Freud and Happiness

All year I have tried to figure out the same things for the nonfiction pieces we have read. First, what is the author's central vision of humans? And, second, where does he look for data to create this vision? Freud spent his life dealing with unhappy and severly disfuntional people. Is it any surprsie then that his central focus is Happiness? (Besides that, his name, in German, means "joy"!) While his sentences can be long and hard to follow, his arguments are among the clearest of any we have read this year. He loves a numbered list, and so do I.

Here are the parts that I find important in the first half:
1. He asks "what is the purpose of human life" but feels he has no answer. What he can answer is: based on their behavior, what do humans seek? A: happiness (p.25)
2.Life is hard, and happiness illusive because of:
a.our body is doomed to decay (pain and anxiety)
b. the external world is against us
c. other people can cause us suffering


3.so we need "palliative measures"
palliative 1: diversions
palliative 2: substitutions
Palliative 3: intoxications

4. Civilization is actually the cause of our anxiety and neuroses. It is interesting to see if he believes this for the same reasons that Neitzshe believed it.

And then there is all the stuff about sex and religion. I'm looking forward to great conversations in class this week.