Sigmund Freud's Civilization And Its Discontents

Humanity has the instinctual drive to experience pleasure by fulfilling basic human needs, and avoiding things that cause pain or discomfort. In Sigmund Freud’s ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’, Freud is ambivalent towards the idea of this Pleasure Principle, as he believes that although most of our actions and drives are to experience pleasure and ultimately happiness, there are other internal drives that conflict with this idea, specifically the Reality Principle. This principle reveals that displeasure is ineluctable in life, despite the fact that the Pleasure Principle is to completely avoid suffering. Freud’s argument is that civilization seeks pleasure but tries to avoid the fulfillment, which makes the source of pleasure an instrument of pain, and this is the connection between civilization and an individual.
Freud theorizes that humans repress the desire to please themselves in order to fulfill their needs. For instance, in order to provide ourselves with food and shelter, we must repress our urges and work for hours each day. Of course working is not something that is pleasurable, but we cannot avoid it as it is the only way to attain pleasure like food and a comfortable home. Society has also created mechanisms that restrain our desires and make them forbidden, such as religion. In many religions, it is forbidden to have premarital sex, to avoid problems with pregnancy, money, family values etc. This restriction was made as if the pain of abstinence is far less painful than the pain of these problems, and enduring is much easier. The sources of pleasure become instruments of pain that Civilization has unintentionally created for the