Civilization and Its Discontents - Chapter 1

Sigmund Freud
Civilization and Its Discontents (Chap. 1)


The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks
power, success, riches for himself and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the
truly precious things in life. And yet, in making any general judgment of this kind, one is in
danger of forgetting the manifold variety of humanity and its mental life. There are certain men
from whom their contemporaries do not withhold veneration, although their greatness rests on
attributes and achievements which are completely foreign to the aims and ideals of the multitude.
One might well be inclined to suppose that after all it is only a minority who appreciate these great
men, while the majority cares nothing for them. But the discrepancy between men’s opinions and
their behaviour is so wide and their desires so many-sided that things are probably not so simple.
One of these exceptional men calls himself my friend in his letters to me. I had sent him my little
book which treats of religion as an illusion and he answered that he agreed entirely with my views
on religion, but that he was sorry I had not properly appreciated the ultimate source of religious
sentiments. This consists in a peculiar feeling, which never leaves him personally, which he finds
shared by many others, and which he may suppose millions more also experience. It is a feeling
which he would like to call a sensation of eternity, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded,
something “oceanic.“ It is, he says, a purely subjective experience, not an article of belief; it
implies no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of the religious spirit and is taken
hold of by the various Churches and religious systems, directed by them into definite channels,
and also, no doubt, used up in them. One may rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this
oceanic feeling alone, even though one reject all beliefs and all illusions. These views, expressed
by my friend whom I so greatly honour and who himself once in poetry described the magic of
illusion, put me in a difficult position. I cannot discover this "oceanic”” feeling in myself. It is not
easy to deal scientifically with feelings. One may attempt to describe their physiological signs.
Where that is impossible—I am afraid the oceanic feeling, too, will defy this kind of
classification—nothing remains but to turn to the ideational content which most readily associates
itself with the feeling. If I have understood my friend aright, he means the same thing as that
consolation offered by an original and somewhat unconventional writer to his hero, contemplating
suicide: “Out of this world we cannot fall.“ [1] So it is a feeling of indissoluble connection, of
belonging inseparably to the external world as a whole. To me, personally, I may remark, this
seems something more in the nature of an intellectual judgment, not. it is true, without any
accompanying feeling-tone, but with one of a kind which characterizes other equally far-reaching
reflections as well. I could not in my own person convince myself of the primary nature of such a
feeling. But I cannot on that account deny that it in fact occurs in other people. One can only
wonder whether it has been correctly interpreted and whether it is entitled to be acknowledged as
the fans et origo2 of the whole need for religion.

I have nothing to suggest which could effectively settle the solution of this problem. The idea that
man should receive intimation of his connection with the surrounding world by a direct feeling
which aims from the outset at serving this purpose sounds so strange and is so incongruous with
the structure of our psychology that one is justified in attempting a psycho-analytic, that is, genetic
explanation of such a feeling. Whereupon the following lines of thought present themselves.
Normally there is nothing we are more certain of than the feeling of our self, our own ego. It
seems to us an independent unitary thing, sharply outlined against everything else. That this is a
deceptive appearance, and that on the contrary the ego extends inwards without any sharp
delimitation, into an unconscious mental entity which we call the id and to which it forms a
facade, was first discovered by psycho-analytic research, and the latter still has much to tell us
about the relations of the ego to the id. But towards the outer world, at any rate, the ego seems to
keep itself clearly and sharply outlined and delimited. There is only one state of mind in which it
fails to do this—an unusual state, it is true, but not one that can be judged as pathological. At its
height, the state of being in love threatens to obliterate the boundaries between ego and object.
Against all the evidence of his senses, the man in love declares that he and his beloved are one,
and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact. A thing that can be temporarily effaced by a
physiological function must also of course be liable to disturbance by morbid processes. From
pathology we have come to know a large number of states in which the boundary line between ego
and outer world become uncertain, or in which they are actually incorrectly perceived—cases in
which parts of a man’s own body, even component parts of his own mind, perceptions, thoughts,
feelings, appear to him alien and not belonging to himself; other cases in which a man ascribes to
the external world things that clearly originate in himself, and that ought to be acknowledged by
him. So the ego’s cognizance of itself is subject to disturbance, and the boundaries between it and
the outer world are not immovable.

