Reading Questions
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
1. What is the “oceanic feeling” described by Freud’s friend
in the first chapter? How does Freud interpret it in psychoanalytic terms?
Keep track of what Freud says about religion here and throughout the book.
2. What decides the purpose of life? What are the various strategies and techniques
that can be used to achieve it?
3. “Happiness, in the reduced sense in which we recognize it as possible,
is a problem of the economics of the individual’s libido.” What
kind of attitude is Freud expressing here? What does he mean?
4. What trade-offs does civilization demand from us? Are they worth it?
5. What role does aggression play in our psychic life? In the life of societies?
What are some of the strategies that have been used to cope with it? Be sure
to note the discussion of “the narcissism of minor differences” in
section V.
6. If Freud believes that “civilization is a process in the service of
Eros,” why does life in so-called civilized societies often make us unhappy?
Does it have to do so?
7. “The communal life of human beings had, therefore, a twofold foundation:
the compulsion to work. . .and the power of love. . . .Eros and Ananke [Love
and Necessity] have become the parents of human civilization too” (section
IV). So why can’t we all just be one big happy family?
8. What is the origin of guilt, according to Freud? How does he explain it
psychoanalytically? What, exactly, is the “super-ego?” Why does
guilt have the quality of “fatal inevitability?”
9. Freud calls the sense of guilt “the most important problem in the
development of civilization” at the beginning of section VIII. Why? What
does he mean?