Freud third lecture
A. End of chapter III, transition to chapter IV: Freud suggests that the development of civilization is "a special process, comparable to the normal maturation of the individual" (p. 52). "We may characterize this process with reference to the changes which it brings about in the familiar instinctual dispositions of human beings" (p. 50).
B. Chapter IV:
1. "Conjectures" about the origin and development of civilization: Love (initially within the family) and Necessity (linking people with co-workers).
2. A "digression" (pp. 56-8) about devotion to others as a technique for achieving one's own happiness (picking up a topic from chapter II). Here Freud represents such a life-plan as a transformation of "making genital erotism the central point of one's life" (p. 56); this introduces the idea of aim-inhibited sexual energy (libido). Two questions about the resulting picture of, say, St. Francis of Assisi: (1) Is this plausibly just a technique for increasing one's own happiness? (2) Is it plausible that the energy that goes into living such a life is basically sexual?
3. Tensions between love and civilization (p.58 to end of chapter): (1) Civilization requires a community larger than the family; the individual has to "detach himself from the family" (p. 58), and the family (particularly the women) resist. (2) Civilization restricts sexual life, to redirect some of people's sexual energy towards the fulfillment of its own purposes (p. 59).
C. Chapter V explains this idea of a purpose possessed by civilization itself (treated as a kind of person), for which it needs to rechannel people's sexual energy. Why can't people be joined into communities by love relationships inside the family and "bonds of common work and common interest" (p. 65) outside it? Freud's answer is that there's an aggressive instinct, which is too strong to be counteracted by "the interest of work in common" (p. 69). So to counteract this aggressive instinct, civilization "aims at binding the members of the community together in a libidinal way as well … it summons up aim-inhibited libido on the largest scale" (p. 65). (On aim-inhibited libido see the "digression" in chapter IV.) Thus civilization's need to prevent aggression drives it to redirect sexual energy away from sexual relationships (which tend accordingly to be less satisfactory).