Sigmund Freud
/Civilization and its Discontents
The development of civilizations is a special process, comparable to the growth of an individual from infant to adult. Showing that this is true is an immense task. It involve discovering how civilizations began, and how the course of their development has been determined. At the present time, I have only the following speculations to offer.
After primitive man discovered that he could improve his life by working, he also discovered that it was to his advantage to cooperate with other men. Even before this, human beings adopted the habit of forming families. This was the first form of cooperation. I think that families began when the need for sexual satisfaction became continual, and not seasonal as it is with the animals. When this happened, the male had a motive for keeping the female near him. And the female was obliged in the interest of her helpless young to stay with the stronger male. But this primitive family is still not civilization because the will of its head, the father, is unrestricted. Further advance toward civilization was made when the sons of this father discovered that together they were stronger than he. However, in order to be able to cooperate, the sons had to impose restrictions on one another. These restrictions were the first laws.
The communal life of human beings originates from the necessity to work together, and from the power of love. Love and necessity are also the origins of civilization. Civilization means that a large number of people live and work together in a community. In this way, the development of civilizations would seem to have as a result that people become happier and happier. However, this has not happened.
The love that founded the family continues to function in civilizations in both its sexual and non-sexual forms. The effect of love is to bind large numbers of people together. The word ‘love’ has many meanings in ordinary language. It means the relation between a man and woman whose sexual needs have led them to begin a family. It also refers to the positive feelings between parents and children, and between brothers and sisters. In my opinion, these latter feeling of affection began as sexual love. Both kinds of love, the sexual and non-sexual, extend outside the family and create bonds with people who used to be strangers. Sexual love leads to the formation of new families, and non-sexual love leads to the formation of friendships. Friendships are important for civilization because they are not exclusive. It is possible to be friends with many people. It would seem that love in both its forms is important for civilization, and that civilization helps to spread both sexual love and friendship. However, love and civilization come in conflict.
This conflict expresses itself as the conflict between the family and the larger community. As I have said, one of the aims of civilization is to bring people together. However, the family is reluctant to give up its members. The more closely the members of a family are attached to one another, the more they cut themselves off from others. A tightly-knit family makes it difficult for them to enter into a wider circle of life. Separating oneself from the family is a task that faces every young person. Society helps him in this task through education, and the need for working with others.
Also, women, who began civilization by the claims of their love, soon came into opposition to civilization. Women represent the interest of the family and of sexual love. The work of civilization is increasingly the work of men. It confronts them with more and more difficult tasks. Since a man has only a limited amount of energy, he can accomplish these tasks only by withdrawing from women and sexual love. He has to associate constantly with other men, and this makes him neglect his duties as a father and husband.
Civilization, therefore, as it increases in size, tends also to restrict sexual life. One of the first restrictions is the requirement that sexual partners not be of the same family. The main reason for these restrictions is that civilization requires that people use most of their energy for work and not for pleasure. In this way, civilization treats sexual desire as if it were a potentially rebellious segment of a population that needs to be suppressed. Western European civilization has done this more than other civilizations.
Sexuality in children is also not permitted by civilization, and there is further requirement that the sexual life of adults must have one form. It must be heterosexual, and it must be with one person. Civilization is prepared to tolerate sexuality only because it is needed to continue the human race.
This is an extreme picture, and we know that here are many exceptions. There are so many exceptions that they have stopped being punished. But we should not assume because of this that the sexual life of civilized people is not severely restricted. It is! And the pressures from this restriction are what make life of civilized human beings not as happy as we might have expected.