With Chapter 6 (Sigmund Freud, Civilization, and Sex) Carl Trueman turns to the second part of his account for the principle pathologies of contemporary life in the West. The first part described the work of some of the leading contributors to the inward turn, the psychologization of the human self. (Check here, here, and here.)
This inward turn could, of course, take expression in a variety of ways, as indeed it does. Trueman mentions phenomena like gratuitous consumption and the distractions of entertainment not to mention skin color or other identity-based ideologies. But in this chapter he focuses on a single aspect of the psychologized self, its sexualization. In some respects little in the way of a formalized account is necessary to explain the centrality of sex to the identity of human persons. Still, Trueman does a good job of explaining how Sigmund Freud's "scientific" explanation for why sexuality must be at the center of the existence of the individual and society was and remains important. Sex (and its repression) has always been important to social life but with Freud the repression of unrestrained human sexuality has been stripped of almost all of its justifications.
While Marx asserted that the cause of grinding social struggle in varying historical forms of economic production and the resulting forms of oppression, Freud "focuses the contrast between the natural authentic self and the civilized authentic self specifically on the conflict between natural sexual desires and the sexual restrictions demanded by life in [any] civilized society." (205) No wonder the doctrinaire Marxists hated Freud. But a neo-Marxist like Jacques Lacan brought the two forms of critical thought together. And while Marx believed that under pure communism there could be a classless--and non-oppressive society--Freud was increasingly dubious. Harmonization of the hyper-sexualized nature of the individual in civilized society could never lead to happiness for all. Only a group's alpha-male could give free rein to his nature. But his reign would be short-lived as another, younger and stronger male, would be waiting outside to take his place. Looking to Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, Trueman suggests Freud was a libidenous Locke:
Primitive man [and by "man" Freud could only have meant males] was better off in knowing no restrictions on [sexual] instinct. To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happiness for any length of time were very slender. Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security.
I appreciate Trueman's acknowledgment that Freud believed that civilizational restrictions on sex were more than a prophylactic against a nasty, brutish, and short life. In other words, there are positive effects to limiting free sexual expression:
Freud sees a number of substitutive distractions in civilized society that ameliorate the unhappiness caused by the frustration of sexual desire. Science and art both offer avenues that allow individuals to take pleasure in life. In addition, for the ordinary person, there is religion ... (220)
Still, a simplistic version of Freud's sexual reductionism has permeated the Western social imaginary. Sex has become increasingly crucial to the identities of many individuals. But like all "identitarian" ideologies, it erases two of the most important facets of human existence: the utterly unique unrepeatability of our individuality and the unifying transcendence of our common humanity.
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