“Civilization and Its Discontents” is a book written by Sigmund Freud in 1929 (originally titled “Das Unbehagen in der Kultur” or The Discontents in Culture). one of Freud's most important and most read works. In this book, Freud explains his perspective by enumerating what he sees as fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. He claims that this tension arises from the individual's search for freedom and non-conformity and from civilization's search for uniformity and instinctive repression. Most of mankind's primitive instincts are clearly destructive to the health and well-being of a human community (such as the desire to kill). As a direct result, civilization creates laws designed to prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it has serious consequences. for those who break these laws. Freud argues that this process is an intrinsic quality of civilization that instills perpetual feelings of discontent in its citizens. This theory is based on the idea that human beings have characteristic instincts that are immutable. Most notable are the desire for sex and the predisposition to violent aggression towards authority figures and sexual competitors. Both hinder the gratification of a person's instincts. Freud also believes that human beings are governed by the pleasure principle and will do whatever satisfies or gives them pleasure. He also believes that satisfying these instincts satisfies the pleasure principle. In the first two chapters of the book, Freud explores a possible source of religious feeling. He describes an “oceanic feeling of completeness, limitlessness and eternity.” Freud himself is unable to experience such a feeling, but notes that in fact there exists... at the center of the paper... civilization and the individual. Living in a nation still recovering from a brutally violent war (Germany), Freud began to criticize organized religion as a collective neurosis or mental disorder. Freud, a strong advocate of atheism, argued that religion tamed asocial instincts and created a sense of community through shared beliefs. This undoubtedly helped a civilization. However, at the same time, organized religion also exacts an enormous psychological cost on the individual, making him perpetually subordinate to the primordial figure embodied by God. In conclusion, “Civilization and its Discontents” by Sigmund Freud was a book that sought to explain both organized religion and civilization in general. The book was largely influenced by the hostile environment of post-war Germany and was a widely read and widely influential book.