(One sentence summary)
1. What is Freud's initial assessment of humans in the excerpt?
2. Whose view of human nature does this most remind you of? How is Freud's emphasis different?
3. What does Freud say about the challenges human nature poses for "civilization"?
4. What is Freud's "rebuttal" of communism?
5. Groups can overcome their aggressiveness if they have an outgroup. Explain.
6. What does Freud mean by "narcissism of small differences"?
7. What is Freud's version of the social contract?
8. "His aggressiveness is introjected…." Explain.
9. Walk us through Freud's logic on how guilt comes about.
10. "social anxiety," "loss of love," "bad conscience," some people do bad things as long as they don't think they will be caught. What of it?
11. What's the big change with "internalization"?
12. Freud offers a little aside on the history of religion and civilization at 227.2. What's his theory of the Israelites, god, and all those commandments?
13. Two origins of guilt. How is the second one about "permanent internal unhappiness"?
227.7
Fear of authority figure transforms into fear of the super-ego. We renounce instinct because we fear external aggression. And later we renounce it due to fear of conscience.
14. Explain Freud's feedback loop or bootstrap description of the origin of conscience (story number two).
At 228 we get the idea that externally imposed instinct-renunciation generates conscience which then renounces instincts. Ego suppresses the aggressive instinct and transfers the aggressiveness to the super ego.
- Child wants something, is frustrated.
- Develops aggression toward authority that does not give it what it wants.
- But can't express this if it wants to get something.
- So he renounces the urge to be aggressive.
- To get out of this bind, he identifies with the authority and internalizes him.
- Authority turns into super-ego and all the aggression that would have been exercised against the authority attaches to the super-ego.
- The authority is degraded but is now internalized.
- THE POINT: the severity of the the super-ego does not come from the severity of the external authority but from the severity of the aggressiveness child felt toward the authority.
- THUS: conscience arises via the suppression of aggressive impulse
- AND: it gets strengthened every time it suppresses an impulse
15.What is Freud's "nature AND nurture" conclusion to how conscience comes about?
229.4. "constitutional factors and influences from the real environment act in combination"
15.
15.
12. Explicate: "Fate is regarded as a substitute for the parental agency. If a man is unfortunate it means that he is no longer loved by this highest power; and, threatened by such a loss of love, he once more bows to the parental [74] representative in his super-ego — a representative whom, in his days of good fortune, he was ready to neglect. This becomes especially clear where looked Fate is looked upon in the strictly religious sense of being nothing else than an expression of the Divine Will. The people of Israel had believed themselves to be the favorite child of God, and when the great. Father caused misfortune after misfortune to rain down upon this people of his, they were never shaken in their belief in his relationship to them or questioned his power or righteousness. Instead, they produced the prophets, who held up their sinfulness before them; and out of their sense of guilt they created the over-strict commandments of their priestly religion. It is remarkable how differently a primitive man behaves. If he has met with a misfortune, he does not throw the blame on himself but on his fetish, which has obviously not done its duty, and he gives it a thrashing instead of punishing himself" (227.3)
PART I
- "Man is wolf to fellow men."
- Civilization is about controlling this. (Hobbes said Leviathan - is culture the Leviathan?)
- Communist notion of people as good does not hold water.
- You can, though, get a group to be "loving" if there is another group they can be hating.
- Social contract (224.7): trade some happiness for some security
PART II
In a nutshell: aggressive characteristics of ego turned back against itself as superego or conscience.
"What means does civilization employ in order to inhibit the aggressiveness which opposes it, to make it harmless, to get rid of it, perhaps?" (225.2)
- Guilt? Origins of? (225.5)
- guilt ~ did something "bad"
- even just intention
- but how do we know of "bad"?
- it's some "extraneous" influence?
- but why would we submit to it?
- fear of loss of love
- BAD = things that could cause loss of love ::: SOCIAL ANXIETY (226.1)
- whose love? shift from parent(s) to human community
- Qualitative shift when this "thing" is internalized. No longer about being "found out" or "revealed" because super ego is there, inside, in on it all.
- Why do the most virtuous have the most powerful sense of guilt? (226.6)
- luck and ego: bad luck > moral searching
- Sequence
- renunciation owing to fear of aggression by external authority
- erection of internal authority
- renunciation owing to fear of it
- …"conscience is cause of instinctual renunciation but later this reverses…(228.3)
djr on grades | "A great change takes place only when the authority is internalized through the establishment of a super-ego." (226.3) |
You should be able to define/identify:
- "narcissism of small differences" (224.3)
- homo homini lupus
- phylogenetic (229) φυλή, φῦλον - phylé, phylon = tribe, clan, race + γενετικός - genetikós = origin, source, birth
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Last problem was 0480 (HELP) |
Q428. Attribute and explicate.
Fate is regarded as a substitute for the parental agency. If a man is unfortunate it means that he is no longer loved by this highest power; and, threatened by such a loss of love, he once more bows to the parental representative in his super-ego — a representative whom, in his days of good fortune, he was ready to neglect. This becomes especially clear where looked Fate is looked upon in the strictly religious sense of being nothing else than an expression of the Divine Will. The people of Israel had believed themselves to be the favorite child of God, and when the great. Father caused misfortune after misfortune to rain down upon this people of his, they were never shaken in their belief in his relationship to them or questioned his power or righteousness. Instead, they produced the prophets, who held up their sinfulness before them; and out of their sense of guilt they created the over-strict commandments of their priestly religion. It is remarkable how differently a primitive man behaves. If he has met with a misfortune, he does not throw the blame on himself but on his fetish, which has obviously not done its duty, and he gives it a thrashing instead of punishing himself.
Q429. Briefly explain Freud's theory of where guilt comes from.
Q439. Freud in "Civilization and Its Discontents" gives us a theory of how conscience arises and functions. In the selection on anomic suicide Durkheim gives an account of conscience as controlling our otherwise potentially infinite (and unsatisfiable) desires. Compare and contrast.
- Wikipedia: Civilization and Its Discontents
- Hendricks, Christina, Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents Lecture