Why Society Makes You Miserable Civilization and Its Discontents is Freud’s late pessimistic work on the fundamental conflict between individual instinctual satisfaction and the requirements of social life. The thesis is brutal: civilization is built on the suppression of human drives, particularly sexuality and aggression. The more civilized a society becomes, the more instinctual renunciation it requires from its members, and therefore the more neurotic and unhappy those members become. There is no solution to this problem, no path to a society that allows both civilization and happiness. Human beings must choose between gratifying their instincts and living in organized...