ELABORAÇÕES ACERCA DO CONCEITO DE “LIBERDADE INDIVIDUAL” EM "O MAL-ESTAR DA CIVILIZAÇÃO" (1930) DE FREUD

The role of individual freedom in Freudian theory of culture consists of being the currency used to obtain the security provided by life in community; in other words, individuals within the culture relinquish their freedom in exchange for a fairer life. This study aims to investigate the use of the concept of freedom by Freud in "Civilization and Its Discontents," a work in which the author asserts that individual freedom is not a cultural asset. However, he then mentions another type of impulse towards freedom that could be considered beneficial because it is not based on the individual's instinctual satisfaction but rather aims at a collective good. The fact that the motivation behind the impulse determines its positivity or negativity seems contradictory to Freud's overall theory, which presupposes the existence of an unconscious that could conceal from the individual their true motivations behind their actions. Through conceptual analysis, I seek to verify the hypothesis that these two types of impulses towards freedom originate from the same psychic instance with the same purpose of individual satisfaction, and that we can only judge their impact on culture as positive or negative, never their motivation.