Civilization And Its Discontents

Throughout his career, Freud mentors or influences the psychoanalysts who follow him, some of whom become famous in their own right and espouse their own unique takes on the theory Freud founded. In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud occasionally and briefly mentions these successors in courteous acknowledgment of their contributions to the development of analysis in general and his own thinking in particular. More importantly, these theorists function in the book as an unseen audience for Freud’s argument. He sometimes mentions a point of therapeutic technique without defining or explaining it; these comments are arguably directed at the analysts, who, over time, have been some of Freud’s most ardent critics. He wishes to convince them of the rightness of his ideas as much as he wants to promulgate those ideas to the world at large.

Throughout the book, Freud cites: Carl Jung, who believes that the human libido includes more than just sexual energy; Ernest Jones, his biographer and chief proponent of analysis to the English-speaking world; Susan Isaacs, who develops a theory of child development that emphasizes play as a key to independence; Melanie Klein, another child-development theorist; Theodor Reik, who advocates for analysts who do not have medical degrees; and Franz Alexander, who develops an early form of what much later becomes immersion therapy for sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.