Term Papers on Sigmund Freud

Term Paper Title	Sigmund Freud
# of Words	1537
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	6.15

Sigmund Freud

     Each individual member of society is governed by
certain rules that serve to restrict their behavior.  An
example of one of these societal rules forced upon the
individual is the belief that murdering another human being
is wrong.  We know that this act is wrong because of strict
prison sentences that follow such courses of action.  Yet,
how was it that the world could sit idly by as millions of
innocent people were removed from their homes, transported
in cattle cars to concentration camps, and gassed to death?
There have been many explanations for the Holocaust, many
excuses, and many rationalizations made in describing the
world’s failure to act.  The fact still remains that six
million innocent men, women, and children were murdered.
These explanations for the acts of Hitler, Germany, and the
world at large come from many sources.  Historians,
theologians, educators, and psychologists all have differing
views on the subject.  Ironically enough, the most famous
psychologist whose opinion would have been most appreciated
on the subject, Sigmund Freud, died just as Hitler began his
ascent to power.  However, it is possible to theorize on
Freud’s explanation of the Holocaust by using his work
Civilization and Its Discontents.
     Freud’s essay Civilization and Its Discontents was
first published in 1930, while Freud resided in Vienna,
Austria.  Undoubtedly, Freud was aware of the happenings in
the world political arena, particularly the events that were
transpiring in neighboring Germany.  More specifically, he
was in a position to view the beginning of Hitler’s rise to
power.  It is interesting to note that Vienna of the early
twentieth century where Hitler and Freud lived was under the
control of a mayor who was a severe Anti-Semite, who was
eventually barred from running for office by the Pope.
     Hitler began his rise to power in 1924 when he
attempted to take over Munich through a military coup.  The
coup failed, and Hitler was thrown in jail.  It was during
this time in 1924 that Hitler wrote his famous memoir Mein
Kampf, which translated means My Struggle (Dawidowicz 3).
The contents of the book included Hitler’s blueprints for
His Europe.  Hitler was finally given his chance to
transform the face of Europe in 1933, when he gained the
office of chancellor of Germany.  It was five years after
this event, in 1938 that Freud and his family emigrated out
of Vienna, in an effort to escape the wrath of Hitler.
Freud first went to Paris, and later settled in London.
Unfortunately, Freud died shortly after his escape to London
on September 23, 1939 (Freud xxii).  Thus, Freud died on the
brink of the most catastrophic events of the twentieth
century, the Holocaust.  Yet, Freud’s writings did survive
the horrible events that surrounded Europe in the 1930’s and
40’s.  Therefore, it is possible to show how Freud may have
predicted the ensuing tragedy.
     For Freud, the greatest struggle in life was the
struggle between life and death.  He attributed this
struggle to the societal demands placed on the individual
and the individuals own instinct.  According to Freud, the
individual was almost certain to conform to the societal
conventions through a sense of guilt.  In fact, Freud
himself wrote that in writing this work it was his
“intention to represent the sense of guilt as the most
important problem in the development of civilization” (Freud
85).  This sense of guilt held a very high place in the
development of the individual, eventually resulting in the
development of a destructive instinct.  The main argument in
Civilization and Its Discontent, according to Christopher
Badcock, the author of Essential Freud, is that “the id is
basically anti-social and only civilized by the
interventions of the ego” (137).  Essentially what this
means is that the individual in society is innately asocial,
but because of the presence of the ego, the individual is
forced to become sociable.  This conflict between the id and
the ego results in the destructio...

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