It almost seems as if the creation of a great human community would be most successful if no attention had to be paid to the happiness of the individual. It is true that the aim of happiness is still there, but it is pushed into the background. Here by far the most important thing is the aim of creating a unity out of the individual human beings. But in the process of civilization things are different. In the process of individual development, as we have said, the main accent falls mostly on the egoistic urge (or the urge towards happiness) while the other urge, which may be described as a 'cultural' one, is usually content with the role of imposing restrictions. To put it in other words, the development of the individual seems to us to be a product of the interaction between two urges, the urge towards happiness, which we usually call 'egoistic,' and the urge towards union with others in the community, which we call 'altruistic.' Neither of these descriptions goes much below the surface. If it could be done without that condition, it would perhaps be preferable. Integration in, or adaptation to, a human community appears as a scarcely avoidable condition which must be fulfilled before this aim of happiness can be achieved. In the developmental process of the individual, the programme of the pleasure principle, which consists in finding the satisfaction of happiness, is retained as the main aim. In view of its exceptional importance, we must not long postpone the mention of one feature which distinguishes between the two processes. The process of the civilization of the human species is, of course, an abstraction of a higher order than is the development of the individual and it is therefore harder to apprehend in concrete terms, nor should we pursue analogies to an obsessional extreme but in view of the similarity between the aims of the two processes-in the one case the integration of a separate individual into a human group, and in the other case the creation of a unified group out of many individuals - we cannot be surprised at the similarity between the means employed and the resultant phenomena. When we look at the relation between the process of human civilization and the developmental or educative process of individual human brings, we shall conclude without much hesitation that the two are very similar in nature, if not the very same process applied to different kinds of object.

Sigmund Freud on the New Psychology (Excerpt) Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents Civilization and its Discontents

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