What is Culture? From Freud to Bauman: The Malaise in Civilization in 3 Acts
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- Sep 16
- 10 min read
Updated: Oct 22
What is Culture? From Freud to Bauman: The Malaise in Civilization in 3 Acts
Act I: The Solid Origin (The Primeval Order and the Pact of Repression)
What is Culture? The Original Pact (in Totem and Taboo and Civilization and Its Discontents)
The Primeval Order (or Primal Horde) is a concept Freud introduced in his book Totem and Taboo (1913). It is a hypothetical narrative, a scientific myth, which he uses to explain the origin of society, morality, and religion.
The Narrative of the Primal Horde
The Initial Scenario: In the beginning, humans lived in small bands, the hordes. Each horde was dominated by a tyrannical and violent father. This father possessed all the females and expelled all the male sons to eliminate any rivals.
The Revolutionary Act: One day, the exiled sons united, revolted, and murdered and devoured the father. This act of cannibalism was crucial: by devouring him, they internalized his power.
The Immediate Consequence (Guilt): After the act, the brothers were overcome by a feeling of guilt and remorse. The hatred they felt for the father turned into admiration and regret. They realized that, although they had gotten rid of the tyrant, they were now doomed to fight among themselves for the females, repeating the same cycle of violence.
The Founding Pact (The Primeval Order): To avoid the war of all against all, the brothers made a pact, the true birth of the primeval order. They established two fundamental taboos:
Taboo of Incest: Prohibition against possessing the women of the clan (the mothers and sisters). This is the "taboo of the totem."
Taboo of Homicide: Prohibition against killing a member of the own clan (a substitute for the father). This is the "taboo of murder."
To consolidate this pact, they elevated the dead father to a sacred symbol – the totem (an animal or object representing the clan). The totem was both worshipped (as the founding ancestor) and feared (its violation was punished by death).
The Primeval Order is, therefore, the first human social organization, born from a collective crime and sustained by guilt and taboos.
What is the Importance of This Myth?
Freud was not claiming this happened literally. He used this narrative to illustrate a founding psychic conflict:
Culture is Born from Guilt: Morality, religion, and laws do not arise from a rational contract, but from the need to deal with the guilt of a primordial act of violence.
Human Ambivalence: The relationship with authority (the Father, the Law, God) is always ambivalent: it is made of hatred and desire for freedom, but also of love, admiration, and the need for protection.
The Basis of "Malaise": This pact demands the permanent renunciation of the most primitive instinctual desires (incest and aggressiveness). It is the price we pay for the security of life in society, and this renunciation is the source of the "malaise in civilization."
In essence, the Primeval Order is Freud's explanation for humanity's "original sin": a crime that, paradoxically, made us civilized by imposing law and guilt upon us.
Australian Totemism and the Shadow of the Primal Horde
Yes, social systems exist that served as the real basis for Freud's myth, and the totemic clans of Australian tribes are the most famous example. Freud relied heavily on the accounts of anthropologists like Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, who studied peoples like the Arrernte.
Here's how these societies seem to corroborate his thesis:
The Totem as Common Ancestor:
In Australian totemic clans, each group identifies with a totem (a kangaroo, an emu, a plant, a natural phenomenon like rain).
This totem is not just a symbol; it is considered a founding ancestor. The core belief is that all clan members descend from this same primordial being. This is the "real" version of the primal father of the Freudian horde, transformed into a sacred, shared symbol.
The Taboos that Structure Society:
Taboo of Incest (Exogamy): The most important rule was the obligation to marry outside one's own totemic clan. A man of the Kangaroo totem had to marry a woman from a different totem, like Emu or Water. This is the Freudian "taboo of the totem" in its purest form, preventing sexual possession within the symbolic "family" group.
Taboo of Killing and Eating the Totem: It was strictly forbidden to kill or eat one's own clan's totemic animal. Violating this taboo was seen as a grave crime, punishable even by death. This is the "taboo of murder" applied to the paternal substitute (the totem).
The Ritual that Revives the Crime: The Intichiuma Ceremony
This is the most fascinating point and the one that most closely approximates the Freudian paradox. At certain times of the year, the Intichiuma ritual was performed.
In this ceremony, clan members performed sacred dances and chants to magically multiply their totemic animal as a food source for the other clans.
In some tribes, it was permitted, in a highly regulated ceremonial act, to eat a small portion of the own totem.
The Freudian Connection: For Freud, this ritual was the symbolic reenactment of the primordial totemic banquet. It was the moment when the community, in a controlled and sacred manner, relived the original act of killing and devouring the father/totem, only to later reinforce the taboos born from it. It was a way to remember the founding crime while simultaneously reaffirming the law that prevents its repetition in daily life.
