Essay Database

Discussion of Civilization and Its Discontents Whatever modern experimental psychologists may say about Freud's theories, Freud himself was a passionate scientist. He meant that in the same way that Nietzsche praised science (e.g., The Gay Science) -- the sense of honest, careful, truth seeking, grounded in experience rather than in myth or metaphysics. Whether or not early psychoanalytic theory developed out of thoroughly scientific methodology is, of course, debatable but it is doubtless that …

…that were exceedingly sensual, and sometimes sexual, while not requiring repression. Unfortunately, as time passed and Marcuse observed later, this "desublimated" energy came to be used repressively. That is, the Counter Culture as a spontaneous popular movement was displaced by a corporately promoted commercialized and shallow sensuality, available only by consumption. While our sexual attitudes, today, seem to be more permissive, the political and economic repression involved may be too high a price to pay.