Understanding of Modern Society - Essay Example

Guide's Freud and Marx- Their Contribution to the Understanding of Modern Society Introduction Modern society is defined by the repression of individual sexual expression & contrasted with postmodern society, which is characterized by the individual's quest for happiness at the expense of security [Bauman 1997]. Another dictionary definition of modern society puts it as: Modernity is a term used to describe the condition of being related to modernism. Since the term "modern" is used to describe a wide range of periods, modernity must be understood in its context, the industrial age of the 19th century, and its role in sociology, which since its beginning in that era examined the leap from pre-industrial to industrial society, sometimes considering events of the 18th century as well. For the period since the Middle Ages, the term Modern Times is used. Freud as he is called as "the father of psychology" has contributed to the field of psychology in a way that it is tough to imagine the state of this field without his ideology & works. While the past has to be different from us, great thinkers are somehow also our contemporaries. They reach out to us over the centuries, what they said and thought still challenges us; it is their ideas that succeed in keeping them alive. The liveliness of a historic writer does not mean that we have to accept everything that person had to say; we should retain the right to pick and choose that which wewant to accept for ourselves [Roazen 2000]. Freud wrote-The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psychoanalysis; . . . psychoanalysis cannot situate the essence of the psychical in consciousness, but is obliged to regard consciousness as a quality of the psychical, which may be present in addition to other qualities or may be absent [S. Freud 1923] Freud was engaging in a kind of public relations, as he praised one of Morselli's other writings "without any mixed feelings, with unreserved approval." [Roazen 2000]To Freud's student in Italy (Edoardo Weiss), whom Freud had known for over a decade, Freud wrote with a kind of candor that could illustrate Henry James's conception of the contrast between European and American sensibilities. For Freud was pleased with the critical review that his Italian disciple had come up with: "I am glad you have shown yourself to be courageous and honest, as always."[ Roazen 2000, page 4] However, the closer we may seem to be in easily understanding his works and get to a conclusion of our own, the more complicated our thinking process about him becomes. As for citing an example, the following citation goes: In his Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) he would make no bones about why he thought the love for humanity was both unrealistic and undesirable. In a way Freud had given away his true sentiments even in his letter to Rolland, when he put the love of mankind on the same level as the necessity for technology, which Freud like other Europeans of his time looked on with at best mixed feelings[Roazen 2000, page5]. Further, His book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious is one of the most complicated ones he ever wrote, and attracts little attention nowadays. That text is littered with examples of the worldly wisdom which can be communicated through jokes. Freud's dry cynicism was frequently reported. We know a bit about how much he appreciated Mark Twain's public appearances in Vienna. Like all complex figures Freud had his multiple contradictions, but he harnessed them into making the great literature he left which is still capable of enlivening debates today. It remains for the future to determine whether Freud will in the end succeed in ranking with thinkers like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and others who disturbed the sleep of the world [Roazen 2000, page 8]. By withdrawing all their liberated energies into their life on earth, they will probably succeed in achieving a state of things in which life will become tolerable for everyone and civilization no longer oppressive to anyone." That strain of utopianism has continued to attract a certain kind of passionate following, such as the work of Herbert Marcuse and others[Roazen 2000, page 8]. The citizen in modem society, laboring, according to Freud, under a heavy burden of unconscious guilt, does not recognize it; he only feels a "sort of uneasiness or discontent for which other motivations are ought."The patient does not recognize this sense of guilt either. "As far as the patient is concerned this sense of guilt is dumb; it does not tell him he is guilty; he does not feel guilty, he feels ill."4 Freud seems to suggest, however, that the "pale criminal" or "criminal from a sense of guilt," can, in fact, partially recognize his unconscious guilt.' This type of criminal, Freud tells us, does not feel guilty because he commits crimes; rather he commits crimes because he suffers from an oppressive pre-existing sense of guilt which he cannot account for [Smith 1968, page 2]. Freud implicitly did, the idea of unconscious guilt as a means of changing and restructuring society I suggest that they did, that the crisis of pestilence was also an opportunity, an opportunity to topple rulers, banish one's political opponents, and change the form of regime. The process of purification was an integral part of classical politics [Smith 1968, page 9]. Freud finally comes to the conclusion, in Civilization and Its Discontents, that since society will not see that it is sick, and would resist treatment in any case, the only hope for society lies in its being coerced into receiving therapy. Elsewhere, Freud notes that therapy is, in essence, interminable." [Smith 1968, page 8]. Any problem which society experienced could be explained as the result of an unconscious sense of guilt, due to the fathers having sinned even centuries earlier. The analyst would become a historian of guilt, seeking parallels between the past and the present, showing a people that it has fallen short of its real interests today because of what was done yesterday. Neo-freudism Neo-Freudianism thus allows us to examine the factors that help create schools of though that cross the boundaries of single academic disciplines and professions. Neo-Freudianism was not a traditional school of thought created by academics nor by psychology clinicians but was instead forged by professional therapists who were originally associated with the intellectual sect of psychoanalysis and who wrote both for an audience of general readers (Fromm and Horney) and for professionals in fields outside the mental health professions (Fromm and Sullivan). Neo-Freudianism thus bridged the boundaries between clinical therapeutic practice and writing, general intellectual and cultural analysis, and academic social science. This unique sociological nature of neo-Freudianism as an intellectual movement helped create a large audience for the school but also doomed the legitimation of the school within the mental health professions, intellectual culture, and academic social science. Understanding this process raises larger questions about the many intellectual movements so important to our intellectual life [MCLAUGHLIN 1998, page 3]. References [1] Bocock R. J., Freud and the Centrality of Instincts in Psychoanalytic Sociology, The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 28, No. 4. (Dec., 1977), pp. 467-480. http://links.jstor.org/sicisici=00071315%28197712%2928%3A4%3C467%3AFATCOI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T [2] Bauman, Zygmunt , Post modernity and its discontents, CI, NY: New York U Press, 1997. 232 pp. [3] Roazen Paul, WHAT KIND OF MAN WAS FREUD SOCIETY, SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2000 [4] S. Freud, 'The Ego and the Id', London, Standard Edition, vol. 19, (1923). [5] Roger W. Smith, The Political Meaning of Unconscious Guilt, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 4. (Dec., 1968), pp. 505-515. [6] NEIL G. MCLAUGHLIN WHY DO SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT FAILNEO-FREUDIANISM AS A CASE STUDY IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences: Vol. 34(2), 113-134 Spring 1998. Read More