Civilization and Its Discontents

men are not gentle creatures, who want to be loved, who at the most can defend themselves if they are
attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a
powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or
sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his
capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his
possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus [man is
wolf to man]. Who in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute
this assertion? As a rule this cruel aggressiveness waits for some provocation or puts itself at the service
of some other purpose, whose goal might also have been reached by milder measures. In circumstances
that are favorable to it, when the mental counter-forces which ordinarily inhibit it are out of action, it
also manifests itself spontaneously and reveals man as a savage beast to whom consideration towards
his own kind is something alien. Anyone who calls to mind the atrocities committed during the racial
migrations or the invasions of the Huns, or by the people known as Mongols under Jenghiz Khan and
Tamerlane, or at the capture of Jerusalem by the pious Crusaders, or even, indeed, the horrors of the
recent World War -- anyone who calls these things to mind will have to bow humbly before the truth of
this view.

The existence of this inclination to aggression, which we can detect in ourselves and justly assume to be
present in others, is the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbor and which forces
civilization into such a high expenditure [of energy]. In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of
human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in
common would not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests.
Civilization has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man's aggressive instincts and to hold
their manifestations of them in check by psychical reaction-formations. Hence, therefore, the use of
methods intended to incite people into identifications and aim-inhibited relations of love, hence the
restriction upon sexual life, and hence too the ideal's commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself --
a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the
original nature of man. In spite of every effort, these endeavors of civilization have not so far achieved
very much. It hopes to prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence by itself assuming the right to use
violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hold of the more cautious and refined
manifestations of human aggressiveness. The time comes when each one of us has to give up illusions
the expectations which, in his youth. he pinned upon his fellow men, and when he may learn how much
difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will. At the same time, it would be unfair to
reproach civilization with trying to eliminate strife and competition from human activity. These things
are undoubtedly indispensable. But opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made
occasion for enmity.

The communists believe they have found the path to deliverance from our evils. According to them, man
is wholly good and as well-disposed to his neighbor; but the institution of private property has corrupted
his nature. The ownership of private wealth gives the individual power, and waited the temptation to ill-
treat his neighbor; while the man who is excluded from possession is bound to rebel in hostility against
his oppressor. If private property were abolished, all wealth held in common, and everyone allowed to
share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men. Since everyone's needs
would be satisfied, no one would have any reason to regard another as his enemy; all would willingly
undertake the work that was necessary. I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the
communist system; I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or
advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the systems based
are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one
of its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest; 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. Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost before
property had given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love
among people (with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother's relation to her male child). If we do
away with personal rights over material wealth, there still remains prerogative in the field of sexual
relationships, which is bound to become the source of the strongest dislike in the most violent hostility
among men who in other respects are on an equal footing. If we were to remove this factor, too, by
allowing complete freedom of sexual life and thus abolishing the family, the germ-cell of civilization, we
cannot, it is true, easily foresee what new paths the development of civilization could take; but one
thing we can expect, and that is that this indestructible feature of human nature will follow at there.

It is clearly not easy for man to give up the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression. They do not feel
comfortable without it. The advantage which a comparatively small cultural group offers of allowing this
instinct an outlet in the form of hostility against intruders is not to be despised. It is always possible to
bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to
receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness. I once discussed the phenomenon that is precisely
communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are
engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other -- like the Spaniards and Portuguese, for instance,
the North Germans and South Germans, the English and Scotch, and so on. I gave this phenomenon the
name of "the narcissism of minor differences", a name which does not do much to explain it. We can
now see that it is a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression, by
means of which cohesion between the members of the community is made easier. In this respect the
Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have rendered most useful services to the civilizations of the
countries that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the massacres of the Jews in the Middle Ages
did not suffice to make that period more peaceful and secure for their Christian fellows. When once the
Apostle Paul had posited universal love between men as the foundation of his Christian community,
extreme intolerance, part of Christendom towards those who remained outside its became the
inevitable consequence. To the Romans, who had not founded their communal life as a State upon love,
religious intolerance was something foreign, although with them religion was a concern of the State and
the State was permeated by religion. Neither was it an unaccountable chance that the dream of a
Germanic world-dominion called for anti-Semitism as its complement; and it is intelligible that the
attempts to establish a new, communist civilization in Russia should find its psychological support in the
persecution of the bourgeois. One only wonders, with concern, what the Soviets will do after they have
wiped out their bourgeois.
Is Civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man's sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can
understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization. In fact, primitive man was better
off in knowing no restrictions of instinct. To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this
happiness for any length of time were very slender. Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his
possibilities of happiness for a portion of security. We must not forget, however, that in the primal
family only the head of it enjoyed this instinctual freedom; the rest lived in slavish suppression. In that
primal period of civilization, the contrast between a minority who enjoyed the advantages of civilization
and a majority who were robbed of those advantages was, therefore, carried to extremes. As regards
the primitive peoples who exists to-day, careful researches have shown that their instinctual life is by no
means to be envied for its freedom. It is subject to restrictions of a different kind but perhaps of greater
severity than those attaching to modern civilized man.

When we justly find fault with the present state of our civilization for so inadequately fulfilling our
demands for plan of life that shall make us happy, and for allowing the existence of so much suffering
which could probably be avoided -- when, with unsparing criticism, we try to uncover the roots of its
imperfection, we are undoubtedly exercising a proper right and are not showing ourselves enemies of
civilization. We may expect gradually to carry through such alterations in our civilization as will better
satisfy our needs and will escape our criticisms. But perhaps we may also familiarize ourselves with the
idea that there are difficulties attaching to the nature of civilization which will not yield to any attempt at
reform. Over and above the tasks of restricting the instincts, which we are prepared for, there forces
itself on our notice the danger of a state of things which might be termed "the psychological poverty of
groups". This danger is most threatening where the bonds of a society are chiefly constituted by the
identification of its members with one another, while individuals of the leader type do not acquire the
importance that should fall to them in the formation of a group. The present cultural state of America
would give us a good opportunity for studying the damage to civilization which is us to be feared. But I
shall avoid the temptation of entering upon a critique of American civilization; I do not wish to give an
impression of wanting myself to employ American methods.

[Source: Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. and ed., James Strachey (New York: W.
W. Norton, 1961), pp. 58-63.]
Freud distinguished three types of passion: the passion that arises from being in love, the passion that
corresponds to the cathexis of a sublimated activity, and the passion that has more in common with
hate than with love (erotomania).

Cathexis and Anti-cathexis

https://www.verywellmind.com/cathexis-and-anticathexis-2795843
 Man is gifted and endowed with aggression. Freud mentions that civilization ceaselessly tries to
control the implications of this endowment. (Connect to How Derrida views the gift, reference
to Marcel Mauss)

 Freud makes a very strong case that we need to humbly accept that human nature is aggressive,
as evidenced in events in history. From Genghis Kan to the crusades up until the recent world
wars.