Freud and the neurosis of civilization by Dean Gotcher

Freud and
"the neurosis of civilization."
(a paraphrase of Freud's history of civilization)

Dean Gotcher

"Freud noted that … patricide and incest … are part of man's deepest nature."
Irvin D. Yalom, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy

    Freud's account of the beginning of history, and the cause for what he called "the neurosis of civilization" (as explained in Herbert Marcuse's book Eros and Civilization), is not from the scriptures, per se, but is rather a pagan story about a primitive tribe. The story he tells is an effort to circumvent Genesis, where the righteousness of God and the unrighteousness of man, after his disobedience of God's command, results in an antithesis condition of righteousness vs. unrighteousness. By building upon the Gnostic/Hermitic interpretation of Genesis 3:1-6, i.e. that man is by nature sensuous, rational, and therefore 'good' when he is at-one-with nature, i.e. when essence and being (God and man) are united as one as they discover their common ground in their desire for/to love (Eros―sensuous oneness). Marcuse goes into much more detail in his book but I only want to cover the basics of Freud's 'history of civilization' here. It is key to understanding the oneness of psychology and the ~~dialectic~~ diabolical process of 'changingness.'
    The father, the patriarch of the family, and his wife, the mother of the children, freely roamed across the land. The mother and the children, having no other laws than their natural urges, begin having incestuous relationship with one another. The father, seeing the children come between his wife and him, calls this behavior "polymorphously perverse" and lays down laws regarding proper familial relationships, with him at the head of the family, his wife under his authority, and the children under their parents authority, all serving in their specific jurisdiction, but all subject to the father's will, accountable to him for their behavior.
    Some children become dissatisfied with the laws which restrain them from their natural sensuousness, i.e. natural incestuous urges for the mother and for one another, and rebel against the father and his laws, refusing to obey.   He drives them out of the tribe. Chastening chases dissatisfaction out of the room.
    They, reasoning amongst themselves and coming to consensus that they and their mother (mother nature) are by nature meant to be as one, free of unnatural laws of restraint, united as one in 'drive' and in 'purpose.' They then attempt to persuade the children of the tribe into joining with them in their plan of liberation from the father and his laws of restraint, i.e. so that all can have "free and equal" sensuous access to the mother and one another. Some joined with their plan, others did not.

        "A stranger, even if his name were God, who imposes commands upon us must be resisted, he must be killed because nobody can stand him." (Paul Tillich in Leonard F. Wheat, Paul Tillich's Dialectical Humanism)
    "Capitulation enforced by parental authority under the threat of loss of parental love . . . can be accomplished only by repression." "Therefore the question confronting mankind is the abolition of repression - in traditional Christian language, the resurrection of the body." "What the child knows consciously and the adult unconsciously, is that we are nothing but body." "Infants have a richer sexual life than adults." "Freud takes with absolute seriousness the proposition of Jesus: 'Except ye become as little children, ye can in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven."
    "Sexual instincts seeks union with objects in the world." "Eros is fundamentally a desire for union with objects in the world." "Infantile sexuality is the pursuit of pleasure obtained through the activity of any and all organs of the human body [touching, seeing, muscular activity, pain, etc.].
    "In man, infantile sexuality is repressed and never outgrown;" "Normal adult sexuality, judged by the standard of infantile sexuality, is an unnatural restriction of the erotic potentialities of the human body." "The repression of normal adult sexuality is required only by cultures which are based on patriarchal domination." " Psychoanalysis declares the fundamental bisexual character of human nature;" "Adult sexuality, restricted by rules, to maintain family and society, . . . leads to neurosis." "Our repressed desires are the desires we had unrepressed, in childhood; and they are sexual desires." "Eros is the foundation of morality." (Norman O. Brown Life Against Death)