Therefore, the social system of the Australian tribes presented (and still presents) a structure almost literal to what Freud proposed mythologically:
A common ancestor (the Totem/Father).
Two fundamental taboos (Incest and Homicide of the Totem) that organize society.
A ritual (Intichiuma) that deals with the ambivalence of desiring and venerating the same object.
This does not prove the primal horde existed historically, but it shows that Freud found in anthropology real social systems that reflected, in an astonishing way, the universal psychic conflicts he proposed: guilt, ambivalence towards authority, and the need for a law to contain primordial violence.
Freud's theory, although speculative in its origin, was not pulled from thin air, but rather from a powerful interpretation of observable human structures.
If the Freudian theory of the primal horde seems abstract, art offers us a shocking image of its core horror. In Saturn Devouring His Son, Francisco de Goya materializes the myth of Cronus, the primordial father who devours his children to avoid being dethroned.
It is one of the most powerful and disturbing representations ever made on the theme. The painting, with its crude and unadorned violence, goes beyond the mythological narrative to represent the essence of the devouring tyrant – a figure of absolute and terrifying power that echoes directly the father of the Freudian horde, the one who must be eliminated for the civilizing pact, paradoxically, to be born.
Act II: The Structural Diagnosis (The Freudian Malaise and Its Psychic Cost)
The Price of Civilization: The Freudian Malaise
If the myth of the primal horde in Totem and Taboo presents us with the traumatic birth certificate of culture, it is in Civilization and Its Discontents that Freud presents us with the bill to be paid for this pact.
Published in 1930, on the eve of a new wave of barbarism in Europe, the work is a profound and disenchanted diagnosis: civilization, our greatest achievement, is also the source of an inevitable psychic suffering.
The central argument is that for life in society to be possible, we must repress our most primitive instincts – unbridled aggressiveness and sexuality, governed by the Pleasure Principle.
The Pleasure Principle (Lustprinzip) and the Reality Principle (Realitätsprinzip) are fundamental concepts that permeate the entire argument of Civilization and Its Discontents. Freud uses them as pillars to explain the origin of the psychic suffering inherent to civilized life.
In exchange for security and order (the Reality Principle), we give up full satisfaction. This renunciation, however, is not a peaceful act; it accumulates in the unconscious as a residue of frustration, generating the "malaise" that gives the book its title.
How they function in the book's argument:
The Pleasure Principle (Innate): It is the fundamental tendency of the psychic apparatus, governed by the Id, to seek immediate pleasure and avoid displeasure at all costs. It is impulsive, demanding, and knows no limits or morality.
The Reality Principle (Acquired): It is a modification of the Pleasure Principle, imposed by the Ego. It postpones immediate satisfaction, tolerates a certain degree of displeasure, and takes into account the conditions of the external world (social rules, consequences, safety) to obtain a more secure and realistically possible pleasure, even if lesser or delayed.
The Connection with "Malaise":
Culture (or civilization) is the maximum social manifestation of the Reality Principle. For society to exist, it is necessary for individuals to massively renounce the full and immediate satisfaction of their instincts (sexual and aggressive) demanded by the Pleasure Principle.
The Freudian social pact is, in essence, the collective substitution of the Pleasure Principle by the Reality Principle.
The "malaise" is precisely the psychic result of this forced renunciation. It is the price we pay, in the form of frustration, neurosis, and buried resentment, for giving up full instinctual satisfaction in the name of security and collective well-being.
In short, culture is the great structure that forces us to operate under the Reality Principle, and the malaise is the echo of the Pleasure Principle, permanently repressed, which still resonates within us.
These two principles are not just "there," but form the basis of the psychic mechanism that generates the central conflict explored in the book.
Freud goes further, identifying human aggressiveness as the greatest obstacle to civilization. The famous maxim "Homo homini lupus" ("man is a wolf to man") summarizes his skepticism.
The commandment "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is not a natural truth, but rather a reaction against our deepest nature – a cultural defense constructed to contain the very poison we carry within.
Culture, therefore, is a mechanism of control that turns against itself, demanding from us a love we do not feel instinctively.
To relieve the pressure of this internal conflict, we resort to palliatives. Art and science act as noble forms of sublimation, channeling repressed energies into socially valued ends. Religion offers subjective consolation.
But Freud also points to darker outlets: neurosis, which is the breaking of the pact at an individual level, and even intoxication, which he calls "anaesthetizing misery." None of these paths, however, offer a cure. The malaise is constitutive; it is the price of admission for life in society.
