Sigmund Freud, author of Civilization and Its Discontents, is widely considered the father and originator of modern psychology. Through the formation of his now famous four divisions of the human brain, the ego, id, libido, and superego, Freud forever changed the way man views himself and his actions. How, then, could such a great psychologist also write a work that questioned and explained Western civilization? Through his 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 is today. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayFreud begins his work by explaining the formation of the “ego,” that “division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately in control thought and behavior and is most in contact with external reality. » By the time 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 in which a person in love considers himself and the person he is in love as being one. These precise lines take time to develop, however, and Freud points out that an infant learns this slowly; that there are external factors over which he has no control, while there are immediate responses from the limbs and organs of the infant himself, from which impulses are constantly retrieved and reported. So, while at first the infant's ego includes everything around it, it slowly learns to be more exclusive and to demarcate itself between itself and the objects around it. This exclusivity continues as the infant develops until there are strong, defined boundaries between the ego and whatever adults possess. Interestingly, Freud also believes that forgetting something does not automatically mean the destruction of what is in one's mind. Rather, he compares the phenomenon to that of an archaeological dig: if you regress for long enough, you end up seeing everything. Just as an archaeologist simply needs to know where to look and for what purpose, one performing a regression on a patient can find anything, any memory, if he or she simply knows where to look and for what purpose. This ultimately results in the first need for religion. Freud argues that a feeling can only become energized when it is the embodiment of a serious need that a child needs from its father, just as an adult experiences a need for religion as a vestige of that earlier need. Freud then examines why man protects so zealously. his own life and what he hopes to accomplish in it. His answer is simple: man aspires to happiness; “become happy and stay that way” (Freud, 25). In fact, the original and strongest way in which humans strive for happiness is through love. Freud argues that part of this attraction, part of what makes love so perfectly happy, is that when a person is in love they are completely defenseless in the face of suffering, and when they lose the object of her love, she is overwhelmed, helpless. So it’s vulnerability that makes happiness so intoxicating when you’re in love. Humans strive for such happiness as part of the “pleasure principle,” an instinctive impulse that drives humans to satisfy immediate needs and avoid pain. However, a man's ability to make himself happy when living according to the pleasure principle is limited by everything around him, including.