Civilization And Its Discontents By Sigmund Freud

In his text Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud argues that repression is at the ground of civil society, which makes happiness (the fulfillment of the pleasure-principle) unattainable.
Introduction
Sigmund Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents attempts to answer the main question of civilization “What is the purpose of human life?”[Pg17]. Author believe, that human’s lives are the means that reflect upon civilization through a psychoanalysis approach. Freud points out, that civilization itself is the cause of our unhappiness. Human socialization and activities have led to restriction of individual activities. According to Freud, the biggest sources of unhappiness in the world are relations with other people in the society.

Freud was the first person who used the repression term widely, and he argued that the repression is one of the major roots of the social problems, especially, in the Western society. Since the author believed, that humans are naturally have strong instincts towards the sexuality that were repressed by the people propose to meet the constraints that are imposed on them by the civilized social life” [Billing, 2014]. The author indicates that , “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” [Freud, 16]. This is another quote that support the sexulity in human activity that comes from profit of

Foucault’s theory claims repression hypothesis to have been used for self-affirmation while Freud argued that humans are unable to clearly express disturbing thoughts for the fear of being judged and punished and hence they keep such desires at bay in order to keep themselves from being ashamed and humiliated. In addition, Freud repression hypothesis is explained from the psychological point of view and he believes that human’s mind is the main source of repression since only humans mind evaluates our desires and tells us what is right and what is wrong. In contrast, Foucault argues that the sexual repression arise in 19th century due to development of capitalism where society attempts to control and sanitize sexuality. If we compare the Sigmund’s theory of repression with Foucault, we can evaluate by the following quotation of both as Freud said in theory of repression, “We need to divulge the sexual secrets deep inside us that are causing us to be neurotic, in order to be healed.” On the other hand, Foucault argues in the History of sexuality “Sexuality is something that we ourselves create; it is our own creation and much more than the discovery of secret side of our desire” [Yeng,