“It seems certain,” wrote Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in 1929, “that we do not feel comfortable in our present-day civilization.” Maybe you’ve sometimes come to the same conclusion about how we live today. Freud thought he knew why. Our drives and desires as human animals, and as sexual beings especially, are at odds with the demands of cultural development. This course provides an introduction to Freud’s writings, from his founding of psychoanalysis in the 1890s, to his epochal Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, to his reflections on culture and civilization as at once achievements of human creativity and constraints on our happiness.
