ABSTRACT
The second chapter continues with the presentation of a sociogenesis of the modern individual, starting from the considerations of the research that Norbert Elias develops in his work, in order to understand the social transformations which enabled Freud to develop a theory on unconscious psychic processes. In this chapter, as in the others, we take into consideration that Norbert Elias produces advances in Freudian theory with respect to the elaboration of an articulation between individual and society, between social structures and psychic structures, which considers the transformations of social structures and the different psychic dynamics involved in each process from a long-term point of view. We start, then, in this second chapter, from Freud’s thesis about the civilizing process being accomplished through the repressing of impulses and affections, internalizing social norms in the form of self-regulating psychic instances, increasing the level of individuality, at the same time that they increase the level of interdependence between people. The relevance of this chapter is to show, from this perspective, how the concepts of superego and repression, psychic instances and mechanisms that act as social self-regulators, which were elaborated by Freud, are presented and developed in the light of Elias’s consideration of the formation of modern states. Once again, etiquette and habit formation, according to Elias, are shown as developments of the Freudian perspective regarding the psychic effects produced by social transformations, transferring and reproducing behind the scenes of psychic life, that is, in the unconscious, in the form of habits, etiquettes and ceremonials, ancient ways of individuals behaving among themselves in public life.
