The Meaning of Substitute Gratification According to Sigmund Freud

According to Freud, the cause of neurosis in a “person’s environment and society at large” stems from innate sexual frustrations that grow to be unendurable. Due to not being able to satisfy these urges, people come up with ways to satisfy other urges which they believe would suppress their sexual urge, which Freud refers to as substitute gratifications, which end up creating a negative and problematic environment. These substitute gratifications could be anything from love to violence to the use of drugs, amongst many other.

Libido, which is the sex drive according to Google, is the source of the problems within the development of civilization and of the aggressive side of human nature itself, according to Freud’s thesis. Sexual love is fine when it is limited to two people, for a third one can be overwhelming or even disturbing. However, sexual love becomes problematic when additional people and factors are added to it.

According to Freud, civilization endeavors to bind the members of the community to one another by their sexual drives, and to do this civilization alters one’s sex drive into an aim-inhibited sex drive that is channeled into a kind of sexual relationships where restrictions are necessary, and inevitable.

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The other area Freud refers to, besides the libido, that can cause problems for civilization is a man’s instinct for aggression and violence, which Freud summarizes with the quote Homo homini lupus, which translates to A man is a wolf to another man. Although this instinct might not show itself initially with one’s neighbor, due to a possible friendly or sexual relationship, one only needs the smallest provocation to gratify their violent instinct on one another.

With his quote, homo homini lupus, Freud is making the point that man are not calm, love-seeking, friendly creatures, but rather pleasure-seeking, wanting to be dominant, and aggressive creatures, who will harm one another if needed to be, or if satisfactions will be met. When Freud states that this aggressive instinct lies in wait for some provocation, or else it steps into the service of some other purpose, he means that aggression doesn’t necessarily need to be always apparent, or be in the form of physical aggression. Referring to the first part of his statement, Freud is saying that someone who might seem calm all his life and friendly, such as many menacing world leaders were, that doesn’t mean there isn’t the aggressive instinct within them waiting to go off leash, which is evident through how many world leaders expose an ugly side to their leadership when they’re in absolute power. Referring to the latter part of his statement, Freud is stating that aggression doesn’t need to be in the form of physical aggression, but also takes place when one man takes advantage of the other financially, and emotionally, or humiliating someone, among many other situations. The aggressive and violent instinct of men are tangible in many historic situations in the world, and even today. As Freud implied, the invasion by the Huns, WWI, as well as the attack on Jews by the crusaders are great examples of men being fed into their instincts. Even today, as there’s war going on Syria, as many terrorist groups are creating turmoil worldwide, once again one realizes that humans are yet another breed of animals that are slaves to their instincts.

Being a slave to one’s instincts can open a road for discomfort and enmity between neighbors, and therefore, between neighboring nations as well. Moreover, the more and more people who abandon reasoning, and go with their instincts of aggression will cause the disintegration of society, slowly but surely. According to Freud, a man’s passions and instincts are much stronger than their carefully thought out reasonings, and although the law and government tries their best to put these instincts in rein, they don’t have reach to the deep ill-will nature of humans.

Freud begins his sixth paragraph with an attack on Marxism, communism, and the overall belief that the exclusion and termination of private property, and the concept of private property, will provide equality for all men. According to Freud, this is rounded on an untenable illusion, because Freud states that it’s not private property that creates inequality, or the instinct to want to own something and have possessions, or overall competition. He gives well thought out examples, such as the competition and inequality between humans during the primitive times when possessions were scarce, or when babies are being born in a nursery with no possessions of their own just yet. In both cases, competition among the two, the instinct of aggression, is still tangible. Freud considers a situation where private property and personal possessions are eliminated, but still he finds means and topics that will bring out the worst of aggression in men, which could be the dominance within sexual relationships, as well as the dominance within families itself. Freud even goes a step further by imagining a society where family, the nucleus of the culture, was also eliminated; at that point, one couldn’t even foresee the future, or imagine any further, but one could be sure that human nature would be follow wherever it was led.

If people were deprived of aggression and their sexual desires, it’s hardly possible that mankind would be happy. Smaller communities solve the problem of not being deprived of aggression and sexual desires by redirecting their aggression towards those that are outside of their communal group. According to Freud, it’s easy to gather people and have them love each other as long as they believe in the same aggressive outcome, which allows them to unite. Freud criticizes the Christian community due to them having their foundation as universal love between all men, because contrary to their “foundation”, Christians gave zero tolerance to any who wasn’t Christian. The last statement of this paragraph implies that a nation founded on either political or religious terms still prove to be unsuccessful, as the Soviet has proven to disintegrate, as the menacing and dominant minds of man continue to follow their sexual urges and instincts.

Freud believes that primitive people had it better than civilized people, because unlike civilized people, primitive people weren’t forced to put restrictions on their instincts and sexual urges, which civilized people must do in order to remain civilized. However, Freud makes the critical point of the primitive life being not enviable in regards to its freedom, because only the head of the family enjoyed the amazing feats of freedom, and the happiness that came along with it, while the other members of the community suffered even more rigorous restrictions than civilized people do of today.

The note of optimism that Freud provides in this paragraph stems from his statement “we may expect that in the course of time changes will be carried out in our civilization, so that it becomes more satisfying to our needs and no longer open to the reproaches we have made against it”. However, Freud doesn’t turn a blind eye to the more probable possibility of ‘la misere psychologique’ of groups, which states that the civilization will be even in a worst shape than it is now if groups only identify with themselves with leaders who have their physical qualities, but not personalities to rule over them.

Freud states that all who have experienced poverty during their youth should be exempt from the observations being made here, because once that poor person has possessions of his own, he will refrain from acting as those who had acted toward him when he had no possessions. Lastly, Freud makes the point that fighting for equality is useless and a dead-end, because mother nature has already ensured that everyone were created unequally by providing everyone with different outlooks in life, different physical appearances, different mental health, and different emotions, among other things.