Love and Aggressiveness in Freuds Civilization and Its Discontents - Book Report/Review Example

Discuss the relationship between love and aggressiveness in Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents1, making especial reference to chapters 5 and 7.Love and aggressiveness are very closely related in Freud’s conception of a person’s social interactions. Both allow the individual to satisfy the desires of his ego: love-relationships provide satisfaction of desires either through sexual satisfaction, or (in friendships) through aid to achieve the individual’s aims; aggressiveness towards other people allows the individual to satisfy the desires of his ego undisturbed by competition from others. Freud discusses the origins of our sentiments of aggression (especially as involved in feelings of guilt) in chapter seven of Civilization and its Discontents, and finds them to be intimately involved with feelings of love; equally, sentiments of love often originate from feelings of aggression. Finally, Freud deploys his concepts of love and aggression to show that civilized societies are bound to fail: they place restrictions on our natural sentiments of love and aggressiveness which are in many cases insupportable – in particular, he criticises societies founded on the Christian principle of love, and those founded on communist ideas. Freud’s discussion of the origins of our aggressiveness show how strongly it is related to love, as he conceives it. The initial aggressive sentiment is directed inwards, at the child’s own ego, Freud claims, due to a frustration of the desires of the child’s ego. This ‘introjected’ aggressive impulse results in the formation of the super-ego, and so the initiation of feelings of guilt. For example, when a child is forbade by a parent to do something which is desired by his ego, he initially feels aggressiveness towards that parent as a result of the frustration of his desires. However, since aggressiveness cannot be directed towards the parent, it is directed at the ego, the source of the frustrated desire. Why can aggressiveness not be directed at a parent (or another figure of authority)? Here, Freud shows how essential he believes the concept of love to be to the formation of aggressive impulses: the child directs aggressiveness towards his own ego rather than towards the figure of authority because of a “fear of loss of love” (p. 757). Thus, the need for love is instrumental in the formation of the super-ego, which results in aggressive impulses directed at the ego: self-hating feelings of guilt. In situations where aggressiveness is in fact directed towards the figure of authority, and not introjected, love is still essential to the changes in the individual’s psychological make-up. Freud claims that this would only happen in situations involving the Oedipus complex: that is, when sons kill their fathers. This supposedly was a more common occurrence in earlier societies which were less bound by ‘civilizing’ restrictions. Here, the actual aggression involved in killing the father results in a feeling of remorse at the action: this is because of the love that the son naturally has for his father. Hence, for Freud, the origins of feelings of aggression are always bound up with feelings of love. However, it is not obvious that non-repressed aggression need always be followed by feelings of remorse. As stated above, Freud believes that the only cases of actual aggression by a child will be from a son to his father, and, since this relationship necessarily involves some love, remorse is a necessary consequence. However, it is not clear that son-to-father aggression would be the only case of actual aggression from a child to a figure of authority – a child may show aggression towards a teacher or minder, for example – and if aggression is directed at others, there may not be a necessary bond of love from the child to these people, so remorse may not be a necessary consequence. Freud’s assumption is that a child’s initial authoritative influence will be from his father, so it is towards the father that initial aggression (suppressed or not) will be directed. Whilst this assumption will usually hold, it is clearly not true in all cases – consider, for example, orphans. Regardless of this objection, it seems fair to allow that it is the conflict between feelings of love and the original sentiments of aggression that result in guilt and remorse in nearly all possible cases, and perhaps in all actual cases. This said, Freud also claims that, “aggressiveness […] forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people” (p. 751). This is due to the fact that he sees love as essentially a self-serving phenomenon: through love-relationships, individuals are able to temper the aggressiveness of others towards them, enlist the aid of others in achieving their own desires and defending themselves from the aggressiveness of their enemies, and fulfil their sexual desires (in explicitly sexual love-relationships). Evidence for this reading of Freud’s conception of love-relationships can be found in chapter five of Civilization and its Discontents: Freud writes, “if I love someone, he must deserve it in some way […] he deserves it if he is so like me in important ways that I can love myself in him; and he deserves it if he is so much more perfect than myself that I can love my ideal of my own self in him” (p. 748) – therefore, for Freud, love is an egotistical construct. Thus, it is our own aggressiveness towards other people, and their potential aggressiveness towards us, that causes us to form love-relationships. In turn, this aggressiveness stems from our very nature – Freud writes of the “primary mutual hostility of human beings” (p. 750) – and is designed to allow the fulfilment of the desires of our ego. Thus, our feelings of love and aggression, the formation of each being dependent on the other, are constructed egotistically in order to fulfil our desires. It is from these ideas of the nature of the sentiments of love and aggression that Freud derives his critique of civilized society. Social interactions with other human beings and the structuring of these interactions by a society necessarily result in the restriction of these sentiments. Hence, to put it simply, our natural sentiments of love and aggression are restricted by civilization, and so are bound to lead to the frustration of the individual. It is civilization which causes the inhibition of our initial sentiments of aggression, and so leads to the feelings of guilt described above. Equally, civilization necessarily imposes “a restriction upon sexual life” (p. 747), and so restricts the love-relationships that an individual would naturally form. Freud demonstrates that civilization is unviable by criticising two different socio-political ideals: Christian society and communism. Freud’s criticism of Christian societies (which extends to most non-Christian western societies) is based on a criticism of the fundamental tenet of Christianity and other moralities: ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’. This doctrine, Freud says, is based on a misunderstanding of human nature: we cannot truly love someone who is not in some way deserving of our love. In the first place, to do this undermines our relationships with those who are deserving of our love: “it is an injustice to them [the people I love] if I put a stranger on a par with them” (p. 748). Secondly, it runs against the egotism of our nature to love oneself so little as this doctrine implies: if I am to love everyone equally, then I must love each person only a very little; if I am to love each person as myself, then I must love myself only a very little. But this is contradictory to my nature, so it is impossible to love everyone as much as I love myself. It might be objected, though, that Freud here conceives of love as something of which each person only has a defined quantity to give; however, he gives no evidence of this, and indeed it would seem that love does not work like this – we can love new people without diminishing the strength of our love towards those we originally loved (e.g. our parents). Another of Freud’s criticisms of the Christian doctrine is that it requires an individual to love his enemies: this is impossible and absurd, because it requires loving those who are not worthy of love – it is contradictory to the egotistical nature of love-relationships as Freud conceives them. Communism, on the other hand, fails by misinterpreting the nature of human aggression. The essential idea of communism is that removing ownership will remove human aggressiveness; however, Freud counters this by pointing out that aggressiveness is the result of any restrictions on the fulfilment of our desires, not just restriction on the fulfilment of those desires involving property ownership. He writes: “in abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments […] but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature” (p. 751). Thus, sentiments of aggressiveness are not abolished in communist systems, since there is still power, and there are still restrictions on some of our desires – e.g. sexual desires. In conclusion, I hope to have shown here that love and aggressiveness are very closely linked in Freud’s conception of our psychology. Initial sentiments of aggressiveness are based on frustration of a child’s egotistical desires; sentiments of love are initially directed at parents. Since parents tend to be figures of authority, these sentiments combine to create the super-ego, and feelings of guilt and remorse. Each of love and aggressiveness often stems from the other (according to Freud’s definition of them), and both are ultimately involved in serving the desires of the ego. Thus, according to Freud, “civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration.” (p. 750) because it restricts the natural scope of our sentiments of love and aggression, and so frustrates our egotistical desires. 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