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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Freud say about restrictions on sexual life if society is to be held together?

2. Whom does Freud say he would be wronging, to love his neighbor as himself?

3. What does Freud say the feeling of guilt expresses?

4. Where does the conscience’s severity originate, according to Freud?

5. To whom are sexual frustrations intolerable, according to Freud?

Short Essay Questions

1. What difficulty does Freud say he would expect in any analysis that sought to analyze society’s neuroses?

2. How, according to Freud, do other people figure differently in sensual love and social love?

3. What does Freud say society does in order to accommodate the traits he sees in human nature?

4. How does Freud describe the super-ego?

5. What difficulties does Freud say are involved in describing the death instinct?

6. How does Freud characterize the traditional view of the extremes of pleasure and pain in love?

7. How does Freud characterize the mindset of people who do not appreciate the reality he is describing, of hostility as a fundamental force of human nature?

8. How does Freud characterize the opposition of egoism and altruism?

9. How does Freud characterize the super-ego’s cultural function?

10. Where does Freud say the feeling of guilt originates?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Freud’s work was ground-breaking at the time, and it is still not completely accepted or understood, but its consequences were nonetheless significant. Using examples from the text, describe the consequences of Freud’s ideas. How does he lead us to see the world, if we are going to apply his ideas to day-to-day life?

Essay Topic 2

In Freud's account, guilt and the super-ego require sacrifices in order to be allayed. Where in contemporary culture do you find people making sacrifices, and what feelings are they assuaging by making them?

Essay Topic 3

Who is the audience for Civilization and Its Discontents? What is the ideal reader for Civilization and Its Discontents likely to think about the book’s main topics? How does this book try to affect the reader? What is it trying to teach him or her, or get him or her to do?

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