The final paradox, then, is this: culture is what saves us from the barbarism of the horde, but it is also what prevents us from being fully happy. It protects us from an external war, but condemns us to an internal, permanent civil war. It is this insoluble contradiction that paves the way for understanding the crisis of the subject in the contemporary world.
Act III: The Liquid Collapse (Liberation as a New Threat in the Baumanian Era)
The Malaise in the Liquid Age
If Freud's diagnosis was one of a conflict between the individual and a solid, repressive culture, our time presents an even more dizzying paradox.
We live in what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called "liquid modernity," an era where all the structures that sustained the Freudian social pact – tradition, the patriarchal family, rigid institutions – have dissolved in favor of fluidity, individualism, and freedom of choice.
At first, this sounds like the ultimate liberation. And, in many ways, it is. The dissolution of the symbolic "father" and his rigid taboos has benefited countless segments of humanity, allowing the flourishing of identities, desires, and ways of life that were once brutally repressed by the traditional pact.
The rebellion against culture, which in Freud was a symptom, has become, paradoxically, the new social commandment: "Enjoy!", "Be authentic!", "Free yourself!".
However, it is here that the crucial contradiction that threatens existence itself is revealed. By undoing the pact that required the renunciation of instincts, liquid society has also weakened the social brake against the death drive (Thanatos).
What Freud saw as the pillar of civilization – the repression of aggressiveness – has lost its strength. The result is not a paradise of freedom, but a new and perhaps more dangerous form of malaise, which manifests itself in concrete and alarming ways:
Ecological Collapse: The inability to renounce consumption and infinite growth in the name of a collective future. The "free" individual exercises their right to immediate pleasure, but the cost is the destruction of the common home, an act of slow-motion self-extermination.
War on the Web: Social networks have become the stage where aggressiveness, now released from the brake of face-to-face contact, manifests in its crudest form. Hate, cancel culture, and the dissemination of disinformation are the digital horde turning against itself, without the mediation of an effective symbolic law.
The Anguish of the Unlimited: If in Freud's time suffering came from an excess of repression, today it springs from the absence of limits. Without a clear pact, the individual is overloaded with the infinite burden of having to construct themselves anew each day. Freedom becomes a sentence, generating an epidemic of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.
Thus, the primordial question Freud identified in the social pact – "how to prevent societies from self-exterminating?" – resurges with terrible urgency. The Freudian project was to deal with the malaise of an overly solid world. Our challenge is to deal with the malaise of a world that has liquefied. The liberation of the individual, an undeniable achievement of postmodernity, has proven to be a double-edged sword: it granted us the right to be who we are, but it tore away the safe ground that prevented us from falling into the abyss.
The great dilemma of our time, therefore, is no longer how to bear the weight of repression, but how to rebuild a pact of non-aggression and mutual care that is as liquid and flexible as our identities, but as solid and uncompromising as the primordial need not to self-destruct. In short, how to be free without annihilating ourselves and the world we inhabit.
Final Consideration
Finally, it is essential to clarify that the journey from Freud to Bauman, narrated in these three acts, is not a condemnation or a defense of culture, but rather an attempt at diagnosis.
Neither Freud with his psychoanalysis, nor Bauman with his sociology, seek to convince the reader about the validity of the social pact; their work, as scientists, is to describe its mechanisms and consequences with the theoretical tools available in their time.
They do not offer easy solutions. On the contrary, the great legacy of thinkers like them is precisely to open more questions than to bring comfortable answers.
It is in this space of unease and reflection – and not that of indoctrination – that the purest value of research and philosophy resides: to help us understand the paradoxes of the human condition, even if we cannot resolve them.
Crucial Observation
This overview, however, would be incomplete without recognizing that culture is a diamond with infinite facets, and each theoretical tradition illuminates one of them.
If Freud and Bauman give us the keys to the psychodynamics and social form of culture, it is in Cultural Studies – with Stuart Hall at the forefront – that we understand it as a living field of dispute, where meanings are negotiated and identities are resisted.
The critical vision of the Frankfurt School (Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer) alerts us to its dark side: the "Culture Industry" that transforms it into a commodity to homogenize desires.
An anthropologist like Clifford Geertz sees it as a "web of meanings" to be interpreted, while Pierre Bourdieu exposes its role as symbolic currency that generates distinction and perpetuates inequalities.
Each of these thinkers, in their own way, does not offer a definitive answer, but a powerful tool.
Together, they compose a survival kit for deciphering the world and, ultimately, for understanding ourselves within it.
Now, follow the intellectual saga of the Enlightenment concept in the coming article.
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