Reviews

Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Peter Gay

ichirofakename's review against another edition

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4.0

Read it. Pay attention.

Good luck with Chapter 8.

onthebrookeshelf's review against another edition

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informative fast-paced

ludsvica's review against another edition

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2.0

dice tanto eppure non dice nulla. sicuramente non adatto alle persone come me che hanno un tot di attenzione molto basso, bisogna essere concentrati per capire e assorbire la conoscenza. spero di poterlo rileggere in futuro e apprezzarlo di più

ghazalv's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

designwise's review against another edition

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4.0

I am fascinated by Freud's imagining the history of the ancient city of Rome as a metaphor for the human mind, built layer-upon-layer of memory and observation. Freud explores, “the more general problem of preservation in the sphere of the mind,” by asking the reader to imagine the mind as analogous to the history of the Eternal City of Rome, a fantastic landscape in which all of the structures that once existed since “the Roma Quadrata, a fenced settlement on the Palatine …are found dovetailed into the jumble of a great metropolis which has grown up in the last few centuries since the Renaissance.”

"Now let us, by a flight of imagination, suppose that Rome is not a human habitation but a psychical entity with a similarly long and copious past — an entity, that is to say, in which nothing that has once come into existence will have passed away and all the earlier phases of development continue to exist alongside the latest one. This would mean that in Rome the palaces of the Caesars and the Septizonium of Septimius Severus would still be rising to their old height on the Palatine and that the castle of S. Angelo would still be carrying on its battlements the beautiful statues which graced it until the siege by the Goths, and so on. But more than this. In the place occupied by the Palazzo Caffarelli would once more stand — without the Palazzo having to be removed — the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; and this not only in its latest shape, as the Romans of the Empire saw it, but also in its earliest one, when it still showed Etruscan forms and was ornamented with terra-cotta antefixes. Where the Coliseum now stands we could at the same time admire Nero’s vanished Golden House. On the Piazza of the Pantheon we should find not only the Pantheon of to-day, as it was bequeathed to us by Hadrian, but, on the same site, the original edifice erected by Agrippa; indeed, the same piece of ground would be supporting the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the ancient temple over which it was built. And the observer would perhaps only have to change the direction of his glance or his position in order to call up the one view or the other."

scottpnh10's review against another edition

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challenging reflective medium-paced

4.0

mikayllawilson's review against another edition

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reflective fast-paced

3.0

Freud is actually wild, there’s not much more I can say 

ethandickler's review against another edition

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Read aloud to no one. It’s weird that ultimately, Freud sides against ego and for civilization even though it in itself is suppression incarnate. Hitler will do that to a man I guess. 

erin_oriordan_is_reading_again's review against another edition

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Textbook for a college psychology course

limescat's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

3.5