Freud And Marx

Word Count: 960

Freud and Marx it can be argued were both, as individuals,

dissatisfied with their societies. Marx more plainly than Freud, but Freud

can also be seen as discontent in certain aspects such as his cynical view of

human nature. Each were great thinkers and philosophers, but both seemed

unhappy. Perhaps the social ills and trouble each perceived in the world

about them were only the reflections of what each of the thinkers held within

themselves. Each person observes the same world, but each of us interprets

that information in a different way. They both saw the world as being injust

or base. Each understood the disfunctions in society as being caused by some

aspect of human greed or other similar instinct. They did however, disagree

on what the vehicle for these instincts' corrupting influences are. Freud

claimed that tension caused by the stuggle to repress anti-social instincts

eventually was released and caused the social evils he observed. Marx also

saw instincts at work but not the tensions and Id that Freud saw, Marx simply

credited man's greed and the subsequent oppression of other men as the root to

all that was wrong with civilization. It is interesting to note that both

Freud and Marx saw conflict but each traced it back to sources each was

respectively educated in.



Freud was a Psychoanalyst and his understanding of the mind was very

conflict oriented. He saw man as a kind of glorified animal who had the same

desires and needs as any other animal. The only true difference between the

human-animal and other animals was that the human-animal possessed an

intellect. Freud divided man's psyche into three parts, the Id, Ego, and

SuperEgo. What differed the human-animal from any other animal was the

SuperEgo, which arose from man's intellect. The Super-Ego as Freud theorised

it is the values of one's parents internalised. He went further to then

explain that unhappiness in life is caused by the conflict between the Id and

the SuperEgo. As stated, all of Frued's philosophy was very conflict oriented

so it is not difficult to understand then how Freud applied this view

macrocosmically to society as a whole.



Freud addressed this in his essay, "Civilization and It's

Discontents". In it, Freud claimed that civilizations are developed through

the channeling of anti-social erotic and aggressive urges into constructive

outlets. He went further and explained that social ills are caused by those

members of society who are not satisfied with the substitutes supplied by the

channelling of anti-social instincts into social creative energies. Such

repression causes a certain tension which after awhile cannot be repressed

and is released in socially unacceptable behaviour. As Freud explained it,

"Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this

primary hostility of men towards one another". Freud saw humanity as being

destined to stuggle as long as humanity exists. In his own words, "This

struggle is what all life essentially consists of and the evolution of

civilizations may therefore be simply describes as the struggle for the life

of the human species&q

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