РефератыИностранный языкInIndustrialism Essay Research Paper Freud and Marx

Industrialism Essay Research Paper Freud and Marx

Industrialism Essay, Research Paper


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”.


Although li

ke Freud, he saw conflict within society, Karl Marx had


radically different ideas and perceptions about humanity and civilization.


Marx saw the same things as Freud, but chalked it up to inter-economic


class conflict instead of conflict within one’s psyche. This class conflict


was caused by one class, the Bourgeois, which he characterized as having the


great majority of wealth and power and having rule over the lower class, or


Proletariots, which worked for the Bourgeois. This view of economic class


strife was just one stage of Marx’s idea that all of history was leading up


to some finality and that at such a time all of man would be able to live in


a Utopia. Marx also applied this idea in reverse and attempted to explain that


the Proletariot class and Bourgeois class have existed in varying forms for


all of mankind’s history. He tried to illustrate using the example of slavery


and feudalism that each time a form of oppression by a class of another class


was destroyed a new form took it’s place. Marx felt that it was a Communist’s


responsibility to awaken the mostly ignorant Proletariot to this and help to


abolish the concept of private property, which he also believed was the


primary means of the Bourgeois to oppress the Proletariot workers. Marx


predicted that Capitalism and it’s Bourgeois patrons would eventually become


thin out due to competition and therefore the wealth would become


increasingly more centralised in fewer people’s pockets. The spread of wealth


would eventually become so uneven and lop-sided that a revolution would occur


and the Bourgeois would be overthrown. Marx believed that Capitalism was


probably the last form of oppression and once overthrown, everyone would live


as a single society where all men could live in peace without rule over one


another, Utopia.


Freud and Marx although similar in some ways, held very different


views about the world around them. Aside from the obvious difference that


Freud believed the cause of social evils was within man himself and Marx saw


the problem as being an economic one as long as history itself, there are


other more specific differences. Freud saw the conflict as being internal


and therefore expressed within the society in which a man is part of, but


Marx saw the conflict in a more black-and-white sense. To Marx, it was


between two groups of people, the oppressed and the oppressors. Marx however


was also generally more optimistic, especially when it came to predictions


of the future. He saw the underdogs, the Proletariots eventually overcoming


adversity and establishing Utopia. Freud is much less exciting for all he


could divine was that humanity would continue to struggle. Freud seemed


perhaps to believe that the meaning of life was struggling. Freud saw nothing


of the occasional revolutions Marx did, it was all one long struggle to him.


Freud and Marx theorised about and observed the world around them and


interpreted it in the terms and ways they were most accomplished at and


familiar with. The question remains unanswered though, did Freud and Marx


simply observe the true reality of the world and state what they saw, or was


the world about them in actually reflecting themselves.

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