Sexual desire, civilization and psychoanalysis

I came to the conclusion that the sense of profound guilt some paraphiles (especially pedophiles) feel comes from the conflict between the house of our instincts (what Freud calls Id) and an Ego that tries to abide by the rules of civilization, which is at the center of the conflict. It's like our Id is brutal, barbaric and uncivilized, as opposed to society's civilization and conformity. And the Ego has to solve this conflict before it's too late, before it collapses and disorders such as depression and psychosis come to birth.

On one side of the conflict we have the Id. The Id is where our most barbaric instincts dwell. The Id wants freedom, a freedom forbidden by civilization.
On the other side, we have the Ego that finds itself lost between the Id's desires and society's rules. The Ego is thus uncapable of resisting the tensions and develops a sense of guilt and shame coming from all the repressed desires within the Id: society wins, with its rules and limits.

Let's not forget about the role of a third entity, the Super-ego, which has interiorized society's rules, thus acts like a guilt enabler.

Here's a quote from Sigmund Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents":
- ‘In order to fend off certain unpleasurable excitations arising from within, the ego can use no other methods than those which it uses against unpleasure coming from without, and this is the starting-point of important pathological disturbances.’

From Wikipedia:
In this seminal book, Sigmund Freud enumerates what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individual's quest for instinctual freedom and civilization's contrary demand for conformity and instinctual repression. Freud states that when any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, then it creates a feeling of mild contentment. Many of humankind's primitive instincts (for example, the desire to kill and the insatiable craving for sexual gratification) are clearly harmful to the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments if such rules are broken. Thus our possibilities of happiness are restricted by the law. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that instills perpetual feelings of discontent in its citizens.

Freud's theory is based on the notion that humans have certain characteristic instincts that are immutable. Most notable are the desires for sex, and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authority figures and towards sexual competitors, which both obstruct the gratification of a person's instincts.

But if violent and sexual acts against the law are forbidden by both the state and our interiorized morals (by our super-ego), what is the way to find happiness?
We should redirect our deviant desires to constructive, creative and fullfilling activities that harm no one. We can manipulate our libido and use it for something constructive, letting it come out in a non-violent, law-abiding manner. This seems the answer and the way to come out of that sense of profound unhappiness.

An interesting theory, though I do have a few problems with it, mostly pertaining to Freud's assumptions on human "primal instincts".

Chessplayer wrote:An interesting theory, though I do have a few problems with it, mostly pertaining to Freud's assumptions on human "primal instincts".

Well, I only agree with him to a certain extent. Unlike him, I recognize that humans also have other primal instincts that don't revolve around sex. But I can't deny that sexual desire fuels most a large part of the human behavior.

ElKahn wrote:I came to the conclusion that the sense of profound guilt some paraphiles (especially pedophiles) feel comes from the conflict between the house of our instincts (what Freud calls Id) and an Ego that tries to abide by the rules of civilization, which is at the center of the conflict. It's like our Id is brutal, barbaric and uncivilized, as opposed to society's civilization and conformity. And the Ego has to solve this conflict before it's too late, before it collapses and disorders such as depression and psychosis come to birth.

On one side of the conflict we have the Id. The Id is where our most barbaric instincts dwell. The Id wants freedom, a freedom forbidden by civilization.
On the other side, we have the Ego that finds itself lost between the Id's desires and society's rules. The Ego is thus uncapable of resisting the tensions and develops a sense of guilt and shame coming from all the repressed desires within the Id: society wins, with its rules and limits.

You can simplify this significantly to just two, not three: "Egoic Consciousness" and "True Self"; the effect will be you'll now be inline with thousands of years of psychological tradition beginning long before Freud and continuing until today. There is a major difference between the two and three house model, namely, for the older tradition, Ego is seen as a virus that has infected True Self. True Self is love based, ego is conditioned by civilization. The difficult step to understanding this view is to accept that humans are fundamentally good and loving, something difficult when the opposite has been trained in us for our whole lives by the war-machine of capitalist society.

Here's a few links to get you going on the Ego/True Self perspective,

http://www.purifymind.com/EG.htm
http://www.drwaynedyer.com/blog/the-ego-illusion/
http://www.esotericscience.org/articlea.htm

Here's a quote from Sigmund Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents":

Freud was a superficial person in ways, even in later life he never understood the depth of reality; but an important read none the less. If you liked that, you'll also enjoy Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization" which is a more recent, sophisticated and deep version of what Freud realized.

Here is the Wiki synopsis,

"Marcuse discusses the social meaning of biology - history seen not as a class struggle, but a fight against repression of our instincts. He argues that "advanced industrial society" (modern capitalism) is preventing us from reaching a non-repressive society "based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations". He contends that Freud's argument that repression is needed by civilization to persist is mistaken, as Eros is liberating and constructive.