Further reflection shows that the adult’s sense of his own ego cannot have been the same from the
beginning. It must have undergone a development, which naturally cannot be demonstrated, but
which admits of reconstruction with a fair degree of probability. [3] When the infant at the breast
receives stimuli, he cannot as yet distinguish whether they come from his ego or from the outer
world. He learns it gradually as the result of various exigencies. It must make the strongest
impression on him that many sources of excitation, which later on he will recognize as his own
bodily organs, can provide him at any time with sensations, whereas others become temporarily
out of his reach—amongst these what he wants most of all, his mother’s breast—and reappear
only as a result of his cries for help. Thus an object first presents itself to the ego as something
existing outside, which is only induced to appear by a particular act. A further stimulus to the
growth and formation of the ego, so that it becomes something more than a bundle of sensations, i.
e., recognizes an outside, the external world. is afforded by the frequent, unavoidable and
manifold pains and unpleasant sensations which the pleasure-principle, still in unrestricted
domination, bids it abolish or avoid. The tendency arises to dissociate from the ego everything
which can give rise to pain, to cast it out and create a pure pleasure-ego, in contrast to a
threatening outside, not-self. The limits of this primitive pleasure-ego cannot escape readjustment
through experience. Much that the individual wants to retain because it is pleasure-giving is
nevertheless part not of the ego but of an object; and much that he wishes to eject because it
torments him yet proves to be inseparable from the ego, arising from an inner source. He learns a
method by which, through deliberate use of the sensory organs and suitable muscular movements,
he can distinguish between internal and external —what is part of the ego and what originates in
the outer world—and thus he makes the first step towards the introduction of the reality-principle
which is to control his development further. This capacity for distinguishing which he learns of
course serves a practical purpose, that of enabling him to defend himself against painful sensations
felt by him or threatening him. Against certain painful excitations from within the ego has only the
same means of defence as that employed against pain coming from without, and this is the
starting-point of important morbid disturbances.

In this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is more correct to say: Originally the
ego includes everything, later it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are
aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling—a feeling which
embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable connection of the ego with the external
world. If we may suppose that this primary ego-feeling has been preserved in the minds of many
people—to a greater or lesser extent—it would co-exist like a sort of counterpart with the
narrower and more sharply outlined ego-feeling of maturity, and the ideational content belonging
to it would be precisely the notion of limitless extension and oneness with the universe—the same
feeling as that described by my friend as “oceanic.“ But have we any right to assume that the
original type of feeling survives alongside the later one which has developed from it?
Undoubtedly we have: there is nothing unusual in such a phenomenon, whether in the
psychological or in other spheres. Where animals are concerned, we hold the view that the most
highly developed have arisen from the lowest. Yet we still find all the simple forms alive today.
The great saurians are extinct and have made way for the mammals, but a typical representative of
them, the crocodile, is still living among us. The analogy may be too remote, and it is also
weakened by the fact that the surviving lower species are not as a rule the true ancestors of the
present-day more highly developed types. The intermediate members have mostly died out and are
known to us only through reconstruction. In the realm of mind, on the other hand, the primitive
type is so commonly preserved alongside the transformations which have developed out of it that
it is superfluous to give instances in proof of it. When this happens, it is usually the result of a
bifurcation in development. One quantitative part of an attitude or an impulse has survived
unchanged while another has undergone further development.

This brings us very close to the more general problem of conservation in the mind, which has so
far hardly been discussed, but is so interesting and important that we may take the opportunity to
pay it some attention, even though its relevance is not immediate. Since the time when we
recognized the error of supposing that ordinary forgetting signified destruction or annihilation of
the memory-trace, we have been inclined to the opposite view that nothing once formed in the
mind could ever perish, that everything survives in some way or other, and is capable under
certain conditions of being brought to light again, as, for instance, when regression extends back
far enough. One might try to picture to oneself what this assumption signifies by a comparison
taken from another field. Let us choose the history of the Eternal City as an example. [4]  Historians
tell us that the oldest Rome of all was the Roma quadrata, a fenced settlement on the Palatine.
Then followed the phase of the Septimontium, when the colonies on the different hills united
together; then the town which was bounded by the Servian wall; and later still, after all the
transformations in the periods of the republic and the early Caesars, the city which the Emperor
Aurelian enclosed by his walls. We will not follow the changes the city went through any further,
but will ask ourselves what traces of these early stages in its history a visitor to Rome may still
find today, if he goes equipped with the most complete historical and topographical knowledge.
Except for a few gaps, he will see the wall of Aurelian almost unchanged. He can find sections of
the Servian rampart at certain points where it has been excavated and brought to light. If he knows
enough—more than present-day archaeology—he may perhaps trace out in the structure of the
town the whole course of this wall and the outline of Roma quadrata. Of the buildings which once
occupied this ancient ground-plan he will find nothing, or but meagre fragments, for they exist no
longer. With the best information about Rome of the republican era, the utmost he could achieve
would be to indicate the sites where the temples and public buildings of that period stood. These
places are now occupied by ruins, but the ruins are not those of the early buildings themselves but
of restorations of them in later times after fires and demolitions. It is hardly necessary to mention
that all these remains of ancient Rome are found woven into the fabric of a great metropolis which
has arisen in the last few centuries since the Renaissance. There is assuredly much that is ancient
still buried in the soil or under the modern buildings of the town. This is the way in which we find
antiquities surviving in historic cities like Rome.

