EUGENE GOODHEART
389
essence of self-consciousness and reason is to bring something into
consciousness . Indeed, the insidiousness of repression is precisely its
unconscious character. I say unconscious rather than irrational
because repression has its reasons, for instance, the reduction of
pain that might be the inadvertent consequence of the satisfaction of
an instinct. But the "reason" of repression is "correlated" (Freud's
word) with the unconscious and not to be confused with rational
consciousness. Conscious rational reflection is not only not repres–
sive , it may be a path of psychic liberation. Marcuse's idea of repres–
sion has its source not in Freud, but in politics, where, of course,
repression is more often than not conscious.
Marcuse's aim (it is Brown's as well) is to establish the possibil–
ity of a nonrepressive civilization. This idea, it would seem, is a con–
tradiction in the Freudian view - in which civilization is by defini–
tion repressive. How then is such a possibility imaginable? How can
civilization become the direct expression of erotic energy, a field of
self-delighting
aesthe~ ic
play, if the repressive character of civiliza–
tion is a fundamental premise of Freudian thought? Marcuse in ef–
fect accepts Freud's account of the repressive character of civiliza–
tion, but he historicizes it; that is, he sees it as a function of a specific
historical organization of society , not as intrinsic to it. Marcuse
characterizes the principle behind this function as the
"performance
principle:
the prevailing historical form of the
reality principle."
The
historicizing of civilization Marcuse believes to be an implication of
Freud's own work, though it is concealed by the concept of the real–
ity principle, which makes "historical contingencies into biological
necessities." Marcuse even endorses Freud's view that "a repressive
organization of the instincts underlies
all
historical forms of the real–
ity principle in civilization," but he notes Freud's historical insight
"that civilization has progressed as organized
domination."
If
the
historical dimension were lacking, it would be futile to advocate, as
Freud does in
Civilization and Its Discontents,
a mitigation of the
severity of repression.
Marcuse never relinquishes the category of repression. Indeed,
he makes a crucial distinction between surplus and basic repres–
sion - that is to say, between restrictions necessitated by social
domination and the "'modifications' of the instincts necessary for the
perpetuation of the human race in civilization." Nonrepressive civili–
zation is something of an exaggeration in Marcuse's argument. The
essential claim is that repression engendered by "social domination"
is not a necessity of civilization. The raison d'etre of social domina-