    The "consensus group" then put their plan of negating the father figure and his laws of restraint against 'normal' human sensuous behavior into social action (praxis). They not only succeeded in killing the father, they, according to dialectical thinking, also succeeded in eating him as well (negation, annihilation―patricide).
    Their dialectical reasoning being: if you simply kill the father and bury him a future generation, upon seeing the grave, might ask "Who was that?" Your response would probably be: "That was dad." "What happened to him?" "We killed him." "Why did you do that?" "Because he kept telling us what we could and could not do." "Was he totally evil?" "No. He did feed us, cloth us, protect us, and tell us he loved us." "On second thought maybe it was not such a good idea to kill him." "If we just do whatever it is we want to do, no work will get done, we will go without food, go without clothing, have no protection, and become scattered and divided against one another for the sake of survival." The logic of 'survival' then would be to set up rules of restraint upon sensuousness and spontaneity so that the tribe could live and work together as one. With this realized, the conscience would 'kick in,' negating the 'justification' for killing the father (the negation of the father system was negated by the conscience, and liberation from 'repression,' i.e. emancipation from the system of righteousness was lost).
    Some children (undoing freedom) would set up a committee who, acting as a father figure, would oversee the mother and the children with rules to guarantee order and work, for the survival of all (with the children and mother serving and protecting the committee, i.e. submitting their sensuousness―their Id, their urge for incest, their "life instinct," their natural 'drive' for pleasure, and their will―their purpose to know and fulfill their incestuous―social identity at all cost, their "death instinct," to the father's will). Thus a "neurosis of civilization," a guilty conscience for thinking about incest and patricide, would plague society from then on, forever binding it to the father figure and his unnatural (righteousness) restraints against sensuousness. As members of the family divided from the family, replicating their life experience in the family they to would set up committees to oversee the family, thus restoring the father figure, now in opposition to other families with the same system now fighting over the same land, food, women, i.e. things of pleasure, etc.
    Without dialectical reasoning coming to the aid of sensuousness, the natural 'drive' and 'purpose' of the children would never be 'discovered' and the children (society) would forever be subject to a higher authority than nature, i.e. subject to the patriarchal paradigm and his definition of righteousness and his use of chastening to maintain it, i.e. righteousness―that which is not of nature, i.e. that which nature can not comprehend. Thus division, dissention, and war would continue to plague the world to the end of time.

With sensuousness and spontaneity being at the heart of the controversy, the object is to remove any rules which are not themselves subject to sensuousness and spontaneity. While Freud did not know how to overcome the "neurosis of civilization," the use of rules which interfered with spontaneity, he did make an attempt to overcome the problem by counseling individuals, one at a time on his 'couch.' By 'delivering' their "ought's," as in "I 'ought' to be able to do what I want to do that is natural to me and the other person when both of us agree upon doing it and no one is 'hurt' by us doing it." with "How did/do you feel?" and "What did/do you think?" questions. It was J. L. Moreno, who told Freud he needed to do 'it' in a group setting, and the members of the 'Frankfurt School' and their associates (Kurt Lewin who at one time edited their German articles) who introduced the "aesthetic dimension" (the 'rules' of Eros found in the man's nature) to the "neurosis of civilization" problem.

"... memory of gratification is at the origin of all thinking, and the impulse to recapture past gratification [dopaminergic impulses] is the hidden driven power behind the process of thought." (Herbart Marcuse Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud).
"The child's and adolescent's natural love of life must be protected by clearly defined laws." "Those forces in the individual and in the society that are natural and vial must be clearly separated from all the obstacles that operate against the spontaneous functioning of this natural vitality." "It is the elimination of all obstacles to freedom that has to be achieved." "Natural sociability and morality are present in men and women. What has to be eliminated is the disgusting moralizing which thwarts natural morality and then points to the criminal impulses, which it itself has brought into being." "Sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology." "the right of the woman to her own body." "The termination of pregnancy is at variance with the meaning of the family, whose task it precisely the education of the coming generation – apart from the fact that the termination of pregnancy would mean the final destruction of the large family." "The preservation of the already existing large families is a matter of social feeling; . . the large family is preserved because national morality and national culture find their strongest support in it." (Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism)

While Freud's figurative heroes were Narcissus and Orpheus, he was not able to bring the two together in social action. Narcissus pined away, in love with his reflection in a pool of water, while Orpheus made love to young boys. The first saw his nature within nature but could find no way to get it to relate with him in person, while the other expressed his personal nature to nature but could not receive that love in turn, as his equal, his women lovers eventually killing him out of jealousy for turning to others. This is Freud's story, these are his heroes. Without these heroes there is not "Freud." Without Freud their is no psychology. You see why I say there is no such thing as a "Christian psychologists." It's foundation is abomination. You can try to cover it with all the sheep skin you want, it is still abomination, and takes all who use it, there. It not a how far down the road you have gone, it's the road your on. To take a step on Freud's road of abomination is to step in abomination. "And he [Jesus] said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God." Luke 16:5

"The interest of restoring a youth-adult homosexuality culture, an undercurrent growing around the world, pushing for global equality, carries with it an interest in the boys of adolescent age. This is true of almost all social-psychology material today. For example: HANDBOOK of PARENTING Theory and research for practice Edited by MASUD HOGHUGHI NICHOLAS LONG with support for their research from researchers like Charlotte J. Patterson Charlotte J. Patterson

