1. Freud defines three stages of sexuality, the oral, the anal and the oedipal
stage. An infant in its oral stage learns that there is an external world
through pleasure and pain. Human nature is governed by the pleasure principle.
When the infant is being breast fed he/she feels pleasure and when pulled away
from the breast the baby feels pain. The pleasure principle is a way of seeking
pleasure in order to avoid pain. We can’t be happy all the time because three
things threaten us. First of all our own bodies can’t handle too much pleasure
at once, eventually our bodies get older and death is inevitable. Second,
natural phenomenon’s get in our way, and third our relationships with others.
We are emotionally dependent on others and when we take their words into
consideration we become unhappy. Since we can’t be happy all the time we need
to learn how to avoid pain. There are five ways we can avoid pain. We can become
hedonistic and gain pleasure at all costs all the time. This way of avoiding
pain isn’t really possible due to the fact that we wouldn’t be able to
accomplish anything else in our lives. Second way of avoiding pain is by
voluntary isolation. A person can take him/herself out of society and become a
hermit. They do not deal with people on an emotional or personal level. The
third way of avoiding pain is turning away from the world, the libidinal energy
is turned inward and used up by them when they create art and literature. Forth
is by working in groups and forming memberships. Groups are formed for
protection against brute force and have allowed us to conquer nature. The fifth
way is by influencing the organism. The individual wants to kill off all
instincts and does this either by using drugs and alcohol, or using eastern
techniques such as yoga. Freud said that another basic way to avoid pain is
love. Sexual love is the most intense form of feeling pleasure. All forms of
pleasure are related to sexual love. The sublimation of love can be between
brother and sister and also can exist between friends. Along with love comes the
appreciation of beauty and it is related to the sexual feeling that is part of
our libido. Civilization can not do without beauty even though everyone has his
or her own interpretation of what is considered beautiful. Freud describes the
origin of civilization through four different time periods. First in Time A,
which is the time of the primal male, the male is brutish, ape-like and is
governed by the pleasure principle. The male needs to gain genital pleasure no
matter the consequences so he begins to associate pleasure with one woman. The
male wants to keep this woman close to him and therefore he also has to keep
their children. The woman stays with him for the protection he provides for her
and the children. Only the male can determine who will and will not receive
pleasure. The reason why this family is formed is because the forceful male
wants pleasure and he needs the children to do the work that he is not willing
to do. The primal male becomes known as ‘The Law’ and since he takes this
role he feels he should be receiving all the pleasure. The children must work
for him and he is the source of their pain. In Time B, the brothers come
together and form the ‘brother band’ and use their collective will to kill
the father that has caused them so much pain. After his parricide the brothers
will begin to fight one another to gain the power that their father once had
possessed. Time C is the time of chaos, the brothers are fighting one another to
gain power and the women have to take over. The women keep the order and inform
the brothers that the chaos is a result of the death of ‘The Law’. In Time
D, the father (the Law) returns as a symbolic totem. The concept of ‘taboo’
is introduced and the brothers must renounce their instincts and have to
sublimate their love. The incest taboo forces them to stop trying to dominate
the economy of pleasure. Due to the renunciation of instincts, genital
satisfaction is sublimated. The most intense form of pleasure, sexual pleasure,
now becomes aim-inhibited love. This renunciation of instincts therefore changes
sexual satisfaction to affection and respect for others around us and is
aim-inhibited. This kind of love has its negative results. First is when a
family is so libidinally bound that it can not function without any of its
members. The family does not want to widen its circle and can not give up an
individual. Second is when a woman becomes neurotic due to lack of attention.
Since the work of civilization is considered to be the work of men, their
libidinal energy is spent on the world. The result is that the woman becomes
hostile due to not being satisfied. 2. The displacement of the libidinal energy
develops as we try to avoid pain. This makes people fantasize and they receive
pleasure through these fantasies. People obtain satisfaction without interfering
with the real world. Happiness is a function that is the economics of the
individual’s libido. Libido is energy and there is a finite amount and it
needs to be spent. One can expend it all at once or divide it up. There is a
need for something based on a lack. We all have our own way of dealing with this
lack. This economics of the libido are broken up into two parts, the general and
the individual. The general is true for everyone, because everyone wants to be
happy. The individual puts the economics of the libido at risk for unhappiness
and disappointment. People use different ways to deal with the world and
distributing libidinal energy. The erotic person is emotionally dependent on
others especially when it comes to relationships. His/her energy is invested in
others and becomes very easily attached. The narcissistic person turns inward
and is self-sufficient. They use their energy to create things and derive
pleasure from themselves. The third is the action man, he conquers nature by
pushing forward. He/she wants to try out his strengths on the world and this is
his source of pleasure. The neurotic person can’t spend his libidinal energy,
this energy works as a neurosis and the person might have a nervous tick. The
last is the psychotic who creates a different world as a way to expend his
energy. He is a hermit and completely withdraws from society and this causes him
to turn inward and lose all connection with reality. Eros (love) is responsible
for increasing the size of the community. From this a society values and accepts
monogamous heterosexual relationships. Civilization narrows down pleasure by
posing restrictions on us. These restrictions cause individuals to repress
things and these repressed objects will come back in some form.. Nature does not
restrict its instincts and is guided by the pleasure principle. Since these
restrictions are not natural, people acquire a hostile attitude towards
civilization. Human nature is polymorphously perverse which means that pleasure
can come from any object. When ‘the law’ causes problems when it puts
restrictions on the pursuit of pleasure. Anything linked to ‘the law’ is
acceptable and anything else is perverse and criminal. The Ideal State of
Affairs is a community based on pairs of lovers and they are libidinally
satisfied and nothing in the external world matters. Things are not this way
because civilization has certain aims and we can not always pursue the pleasure
principle. An ideal demand is “love thy neighbor as you love yourself”. If
you do not follow this then your neighbor becomes an object of your aggression.
This means that we have to control two instincts, the pleasure and the
aggression. The only thing that stops aggression is the sense of guilt. Eros is
controlled by the pleasure principle, which binds people together and the
community grows. Thanatos is the death drive, this causes destruction and death.
Freud also believes that these two are the same. For example when we are hungry
we might eat an apple. Eating the apple is negation but we need to eat to live.
Our entire behavior is a manifestation of the struggle between life and death.
This is also defined as one word ‘lifedeath’. Civilization is the reason for
our misery but our aggression is a threat to civilization. Civilization forces
us to internalize all of the aggressive instinct and send it back to the ego
where it originated. This new area is referred to as the super-ego. The
super-ego functions as guilt. This is societies way of controlling man’s
aggressive tendency. The super-ego is formed during the phallic stage when a boy
realizes that he can not have the mother because of his father. The boy becomes
incapable of doing anything because of the ‘no’ of the father. The super-ego
beats up on the ego; this punishment is a way of threatening to destroy the ego.
Sigmund Freud concluded that human nature is governed by the pleasure principle
to avoid pain. Sexual love is the most intense form of pleasure. Eros (love) is
responsible for increasing the size of the community. As we try to avoid pain
our libidinal energy is displaced. Due to this we all need to find our own way
of distributing this energy.