Aggressiveness can transform into sadism that is closely connected with Eros or sexuality. Sadism is a part of sexual instinct and a person should have a ‘strong alloy between trends of love and the destructive instinct’ (78-79).
Besides, Freud stresses that sadism has a destructive instinct in its manifestations. The natural aggressive instinct opposes the ‘programme of civilization’ and is the manifestation of the ‘death instinct’, which is closely connected with Eros. Consequently, the evolution of civilization is in a constant struggle between the instinct to survive and the instinct to die – between ‘Eros and Death’. In other words, ‘evolution of civilization is the struggle for life’ (Freud 82).
Therefore, the next question is whether it is possible for people to inhibit the aggressive instinct? The society has masterly elaborated a perfect system in order to weaken man’s dangerous desire for aggression. Sigmund Freud thinks that man’s aggressiveness is directed towards his own ego and he feels guilty. A man feels a sense of guilt when he commits something ‘bad’ (84). However, the society decides what is good and what is bad. A man feels guilty even if he does something pleasant for him, but this thing is considered to be a bad one according to the society’s norms (85).
Phaedre is unhappy because of her undivided love and this unhappiness or suffering can be regarded by people of that time as fate or curse. Phaedre says:
Bitter indeed is woman’s destiny! / I have failed. (265)
Fate is closely connected with religion. According to Sigmund Freud, ‘Fate as a substitute for the parental agency. Fate is looked upon in the strictly religious sense of being nothing else than an expression of the Divine Will’ (88). Euripides’s hero, Phaedre, feels guilty for her forbidden feeling. She can do nothing with her love and, as a result, suffers from her love. Freud thinks that ‘the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization and to show that the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt’ (97). Consequently, we can say that primitive people were happier without a sense of guilt imposed by a civilized world.
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