Both Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents discuss the deeply rooted innate conflicts of mankind and the approach in which he may or may not overcome them. In Sophocles’ work, the internal conflicts are revealed as Oedipus develops a sense of guilt when he realizes that he has killed his father and married his mother. Freud invokes this concept and identifies with this Sophoclean sense of humanity’s tragic condition in his discussion of the symptoms of inner conflict and the feelings of guilt and unhappiness that indubitably arise from them.
Freud discusses the humanistic instinct for happiness in terms of the libidinal drive, Eros. On discussing mankind’s libidinal drive, Freud considers the pleasure principle, a notion that all people act in ways to increase personal enjoyment and happiness. “As we see, what decides the purpose of life is simply the program of the pleasure principle. This principle dominates the operation of the mental apparatus from the start. ” (Freud, 25) According to Freud, happiness can only be reached by total instinctual gratification, or, in much simpler terms, by having sex: mankind’s most intense pleasure and source of deepest happiness.
However, this is impossible, because in order for civilization to exist, men must employ their energies in the service of society, thus sacrificing individual personal satisfaction. Freud states that he is strongly concerned of the outcome of the inevitable conflict produced by the demands of man’s instinctual drive on the one hand, and the repressive requirements of civilization on the other. By creating substitute gratification, civilization is able to partially compensate individuals by redirecting libidinal energies into socially acceptable forms of bliss.
The purpose of society therefore becomes to divert mankind from individual sexual gratification into socially productive and acceptable activities, also known as the civilizing process. Therefore, this conflict is invariably resolved in favor of civilization as all people are born into a restrictive civilization in which human innate instincts are repressed at the expense of human happiness. Freud believed that in order to exist in this society, the mind must repress many of its primitive and sexual fantasies into an unconscious level, where they gain tremendous power to shape our thoughts, actions and especially our illnesses.
He stated, “If civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man’s sexuality but on his aggressiveness, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization. In fact, primitive man was better off in knowing no restrictions of instinct. To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happiness for any length of time were very slender. Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security. ” (Freud, 73) The concept that no civilized man has control over his own happiness upon birth was presented in much earlier times, as seen in Oedipus the King.
In other words, a person’s happiness is in the hands of others. Unfortunate Oedipus was born into a cursed life because of his ancestor’s misdeeds and the punishment ordained by the Gods. It was predetermined that Oedipus would murder his father, and marry and sleep with his mother. Although he went out of his way to dodge this fate, and even lived a temporarily affluent life, the ultimate decree of the Gods could not be avoided. Oedipus unsuccessfully attempted to control the pitch of his life and his pursuit of happiness. What he did not realize was that his happiness was not in his authority.
Freud explains the never-ending struggle between the instinct of life and of death, in terms of the struggle between Eros and Death. Freud argues that the primary drive of the human organism, even more fundamental than the life instinct Eros itself, is the Death Instinct: the search for final homogeneity and release from all biological tensions. The dissipation of Eros, through the continuing repression of libidinal energies, leads to the destructive and masochistic aspects of the Death Instinct. In other words, the principle derivative of the Death Instinct is the instinct for aggression.
To reinforce his conviction, Freud wrote, “And, finally, what good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer? ” (Freud, 41) Freud’s ultimate deduction is that we live in a society in which total instinctual gratification, or true happiness, is suppressed while at the same time the Death Instinct begins to permeate through all our activities and institutions: an impenetrable lock on our lives. There is much similarity between the conflict found in Civilization and Its Discontent and Oedipus the King.
The notion of death as the primary drive in our lives is also found in Oedipus the King, indicating that Oedipus is no different than any other ordinary man. Oedipus is portrayed as a highly aggressive leader. Although he did not know that the man he had murdered at the crossroads was his father, this fact still proves that he was a vicious aggressor, for he was vile enough to kill a man for pushing him out of the way. The ambition of Oedipus indicates that the Death Instinct or aggression instinct plays a large role in shaping what type of character he is.
The murder of King Lairs, his father, followed by Oedipus’ ability to answer the riddle of the Sphinx allows Oedipus to take the bloodstained throne. When Oedipus’ glamorous life is shattered by the realization that Teiresias’ prophecy that he indeed was the true killer of his kin had come true, he cries out loud: “What can I see to love? What greeting can touch my ears with joy? Take me away, and haste- to a place out of the way… or kill me, or throw me into the sea… ” (Sophocles, 69) – words which are analogous to those of Freud’s, and indicate that he is, indeed, feeling the pull of the Freudian Death Instinct.
