Freud’S Theory Vs. Levi’S Experiences

Freud’s Theory vs. Levi’s Experiences

In the book, “Civilization and Its Discontents,” Freud maintains that human beings are inherently aggressive. That love for all of humanity is far from an inherent state of the human mind. Other important concept of this book is the human instinct of aggression towards each other, Eros vs. the Death Drive and the super-ego. In which Freud attacks organized religion as a collective neurosis. Religion has performed a great service for civilization by taming asocial instincts and creating a sense of community around a shared set of beliefs, Freud argues. But it has also demanded an enormous psychological cost to the individual by making him permanently subordinate to the primal father figure embodied by God. An acknowledged atheist, Freud refines his theories in “Civilization and Its Discontents” to outline more emphatically the relation between psychoanalysis and religion, as well as between the individual and civilization. Freud explains his ideas of Aggression, Individual and Civilization, Eros and Death Drive, and the Conscience and the Super ego through the depiction of Primo Levi’s experiences in “Survival in Auschwitz.” Therefore, I believe that Freud’s claim does correlate with the life and death situation at Auschwitz.

The primal instinct of human beings is to act aggressively towards one another. In primitive societies, the head of the family gave free sovereignty to the instinctual manifestations of his aggression at the expense of all others. In civilized society, we have restrained our inclination to aggression through the rule of law and the imposition of authority (both internal and external), to ensure the maximum security and happiness for all. While we originally entered society precisely to escape the forces of mutual aggression and self-destruction, the requirement to oppose our aggressive instincts has controversially caused great unhappiness, an increasingly burdensome sense of guilt, and in the most extreme cases, various forms of psychological disorder. Primo Levi describes his experience and the experience of the others while in the gas chamber to be a fortune to survive for three months. Not knowing who or where they are from, the exhausting pain empties their emotions and leads them into a slow and “faceless” death. Levi quote, “I could enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image which is familiar to me: an emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a though is to be seen” (p. 90). Individuals have therefore begun to rebel against civilization with an aggression that exceeds the level of aggression originally suppressed, threatening the breaking up of society. Primo Levi paints a picture with disturbing detail that is meant to serve as a reminder of the unimaginable horrors millions of men, women and children were forcefully subjected to as a result of hate. He stated, “In all countries in which a foreign people have set foot as invaders, an analogous position of rivalry and hatred among the subjected has been brought about; and this, like many other human characteristics, could be experienced in the Lager in the light of particular cruel evidence” (p. 91). Typically, human who is given power will continuously act with aggression among others.

Freud draws an extended analogy between the libidinal development of the individual and the evolution of civilization, identifying three parallel stages in which each occurs: character-formation (acquiring a distinct identity), sublimation (channeling of primal energy into other physical or psychological activities), and non-satisfaction of instincts (burying of aggressive impulses in the individual). Freud also identifies a key difference between the two processes: the program of the pleasure principle, which consists in finding and achieving happiness, is too remembered as the central aim of individual development whereas in the context of civilization, personal happiness is often ignored in the interests of social unity and cohesion. I believed that Primo Levi’s belief on civilization connects with Freud’s analogy that Civilization can be defined as the whole sum of human achievements and regulations intended to protect men against nature and "adjust their mutual relations." Levi proclaimed, “We must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization” (p. 41). According to him, civilization is not exclusively focused on what is “useful”. The cultivation of man's higher mental activities is one of civilization's central aims, and it achieves this aim in part through the production of art. As for the rule of our "mutual relations," a "decisive step" toward civilization lies in the replacement of the individual's power by that of the community. But this replacement from now on restricts the possibilities of individual satisfaction in the interests of law, order, and justice. Even Primo Levi mentioned, “We had soon learned that the guests of the Lager are divided into three categories: the criminals, the politicals and the Jews” (p. 33). Civilized societies place the rule of law over individual instincts.

Freud theorized that all subjects must maintain within the economy of their sexual balance between these two instincts: Eros Drives and Death Drives. Freud applies the

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