    The Id and Ego 'partners' are the "life instinct" of pleasure and the "death instinct" which terminates life once pleasure is perceived as being terminated. In dialectical thought, instead of the child submitting his will, his Ego, his "death instinct" to the father, because the father chastens him and he fears he must submit if he is to stay alive, he must instead will to pleasure, even at the cost of death and attack and destroy the father figure. Being too weak and uneducated in the ways of dialectical thought, it is therefore necessary for a facilitator to come into his life and help him to 'discover' his true sensuous nature, i.e. the "life instinct" of pleasure, and deliver himself from his 'neurosis,' i.e. his obeying the father's will against his own sensuous nature, and unite with others, in consensus, to negate/annihilate the father figure by his natural and willful use of the "death instinct," i.e. to negate/annihilate righteousness at all cost, even if it means death to himself for the common cause. Thus pleasure becomes the meaning, i.e. the 'drive' and 'purpose' of life.
    When the sensuousness of pleasure becomes the 'drive' and 'purpose' of life, then the pleasure of procreation, (touch, taste, sight, smell, sound, pain, etc) becomes the 'reason' for human relationship. Any act which does not procreate but which produces the same pleasure is therefore lawful. Any act or product of procreation which produces restraint or potential restraint to pleasure is therefore up to negation, according to the person's own sensuous and 'rational' desires. When the Father is negated because the children (society) and the mother (nature) desire sensuous-spontaneous oneness (unity), the question of procreation is left up to the person's natural desires and nature itself. Thus abomination, i.e. abortion, euthanasia, 'legalized' suicide (when all that life has meaning for is pleasure and the pain of life drowns out the pleasures of life), and lesbianism, homosexuality, pedophilia, bestiality, etc. becomes lawful, a product of nature, as long as no one is 'hurt' (whatever that means) and all parties "consent" (however that is defined).   Physical (procreation) contact is not necessary when the persons or person can become internally stimulated by contact (or thought of contact) with the other adult or child.
    It was the "aesthetic dimension" which moved the world past Freud and Marx, merging them in their common theme of negating the father figure of 'rules' for the sake of world unity via. sensuousness and dialectical reasoning. The artist expresses rules of nature in his art and the observer is subject to the laws of nature when he takes in the art. In this way both become one in the laws of nature. Thus Hegel's message of "Lawfulness with out law," where the laws of nature, sensuousness and reasoning united as one, rule over the thoughts and actions of men, negating the laws of righteousness.
    By putting women in the workplace with men, the 'fight and flight' nature of man has to abdicate to the 'tend and befriend' nature of women. When the sensuousness of pleasure (Eros) entered the workplace men (and women) could hardly wait to go back to work for more Eros, even continuing to build sensuous relationships with 'fellow' workers afterwards. Labor, to provide food, clothing, protection, and survival is no longer "work," but is an act, in space and time, of men (and women) continuing the sensuousness of pleasure in all things (an act of 'love' for all). At least that is the dialectical theory, the dialectical imagination, the dialectical illusion which was first put into praxis in the garden in Eden, i.e. Genesis 3:1-6, where dialectical (diabolical) reasoning 'liberated' human sensuousness from Godly righteousness.

"Marx defines the essence of man as labor and traces the dialectic of labor in history till labor abolishes itself [i.e. the patriarchal paradigm is negated, i.e. the family farm, the family business, etc. is condemned, i.e. categorized as economically impractical, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and therefore health wise, risky to society]." "Freud suggests that beyond labor at the end of history is love [Eros]." "Love has always been there from the beginning . . . the hidden force supplying the energy devoted to labor and to making history." "Repressed Eros is the energy of history and labor must be seen as sublimated Eros.... instinctual restraints ... enforced by the hierarchical distribution of scarcity and labor." "Men ... work in alienation .... labor time is painful time, for alienated labor is absence of gratification, negation of the pleasure principle." "The irreconcilable conflict is not between work and Eros, but between alienated labor and Eros." [Freud believed that] "the primal father [the traditional home] prepared the ground for progress through enforced constraint on pleasure and enforced abstinence.... the first preconditions for the disciplined ‘labor force' of the future." (Norman O. Brown explaining Freud Civilization and Its Discontents in Brown's book Life Against Death:)

This condition of labor, working under the "primal father's" control, was considered the source of "neurosis" of labor, i.e. man working "by the sweat of his brow," repressing his sensuousness nature for the sake of righteousness, submitting to a higher authorities will, working and living according to his conditions of righteousness. Man carries his work structure back into the home with him. Therefore by 'changing' the work environment from the love of righteousness to the love of sensuousness, the family goes the same way.
Dialectical 'love' will flourish and grow as long as righteousness stays out of the room. That is the abomination platform of Antichrist, the master facilitator of 'changingness.' But man is without excuse.

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen." Romans 1:20-25