The Oedipus Complex is defined as “the family triangle of love, jealousy, and fear that is at the root of internalized morality and out of which grows the child’s identification with the same-sex parent. ” (Gleitman, 722) According to Freud, a comparable situation is reenacted in the childhood of every man and woman, rooted in the common male longing to sleep with his mother. While the male is still a small child, he will already begin to develop a special affection for his mother, whom he regards as belonging to him.
When the mother suckles the baby with her breast, it brings him pleasure. As he begins to grow older, the breast-feeding gradually becomes abandoned, and his only source of pleasure is taken away. The child then begins to see his father as a rival who disputes his sole possession. (Gleitman, 723) Oedipus is the namesake for this complex because in this ancient tale of tragic fate, Oedipus effectuates the two extreme wishes that arise from the child’s helpless situation with his father: the extreme wishes to kill his father and take his mother as wife.
The essence of Freud’s intuition in respect to Oedipus is that the way the son can emerge and become an actual adult is only through the death of the father, through which the son will take the place of the father at the head of the house and table; in the case of Oedipus, the son murders the father, wins his mother as his lover, and takes the place of his father at the head of the castle and kingdom.
After the prophet Teiresias told Oedipus the prophecy, “I say you are the murderer of the king whose murderer you seek. ” (Sophocles, 26) and “you… tablishing a grim equality between you and your children” (Sophocles, 28), Oedipus knew on an unconscious level that it was true, but he did not want to admit it to himself. He understood that he may have in fact killed his father and married his mother, but his stubbornness rejected the idea. Despite the roles played by the others in the story, the actions that Oedipus took were solely his own. Oedipus without knowing it identified with his father’s love of his mother and was aggressive towards his father because of it.
Sophocles gives further evidence to this case by having Jocasta say, “As to your mother’s marriage bed,- don’t fear it. Before this, in dreams too, as well as oracles, many a man has lain with his own mother” (Sophocles, 52). The importance Freud’s argument is not that Oedipus took this action to an extreme, but that all men have to deal with this feeling. His unconscious wishes came to fruition whereas most people keep it in the unconscious. According to Freud, those people that deal with the Oedipus Complex in the unconscious level may or may not deal with it in a healthy manner (Gleitman, 723).
Because of the way that they deal with the Oedipus Complex some people might develop neuroses that affect how they deal with other people on a day-to-day basis (Gleitman, 723). By examining Oedipus’ actions after he discovered the truth, we see that he could not deal with the Complex in a manner that he and society could accept. In effect, he becomes a neurotic, stabbing out his own eyes, and emptied of all pleasure and aggression, he pleaded for death instead. Civilization and Its Discontents implies that men cannot escape a paradox of guilt which springs from the Oedipus Complex.
If we do not suppress our aggressive instinct and instead carry it out, then we will be punished by civilization and we will feel guilt; on the other hand, even if we do suppress our instincts, we will eventually begin to think about them, and scold ourselves for thinking such wicked thoughts, and thus, still end up feeling some sense of guilt. When Oedipus slays his father, this act of aggression was not suppressed, but carried out. As a human being, living in a society in which murder was labeled as “bad,” Oedipus should have felt guilty for his transgression.
According to Freud, this act “was the same act of aggression whose suppression in the child in supposed to be the source of his sense of guilt” (Freud, 93). Because our instincts for aggression and libido are repressed in our minds by the super-ego, they may sometimes rise up into our state of consciousness, the ego. (Freud, 85) Freud writes, “A great change takes place only when the authority is internalized through the establishment of a super-ego. The phenomena of conscience then reach a higher state. Actually, it is not until now that we should speak of conscience or a sense of guilt” (Freud, 86).
By this definition, Freud means that our natural desire for libido clashes with the taboos imposed on our super-egos by society, thus creating the feeling of guilt. “The super-ego torments the sinful ego with the same feeling of anxiety and is on the watch for opportunities of getting it punished by the external world” (Freud, 86) Freud leaves the reader with the feeling that guilt is paradoxical, that “it makes no difference whether one kills one’s father or not – one gets a feeling of guilt in either case! Freud, 94)
His final note on guilt states that his studies and psychoanalysis still have no explanation or solution for this ancient and tragic problem. Society teaches people to place taboos on feelings of aggression, perversion, sexual desire, and destruction; these are the feelings that all men possess at birth, because these feelings are in fact, intrinsic to being human.
However, it is very possible for us to repress these inherent desires that naturally bring us pleasure; after all, it is civilization’s role to impress upon its people substitute gratification such as art, religion, politics, science, and other intellectual replacements so that we may redirect our libidinal energies away from the lost instinctual happiness. The actions of a person, the way in which he develops, and the overall concept of who he is: these are all shaped not only by civilization, but also by the way in which the individual comes to terms his own desires and instincts.
