Civilization and its Discontents

published

2011-07-09

rating

1

I had been wanting to read something by Freud for a while, but I was always skeptical that he would have discovered anything interesting. I was initially turned off by the seemingly crackpot theories of anal-retentiveness and the Oedipus complex, among others. I decided to give this book a try because it was short and I wanted to see if he had any insights into the problems that are caused by placing man, who was designed to be a hunter-gatherer, into civilization. I thought the book was boring and difficult to read. I did not understand many of his points because they used "Freudian" concepts that were not introduced in this book. Overall I thought that there was very little information content and almost no justification for the claims that were made.