Freud's thinking emerged in the wake of Marx and Darwin, both of whom emphasized struggle as the engine of change. Freud's thought developed in a century in which violent conflicts reached unheard of dimensions. The conflicts that Freud stressed were within the psyche: people at war with themselves and sometimes with the cultural authorities they had internalized. But he thought that the way we managed (or failed to manage) those conflicts had everything to do with the explosions of violence that marked the modern world. Although much has changed since Freud first formulated his theories, today's concern with the disruptive power of sexuality and aggression has only intensified. Freud did not propose solutions to how one might escape this violence. Instead, his writings on the connection of culture and conflict identified fundamental problems for the twentieth century-problems that show no sign of disappearing as we move into the twenty-first.
			Manuscript page from Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930. Sigmund Freud Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Photo: Library of Congress/Courtesy of A.W. Freud et al.