page numbers in the chapters on this site are from the 1961 edition          edition:

1961

Political Preface to the 1966 Edition

vii

Introduction

3

Part I: Under The Rule Of The Reality Principle

1. The Hidden Trend in Psychoanalysis
   Pleasure principle and reality principle
   Genetic and individual repression
   "Return of the repressed" in civilization
   Civilization and want: rationalization of renunciation
   "Remembrance of things past" as vehicle of liberation

11

2. The Origin of the Repressed Individual (Ontogenesis)
   The mental apparatus a a dynamic union of opposites
   Stages in Freud's theory of instincts
   Common conservative nature of primary instincts
   Possible supremacy of Nirvana principle
   Id, ego, superego
   "Corporealization" of the psyche
   Reactionary character of superego
   Evaluation of Freud's basic conception
   Analysis of the interpretation of history in Freud's psychology
   Distinction between repression and "surplus-repression"
   Alienated labor and the performance principle
   Organization of sexuality: taboos on pleasure
   Organization of destruction instincts
   Fatal dialectic of civilization

20

3. The Origin of Repressive Civilization (Phylogenesis)
   "Archaic heritage" of the individual ego
   Individual and group psychology
   The primal horde: rebellion and restoration of domination
   Dual content of the sense of guilt
   Return of the repressed in religion
   The failure of revolution
   Changes in father-images and mother-images

50

4. The Dialectic of Civilization
   Need for strengthened defense against destruction
   Civilization's demand for sublimation (desexualization)
   Weakening of Eros (life instinct); release of destructiveness Progress in productivity
              and progress in domination
   Intensified controls in industrial civilization
   Decline of struggle with the father
   Depersonalization of superego, shrinking of ego
   Completion of alienation
   Disintegration of the established reality principle

71

5. Philosophical Interlude
   Freud's theory of civilization in the tradition of Western philosophy
   Ego as aggressive and transcending subject
   Logos as logic of domination
   Philosophical protest against logic of domination
   Being and becoming: permanence versus transcendence
   The eternal return in Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche
   Eros as essence of being

96

Part 2: Beyond the Reality Principle

6. The Historical Limits of the Established Reality Principle
   Obsolescence of scarcity and domination
   Hypothesis of a new reality principle
   The instinctual dynamic toward non-repressive civilization
   Problem of verifying the hypothesis

117

7. Phantasy and Utopia
   Phantasy versus reason
   Preservation of the "archaic past"
   Truth value of phantasy
   The image of life without repression and anxiety
   Possibility of real freedom in a mature civilization
   Need for a redefinition of progress

127

8. The Images of Orpheus and Narcissus
   Archetypes of human existence under non-repressive civilization
   Orpheus and Narcissus versus Prometheus
   Mythological struggle of Eros against the tyranny of reason--against death
   Reconciliation of man and nature in sensuous culture

144

9. The Aesthetic Dimension
   Aesthetics as the science of sensuousness
   Reconciliation between pleasure and freedom, instinct and morality
   Aesthetic theories of Baumgarten, Kant, and Schiller
   Elements of a non-repressive culture
   Transformation of work into play

157

10. The Transformation of Sexuality into Eros
    The abolition of domination
    Effect on the sex instincts
    "Self-sublimation" of sexuality into Eros
    Repressive versus free sublimation
    Emergence of non-repressive societal relationships
    Work as the free play of human faculties
    Possibility of libidinous work relations

180

11. Eros and Thanatos
    The new idea of reason: rationality of gratification
    Libidinous morality
    The struggle against the flux of time
    Change in the relation between Eros and death instinct

203

Epilogue: Critique of Neo-Freudian Revisionism (with footnotes)

217

Index [images from 1966/2000 edition; not for this one, so page numbers are a bit off]

253