Civilization and its discontents

In his final years, Freud devoted most of his energies to a series of highly ambitious works on the broadest issues of religion and society. As early as 1908, he produced a powerful paper on the repressive hypocrisy of " civilized sexual morality ", and its role in " modern nervous illness ". Deepening this analysis in Civilization and Its Discontents, he argues that civilized values - and the impossible ideals of Christianity-inevitably distort our natural aggression and impose a terrible burden of guilt. It is also here that Freud developed his last great theoretical innovation: the strange and haunting notion of an innate death drive, locked in a constant struggle with the forces of Eros.