Civilization and Its Discontents

Was Freud into that?

No, but the, but the whole thing with a- with Civilization and Its Discontents is that civilization makes us miserable.

I, yeah.

Well, listen.

He also says it is that which is at the source of our miseries and our discontents.

In many ways, if you wanted to give this book another title, I've already suggested one for it, The Origin of the Species, it could just as well have been called, uh, more than a century before Freud, uh, Civilization and Its Discontents, uh, which is in many ways Freud's attempt to rewrite Rousseau's account of the evolution of the human species.

But Rousseau notes in this same part that freedom or perfectibility is not our sole natural characteristic, although it is responsible in some way for almost everything that we have become.

Everything that we have become is due to this openness to change.

Mm-hmm.

Maybe that's because one thing I could say about why psychoanalysis is that in my Western civilization class freshman year in college, I think we read Civilization and Its Discontents.

Mm-hmm.

And I think it was in this text, but I underlined the, the line, "Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscence." I think it's in there.