Altruistic surrender or the limits of selflessness (Daniela Luca)

Abstract: Freud refers to the concept of altruism approximately ten times in hiswork, most often in a social or cultural context. In "Thoughts for the Timeson War and Death" he writes: “Throughout an individual's life there is aconstant replacement of external by internal compulsion. The influences ofcivilization cause an ever-increasing transformation of egoistic trends intoaltruistic and social ones by an admixture of erotic elements. In the lastresort, it may be assumed that every internal compulsion which makesitself felt in the development of human beings was originally – that is, inthe history of mankind – only an external one. Those who are born todaybring with them as an inherited organization a certain tendency(disposition) towards the transformation of egoistic instincts into socialones, and this disposition is easily stimulated to bring about that result.”After pointing out that except when in love, "the opposite of egotism,altruism, does not, as a concept, coincide with libidinal object-cathexis", headded, rather laconically, in Civilization and Its Discontents, "thedevelopment of the individual seems to us to be a product of theinteraction between two urges, the urge towards happiness, which weusually call ≪ egoistic ≫, and the urge towards union with others in thecommunity, which we call ≪ altruistic ≫. Neither of these descriptions goesmuch below the surface. In the process of individual development, as wehave said, the main accent falls mostly on the egoistic urge (or the urgetowards happiness); while the other urge, which may be described as a'cultural' one, is usually content with the role of imposing restrictions".