ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents opens with a comment about the role of the writer in society. Freud had Romain Rolland specifically in mind when he reflected on the uneasiness of man in modern civilization. For Freud, Romain Rolland's sensibility blended artistic intuition with intellectual rigor and psychological probity with encyclopedic erudition. Freud did not customarily compose tributes to living European intellectuals. Freud had sent Romain Rolland a copy of The Future of an Illusion in 1927. Romain Rolland replied in a letter on 5 December 1927, coining the phrase "oceanic feeling" and describing it in evocative, vitalistic imagery. Freud was thoroughly perplexed by Romain Rolland's description of the oceanic feeling. For Romain Rolland, the oceanic feeling was above all a bond that had nothing to do with knowing, desiring, or even believing. The oceanic feeling expressed his deepest longing for wholeness and for visceral relationships.
