ABSTRACT
Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud’s account of the genesis and inevitability of aggression in the psyche and in culture, is one of the great works of social theory of the twentieth century. Like his sociologist contemporaries Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel, Freud employs psychologically derived explanatory concepts. Drawing on the dual drive theory to weave together accounts of the human psyche and civilization, Freud shows how basic cultural processes depend on transformations of the sexual and death/aggressive drives and how, without these cultural processes, people would not survive. This chapter suggests that Freud’s drive-based sociology, though brilliant, cannot in itself explain either the prevalence or particular historical expressions of collective violence. Erikson’s formulations about identity, expressing his American independent intersubjective ego psychology, provide greater dynamic understanding and a more experience-near, psychosocial explanation of collective violence. Melanie Klein’s attention to rageful aggression and projection connects and mediates between Freud and Erikson. Finally, the chapter suggests that any generic account of the psychogenesis of cultural violence and aggression, beginning with Freud’s, overlooks the fact that the vast preponderance of those who engage in such violence are men. Reframing Freud, Klein, and Erikson with feminist psychoanalytic gender theory helps to explain this.