Now let us make the fantastic supposition that Rome were not a human dwelling-place, but a
mental entity with just as long and varied a past history: that is, in which nothing once constructed
had perished, and all the earlier stages of development had survived alongside the latest. This
would mean that in Rome the palaces of the Caesars were still standing on the Palatine and the
Septizonium of Septimius Severus was still towering to its old height; that the beautiful statues
were still standing in the colonnade of the Castle of St. Angelo, as they were up to its siege by the
Goths, and so on. But more still: where the Palazzo Caffarelli stands there would also be, without
this being removed, the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, not merely in its latest form, moreover, as
the Romans of the Caesars saw it, but also in its earliest shape, when it still wore an Etruscan
design and was adorned with terra-cotta antifixae. Where the Coliseum stands now, we could at
the same time admire Nero's Golden House; on the Piazza of the Pantheon we should find out only
the Pantheon of today as bequeathed to us by Hadrian, but on the same site also Agrippa's original
edifice; indeed, the same ground would support the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the
old temple over which it was built. And the observer would need merely to shift the focus of his
eyes, perhaps, or change his position, in order to call up a view of either the one or the other.
There is clearly no object in spinning this fantasy further; it leads to the inconceivable, or even to
absurdities. If we try to represent historical sequence in spatial terms, it can only be done by
juxtaposition in space; the same space will not hold two contents. Our attempt seems like an idle
game; it has only one justification; it shows us how far away from mastering the idiosyncrasies of
mental life we are by treating them in terms of visual representation.

There is one objection, though, to which we must pay attention. It questions our choosing in
particular the past history of a city to liken to the past of the mind. Even for mental life, our
assumption that everything past is preserved holds good only on condition that the organ of the
mind remains intact and its structure has not been injured by traumas or inflammation. Destructive
influences comparable to these morbid agencies are never lacking in the history of any town, even
if it has had a less chequered past than Rome, even if. like London, it has hardly ever been
pillaged by an enemy. Demolitions and the erection of new buildings in the place of old occur in
cities which have had the most peaceful existence; therefore a town is from the outset unsuited for
the comparison I have made of it with a mental organism.

We admit this objection; we will abandon our search for a striking effect of contrast and turn to
what is after all a closer object of comparison, the body of an animal or human being. But here,
too, we find the same thing. The early stages of development are in no sense still extant; they have
been absorbed into the later features for which they supplied the material. The embryo cannot be
demonstrated in the adult; the thymus gland of childhood is replaced after puberty by connective
tissue but no longer exists itself; in the marrow- bone of a grown man I can, it is true, trace the
outline of the childish bone-structure, but this latter no longer survives in itself—it lengthened and
thickened until it reached its final form. The fact is that a survival of all the early stages alongside
the final form is only possible in the mind, and that it is impossible for us to represent a
phenomenon of this kind in visual terms. Perhaps we are going too far with this conclusion.
Perhaps we ought to be content with the assertion that what is past in the mind can survive and
need not necessarily perish. It is always possible that even in the mind much that is old may be so
far obliterated or absorbed—whether normally or by way of exception—that it cannot be restored
or reanimated by any means, or that survival of it is always connected with certain favourable
conditions. It is possible, but we know nothing about it. We can only be sure that it is more the
rule than the exception for the past to survive in the mind.

Thus we are entirely willing to acknowledge that the “oceanic” feeling exists in many people, and
we are disposed to relate it to an early stage in ego-feeling; the further question then arises: what
claim has this feeling to be regarded as the source of the need for religion. To me this claim does
not seem very forcible. Surely a feeling can only be a source of energy when it is itself the
expression of a strong need. The derivation of a need for religion from the child’s feeling of
helplessness and the longing it evokes for a father seems to me incontrovertible, especially since
this feeling is not simply carried on from childhood days but is kept alive perpetually by the fear
of what the superior power of fate will bring. I could not point to any need in childhood so strong
as that for a father's protection. Thus the part played by the “oceanic” feeling, which I suppose
seeks to reinstate limitless narcissism, cannot possibly take the first place. The derivation of the
religious attitude can be followed back in clear outline as far as the child's feeling of helplessness.
There may be something else behind this, but for the present it is wrapped in obscurity.
I can imagine that the “oceanic” feeling could become connected with religion later on. That
feeling of oneness with the universe which is its ideational content sounds very like a first attempt
at the consolations of religion, like another way taken by the ego of denying the dangers it sees
threatening it in the external world. I must again confess that I find it very difficult to work with
these intangible quantities. Another friend of mine, whose insatiable scientific curiosity has
impelled him to the most out-of-the-way researches and to the acquisition of encyclopaedic
knowledge, has assured me that the Yogi by their practices of withdrawal from the world,
concentrating attention on bodily functions, peculiar methods of breathing, actually are able to
produce new sensations and diffused feelings in themselves which he regards as regressions to
primordial, deeply buried mental states. He sees in them a physiological foundation, so to speak,
of much of the wisdom of mysticism. There would be connections to be made here with many
obscure modifications of mental life, such as trance and ecstasy. But I am moved to exclaim, in
the words of Schiller’s diver:

Who breathes overhead in the rose-tinted light may be glad!

Footnotes:

1. Christian Grabbe, Hannibal: "Ja, aus der Welt werden wir nicht fallen. Wir sind einmal darin."
2. Source and origin.
3. Cf. the considerable volume of work on this topic dating from that of Ferenczi (Stages in the
Development of the
Sense of Reality, 1913) up to Federn’s contributions. 1926, 1927 and later.
4. According to The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. VII. (1928) "The Founding of Rome, " by
Hugh Last.