artistic creation and intellectual inquiry” (Douglas 355). This is the sublimation of our instincts because we got a higher aim. However, the sublimation of instincts is also a kind of renunciation of many of our fundamental drives. Primitive life without civilization may be short and with a poor material living standard, but many of our basic drives would not need to be repressed and the people have much freedom. But for us, since we are civilized people, we have to keep rational and clam all the time. We cannot let our instincts to direct our behaviors like the people in the past. And for this oppression of instincts, discontent arises.
Just for instance, as university students, most of us have to use much of our time on study to get a good grade. And after finishing the study, we have to go out to do part time job. The pressure from our family, the society and ourselves makes us to oppress our desire of freedom and we have to work hard every day. Can we feel happy with such a busy life without rest? Obviously we cannot. But it’s the feature of modern society to have such a quick life rhythm. If we want to slow down, what we have to do is to quit the civilization.
As demonstrated by Freud, as long as we cannot deny the development of civilization, we have to repress some of our instinct. And for this repression of instincts, we can never feel happy. However, to make a choice between civilization and savageness, we must choose the former one. Thus, happiness is still far away from us.
Work Cited
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its discontents. New York: W.W. Norton & company, 2010. Print
Douglas, Kirsner. “Freud, civilization, religion, and stoicism.” Psychoanalytic Psychology 23.2 (2006): 354-66.EBSCOhost. Web. 20.Nov.2011.
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