Freud's Roman Holiday: Dismembering Civilization and its Discontents

Abstract

Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (1930) reveals the dynamics of dismemberment or death drive within Freud's text and literary interpretation. Freud's main source for his archeological analogy derives from Lanciani, exponent of the destruction of ancient Rome. Lanciani argued that man was responsible for the destruction of Rome: Freud argues that civilization is responsible for man's unhappiness. Freud's archeological sources cannot help but be read by today's readers in the light of the later destruction of European civilization, especially Jewish civilization, during World War II. Freud's pre-World War II text thus manifests a form of Nachträglichkeit or traumatic return of the past in the future.