Sigmund Freud, author of Civilization and Its Discontents, is widely considered the father and creator of modern psychology. Through the formation of his now famous four divisions of the human brain, the ego, the id, the libido and the superego, Freud forever changed the way man sees himself and his actions. How, then, could such a great psychologist write a work that questions and explains Western civilization? Through the discovery (or invention) of these four divisions of the human brain, Freud was able to better understand the formation and existence of Western civilization as it exists today. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayFreud begins his work by explaining the formation of the "ego," that "division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behavior, and is most in touch with external reality." When a human being becomes an adult, the lines of demarcation between him and the rest of the world are strong and defined, except for one case, where a person in love considers himself and the person he is in love with one. However, these defined lines take time to develop and Freud emphasizes that a child learns this slowly; that there are external factors over which he has no control, while there are immediate responses from the child's own limbs and organs from which impulses are constantly recovered and reported. So, while at the beginning the child's ego includes everything around him, he slowly learns to be more exclusive and to delimit between himself and the objects around him. This exclusivity continues as the child develops until there are strong, defined lines between the ego and everything else adults have. Interestingly, Freud also believes that forgetting something does not automatically mean the destruction of that thing in one's mind. Instead, he compares the phenomenon to that of an archaeological dig: if you regress long enough, eventually you can see everything. Just as an archaeologist simply needs to know where to look and what, someone performing a regression on a patient can find anything, any memory, if they simply know where to look and what. This ultimately translates into the first need for religion. Freud argues that a feeling can energize only when it is the embodiment of a serious need: a child needs his father just as an adult feels the need for religion as a remembered residue of that previous need. Freud then examines why man so zealously protects his life and what he hopes to achieve in it. His answer is simple: man tends towards happiness; "becoming happy and staying happy" (Freud, 25). Indeed, the original and strongest way humans strive to achieve happiness is through love. Freud argues that part of that attraction, part of what makes love so perfectly happy, is that when a person is in love, he is completely defenseless against suffering, and when he loses the object of his love, he is distraught and helpless . So it's vulnerability that makes you so intoxicatingly happy when you're in love. Humans aspire to such happiness as part of the “pleasure principle,” an instinctive impulse that drives humans to gratify immediate needs and avoid pain. However, a man's ability to make himself happy when he experiences the pleasure principle is limited by everything around him, including his libido, "the psychic and emotional energy associated with instinctive biological drives." After explaining his psychological analysis of humanity, Freud moves on to the difficult question of the psychological relationship.