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In this book he states his views on the question of man's [[place]] in the [[world]], a place Freud describes as [[being]] on the [[fulcrum]] between the [[individual]]'s quest for [[freedom]] and [[society]]'s [[demand]] for [[conformity]]. As a result, civilization, or its culture, inhibits man's [[instinctual]] [[drives]], which can (and perhaps must) result in [[guilt]] and unfulfillment. Freud bases much of his [[analysis]] on the [[theory]] of the origins of civilization he first posited in ''[[Totem and Taboo]]'' and the [[idea]] of a [[death instinct]] first developed in ''[[Beyond the Pleasure Principle]]''.
In this book, Freud maintains that [[human]] beings are inherently [[aggressive]]. That [[love]] for all of humanity is far from an inherent [[state]] of the human [[mind]]. In [[order]] to live in a [[civilized]] society, [[humans]] must take their [[aggression]] and turn it on themselves in the [[form]] of a [[conscience]] (or [[Super-Ego|super-ego]]) which takes the place of the [[father]] as the [[child]] matures.
[[Other]] important [[concepts]] of this book is the human [[instinct]] of aggression towards each other, dichotomy of [[Eros]] vs. the Death [[Drive]] and the [[super-ego]].
For several chapters Freud provides a fairly commonplace description of our relation to culture. Citing a [[number]] of European writers, Freud describes the [[impossibility]] of achieving happiness, the "[[essence]] of culture," the ambivalent relationships we entertain with it, and the opposition between culture and [[sexuality]]. For someone familiar with Freud's work, there is little to learn. But, using a frequent tactic, he outlines a broader scope of [[understanding]] before advancing his more incisive hypotheses, which are sketched in [[terms]] of the [[economic]], [[dynamic]], and [[topographical]] points of view.
It is as if Freud were asking why the forms and dynamics of groups that he constructed in [[Group psychology|Group Psychology ]] were necessary, considering the inhibitions of [[sexual]] drives, the [[alienation]] that accompanies [[identification]] with large groups and the submission it entails. The response was economic: mankind's aggressive drives endanger culture. Freud then inserts the economic hypothesis into [[mental]] dynamics. Recalling the theory of drives, he suggests that the [[development]] of culture illustrates the [[struggle]] between Eros and death, the [[life instinct]] against the destructive instinct, as it unfolds within the human [[species]]. Once the dynamic relation has been established, there remains the problem of [[identifying]] mental [[formations]], the correlative [[topography]]. The end of the book is devoted to a subtle study of the [[superego]], the [[moral]] conscience, [[remorse]], guilt, and the [[need]] for [[punishment]]. "I suspect that the reader has the impression that our discussions on the [[sense of guilt]] disrupt the framework of this essay . . . This may have spoilt the [[structure]] of my paper; but it corresponds faithfully to my intention to [[represent]] the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization and to show that the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a [[loss]] of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt" (p. 134).
Freud's principal [[thesis]] is that the culture of patriarchal religion creates a [[particular]] way of [[working]] for the [[SuperEgo|superego]], which turns its aggression against the ego and expresses itself in the [[Feeling of Guilt|feeling of guilt]]. This [[process]] is unregulated. Once it is triggered, it worsens and becomes aggravated, exhausting not only the aggressive drives but the sexual drives as well. Moreover, "since civilization obeys an internal [[erotic]] impulsion which causes human beings to unite in a closely-knit group, it can only achieve this aim through an ever-increasing reinforcement of the sense of guilt" (p. 133). Eros itself serves the [[death drives]] or aggressive instincts, which culture serves as well. This results in the death-driven and unregulated dynamic of the [[cultural]] process.
Freud details the ontogenesis of the moral conscience and superego from the [[primitive]] [[social]] [[anxiety]] of the child—loss of the [[parents]]' love—to the erection of an internal [[authority]], which does not distinguish between [[acts]] and intentions and whose power is reinforced with every [[rejection]] of a drive and every [[real]] misfortune. He then claims that the origin of the feeling of guilt is the [[murder]] of the primal father, who alone is capable of provoking the [[conflict]] of [[ambivalence]] and generating the superego.
