Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur [Civilization and its Discontents]

Scott Brewster (University of Lincoln)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.2: German-language Writing and Culture: Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, 800-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Domains

Psychoanalysis

Dates

First circulation or publication 1930

Places

Czech Republic (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

First English publication in a translation by Joan Riviere by the Hogarth Press and Institute of Pscyho-Analsis, London, and Cape and Smith, NewYork, in 1930.

In an often pessimistic reflection on the conflict between instinctual demands and the restrictions of civilization, Freud discusses the origins of religious feeling, the frustrated desires that underlie social structures, the “economic” costs of renouncing pleasure and the existence of an aggressive instinct entirely independent of the sexual and self-preservational instincts. As with all his work on culture, he postulates a similarity between the libidinal development of the individual and the development of social formations. The process of civilization mirrors the m…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1552 words

Citation: Brewster, Scott. "Das Unbehagen in der Kultur". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 November 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5736, accessed 22 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here