We've been delving into the twisted mind of Sigmund Freud lately, and I would not be completely truthful if I didn't say that I was disturbed. I know that I'm not as smart as he was, and don't really understand what I'm talking about, but I don't agree with him on a lot of points.
It becomes obvious very quickly reading "Civilization and Its Discontents" that with Freud, everything is about sex. He's obsessed with it. Not that we all aren't, on some level, but he really is. Unfortunately, his obsession doesn't extend to include love. I don't like the way that he seems to think being in love is the same as being exclusive sexual partners. I believe that not all exclusive sexual partners are in love, and not all those in love have sex. His Oedipus complex idea (basically that all men subconsciously want to kill their fathers and marry their mothers) doesn't make sense to me. What about those kids that didn't have dads in their homes? Their chances of seeing a father figure naked and then making the connection that he should respect men more than women don't seem high.
However, there are also points that I agree with him on. For example, these quotes from "Civilization and Its Discontents":
"We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when he have lost our loved object or its love." -page 33
"The enjoyment of beauty has a peculiar, mildly intoxicating quality of feeling. Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it." -page 33
"He made himself dependent in a most dangerous way on a portion of the external world, namely, his chosen love-object, and exposed himself to extreme suffering if he should be rejected by that object or should lose it through unfaithfulness or death. For that reason the wise men of every age have warned us most emphatically against this way of life; but in spite of this it has not lost its attraction for a great number of people." -page 56
"A love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own value, by doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are worthy of love." -page 57
"When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves, and do not even need the child they have in common to make them happy." -page 65
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