COMMENTS
451
mature superego could be left to the influence of the surrounding
culture. In famiiy and society today, many people have grown up with
an incomplete development of the superego. As Freud emphasized
repeatedly, "the superego is stunted in its strength and growth if the
surmounting of the Oedipus complex is only incompletely successful."
Sexual liberation has freed people from many social pressures and
resu·ictions. But it seems that liberation has not led to greater mental
health nor has it reconciled the human being with civilization, as was
expected; rather, it has led to new neurotic constellations. Today,
people complain about their depressed moods and feelings of empti–
ness, their lack of motivation, their inability to love, their discontent.
The term frustration, introduced by Freud, has become a part of
colloquial speech . In Paris, as
Time
reported recer.tiy, the most
popular weekly cartoon strip is
Les
Frustres.
Freud was of the opinion that frustration is one of the "indispen–
sable conditions" of neurosis. "People," he writes, "fall ill as a result of
frusu'ation, of the nonfulfillment of some vital necessity or desire." It is
important to understand what causes this general frustration today, as
the sexual and economic deprivations of the earlier period have
certainly lessened. Frustration no longer produces neurotic symptoms,
it seems, only discontent and despair. Freud expressed a certain
apprehension when he remarked that neuroses have a biological
function as a protective contrivance. When the indiscreet revelations of
psychoanalysis make flight into illness difficult, a great number of
people may be led to cause disasters worse than their own neurotic
illness. The acting out of frustrated affects might explain much
violence today and many irrational social upheavals.
Our technical achievements have had many different effects on our
lives. We have always had patients whose lives, characters, and pathol–
ogies are influenced by an unconscious drive for vengeance, but very
rarely did such attitudes lead to acts of violence and murder, whereas
today such acts abound. For the analyst who in his daily work sees the
sensitivity and vulnerability of the ch ild, there can be no doubt that
television, which brings so much violence into the child's life so early,
must affect the chi ld's development, dulling the horror of violence and
forming minds that see it as part of daily life. These problems, of
course, are denied in our society, as their honest recognition might lead
to critical questions of freedom of expression.
The general level of discontent may have many causes. It is
certainly true that work in indusu'ial society does not provide the
individual much satisfaction or pleasure. Freud once wrote that the
intention that man should be "happy" does not seem to have been
included in the plan of creation.
If
the development of the Oedipal
