Freud's unattainable happiness; while unattainable it is still possible.

Sigmund Freud was a complex thinker, obvious in his writing of "Civilization and its Discontents". In fact his explanation on his thoughts can become quite distracting and confusing in accordance to what question he is trying to address to the simple reader. One such example is his explanation to happiness and its attainability. He discusses in great detail the processes and methods to happiness from pages 42 to 56, involving a very complex explanation to what drives happiness and the methods in such employed to achieve it. In its entirety he weaves between the two ideas that happiness is both wholly possible and entirely impossible; However, for the sake of my brain and understanding of his argument, I would say that Freud's viewpoint ran towards the more negative answer that happiness is essentially unattainable and fruitless pursuit."

Freud's basic reasoning towards this is that happiness is based on the "pleasure principal" that dominates our minds drive for happiness the aims for the moments of feeling pleasure and the  decreased  feelings of pain and 'unpleasure' in our lives. In simplistic terms happiness is the "(preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and it is from its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon" (p.43). Essentially what he is suggesting is that happiness is the meeting of our needs in such a way that if met on a continual basis it loses the perceived enjoyment being met. That essentially happiness is fleeting and based on the infrequent satisfaction of our desires.

From this stance he goes into detailed and long description of what he calls the 'methods to happiness'; which are essentially based on the idea that one can be happy by merely escaping unhappiness or surviving suffering of the causes towards pain and 'unpleasure'. To summarize them all into the point that Freud was trying to make (as it appears to me) is that everyone has a different set of desires, in regards to happiness, and methods to fulfill them; there is no one way to achieve happiness as it is a lifestyle pursuit unique to the individual. He also pushes the thought that one's desires are limitless, that they are as vast and numerous as to the possibilities of what we can imagine.

Thus we gather the conclusion from Freud that happiness, which is based on the pleasure principle, cannot be fulfilled; as we cannot obtain all that we desire in regards to the economical problems to achieving the satisfaction of the individual's 'libido' (desires) (p.54).

However in regards to answering the question of whether or not it is possible to be happy or not as asked by the first blog topic, the answer is quite obvious. Freud had to have thought that happiness was possible; his entire argument is based on the achievability of happiness, which cannot be argued without the premise that happiness is possible. While he does conclude that happiness cannot be fulfilled he doesn't say that it isn't possible, just that it is a tricky business to obtain.