Civilization and Its Discontents: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader (Harris Classics)

Great read, toying with the good and bad in society as it relates to the individual. Loved it. I will read it again after the Marcus meditations.

I recommend this book to anyone that is interested in how humans function in civilization. Freud was far ahead of his time.

I love the book itself. But there are abundant spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes on every page. It makes it difficult to read. Can someone edit this please?

Freud has made a lot of observations about the world that are mind blowing, but listening through this piece takes that a step farther. What is it about society that causes people to be discontent? It’s a simple but interesting question. While society may have made life easier for us as a whole, it has made it harder as an individual.Freud lists the ideas that to cope with this an individual can become a recluse or they can try to help fellow man. Either option poses its own psychological effects to the individual.Throughout his musings, Freud poses another interesting question: who’s to say that modern man is happier now than men in previous societies? To Freud, the way that happiness is created is through a stark contrast of needs being met after being neglected for so long. Under this idea, it goes to reason that if a person has no needs to meet, then happiness will be something that they do not understand.Although short, this audiobook definitely gives you a lot to think about when it comes to society and why there are many people who still turn to activity such as rape and murder.This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

This modification of Sigmund Feud's work was fine, but the only inferiority that was apparent was the blurry picture of the founder of psychoanalysis; it looked as if the cover of the book was replicated from a low resolution JPG file from Google Images.

My opinions on Freud notwithstanding, this edition is unsuitable for either pleasure or pedagogy. The English only loosely follows the German, taking Freud's poeticisms and turning them into jargon. It's most evident and egregious when Freud quotes Schiller and Goethe. You wouldn't know either were poets. Do not buy this. It markets itself as "contemporary" but in doing so takes itself out of conversation with Freud's own contemporaries. This makes it more difficult, not less, for the modern reader to understand.

Not only Freud's writing style is gone from this "adaptation", there are many typographical errors and bizarre punctuation which change the meaning of the text. At least in the first 2 chapters. I didn't read any further, it's a waste of time. If you actually want to know what are Freud's thoughts on the subject, stay away from this "adaptation". Also, the book was printed on the day when I ordered it, might very well be one of those parents' basement publishing houses.

An absolute dated bore.