Modern Society Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Modern Society - Essay Example For Freud was pleased with the critical review that his Italian disciple had come up with: "I am glad you have shown yourself to be courageous and honest, as always."[ Roazen 2000, page 4] However, the closer we may seem to be in easily understanding his works and get to a conclusion of our own, the more complicated our thinking process about him becomes. As for citing an example, the following citation goes: In his Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) he would make no bones about why he thought the love for humanity was both unrealistic and undesirable. In a way Freud had given away his true sentiments even in his letter to Rolland, when he put the love of mankind on the same level as the necessity for technology, which Freud like other Europeans of his time looked on with at best mixed feelings[Roazen 2000, page5]. Further, His book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious is one of the most complicated ones he ever wrote, and attracts little attention nowadays. That text is littered with examples of the worldly wisdom which can be communicated through jokes. Freud's dry cynicism was frequently reported. We know a bit about how much he appreciated Mark Twain's public appearances in Vienna. Like all complex figures Freud had his multiple contradictions, but he harnessed them into making the great literature he left which is still capable of enlivening debates today. It remains for the future to determine whether Freud will in the end succeed in ranking with thinkers like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and others who disturbed the sleep of the world [Roazen 2000, page 8]. By withdrawing all their liberated energies into their life on earth, they will probably succeed in achieving a state of things in which life will... The citizen in modem society, laboring, according to Freud, under a heavy burden of unconscious guilt, does not recognize it; he only feels a "sort of uneasiness or discontent for which other motivations are ~ought."The patient does not recognize this sense of guilt either. "As far as the patient is concerned this sense of guilt is dumb; it does not tell him he is guilty; he does not feel guilty, he feels ill."4 Freud seems to suggest, however, that the "pale criminal" or "criminal from a sense of guilt," can, in fact, partially recognize his unconscious guilt.' This type of criminal, Freud tells us, does not feel guilty because he commits crimes; rather he commits crimes because he suffers from an oppressive pre-existing sense of guilt which he cannot account for. Freud implicitly did, the idea of unconscious guilt as a means of changing and restructuring society? I suggest that they did, that the crisis of pestilence was also an opportunity, an opportunity to topple rulers, banish one's political opponents, and change the form of regime. The process of purification was an integral part of classical politics. Freud finally comes to the conclusion, in Civilization and Its Discontents, that since society will not see that it is sick, and would resist treatment, in any case, the only hope for society lies in its being coerced into receiving therapy". Any problem which society experienced could be explained as the result of an unconscious sense of guilt, due to the fathers having sinned even centuries earlier.