Marcuse starts with the conflict described by Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents - the struggle between human instincts and the conscience of repression (superego), which is self-repressing trying to follow the society's mores and norms. Freud claimed that a clash between Eros and civilization results in the history of humanity being one of his repression: 'Our civilization is, generally speaking, founded on the suppression of instincts.' Sex produces the energy, and it is repressed so the energy can be channeled into progress - but the price of progress is the prevalence of guilt instead of happiness. "Progress", for Marcuse, is a concept that provides the explanation and excuse of why the system has to continue; it is the reason the happiness of people is sacrificed (see also pleasure principle).

Marcuse argues that 'the irreconcilable conflict is not between work (reality principle - life without leisure) and Eros (pleasure principle - leisure and pleasure), but between alienated labour (performance principle - economic stratification) and Eros.' Sex is allowed for 'the betters' (capitalists...), and for workers only when not disturbing performance. Marcuse believes that a socialist society could be a society without needing the performance of the 'poor' and without as strong a suppression of our sexual drives: it could replace 'alienated labor' with "non-alienated libidinal work" resulting in "a non-repressive civilization based on 'non-repressive sublimation'".

Marcuse's argument depends on the assumption that instincts can be shaped by historical phenomena such as repression. Marcuse concludes that our society's troubles result not from biological repression itself but from its increase due to "surplus repression" which is the result of contemporary society."

Once you have absorbed that step, your next move will be onto Foucault's three volume "A History of Sexuality" which challenges Marcuse's or Freud's presentation of the story of sexuality as a story of repression, which is a Darwinian (Egoic) story, and presents sexuality instead as something evolving and overflowing.

All these texts, Freud's, Marcuse's, and Foucault's are available free online in pdf if you hunt around a bit. Definitely worth the read for those in a position to understand.

ElKahn wrote:We can manipulate our libido

I agree with you; and so do Marcuse and Foucault; but just try and get the "born gay", or "I was born a pedophile" crew to appreciate your position...!

rainbowstar wrote:

ElKahn wrote:We can manipulate our libido

I agree with you; and so do Marcuse and Foucault; but just try and get the "born gay", or "I was born a pedophile" crew to appreciate your position...!

I wasn't referring to gays and paraphiles at all. I wasn't referring to sexual orientation, I was just referring to libido defined as sexual desire....we can manipulate it and have less sex drive, for example, but we can't change orientatiion. You misunderstood my point.

ElKahn wrote:

rainbowstar wrote:

ElKahn wrote:We can manipulate our libido

I agree with you; and so do Marcuse and Foucault; but just try and get the "born gay", or "I was born a pedophile" crew to appreciate your position...!

I wasn't referring to gays and paraphiles at all. I wasn't referring to sexual orientation, I was just referring to libido defined as sexual desire....we can manipulate it and have less sex drive, for example, but we can't change orientatiion. You misunderstood my point.

In that case, you're wrong.

rainbowstar wrote:I agree with you; and so do Marcuse and Foucault; but just try and get the "born gay", or "I was born a pedophile" crew to appreciate your position...!

ElKahn wrote:I wasn't referring to gays and paraphiles at all. I wasn't referring to sexual orientation, I was just referring to libido defined as sexual desire....we can manipulate it and have less sex drive, for example, but we can't change orientatiion. You misunderstood my point.

In that case, you're wrong.

So, all of us people who have struggled in various ways, because of who we're attracted to, have been worrying about nothing all these years? We can all just change to a more acceptable orientation, can we?

How stupid of us.

I was born gay. I know this from my behaviour as an infant. Also more than 2000 examples of homosexuality have been observed in other species. As far as I know, not one example of paedophilia has been observed (correct me if I am wrong). And this should be viewed as positive, since it indicates "something gone wrong somewhere", which gives hope it can be put right.

As for hebaphilia/ephebaphilia, these are legal and moral constructs rather than unnatural phenomena, since sexual maturity is sexual maturity in nature. But the animals (apart from manipulated lab rats) do not have such torments as bipolar disorder, for example.

cumulusjames wrote:I was born gay. I know this from my behaviour as an infant. Also more than 2000 examples of homosexuality have been observed in other species. As far as I know, not one example of paedophilia has been observed (correct me if I am wrong). And this should be viewed as positive, since it indicates "something gone wrong somewhere", which gives hope it can be put right.

I wonder if I'm the only one here who finds it offensive how you keep telling people that their paraphilias need to be "put right" or that they need to have some kind of sick reorientation therapy. Maybe some people feel guilty about their feelings, but I would never want to get rid of my necrophilia. There isn't a single thing "wrong" with my brain. The idea that paraphilias are "wrong" is a human construct and it's a way to keep us in oppression and keep us feeling subhuman. Nature doesn't think in terms of "right" and "wrong".
Also, just because gays have now been told that they're allowed to feel good about themselves doesn't mean that you can turn around and say the same things to us that heterosexuals have said to you. There's nothing wrong with us, and no matter what you say, we are perfectly natural and deserve to feel good about ourselves.

As for hebaphilia/ephebaphilia, these are legal and moral constructs rather than unnatural phenomena, since sexual maturity is sexual maturity in nature. But the animals (apart from manipulated lab rats) do not have such torments as bipolar disorder, for example.

Do you even realize that humans and rats are different species and have different brains? Human brains are much, much more complex than rat brains.