Rome as a Metaphor of Human Mind

In essence, Freud assumes it right that the history of Western civilization is part of our unconscious mental history as well. He uses the terms Eros for love and Thanatos for death, from the Greek Mythology which basically is the foundation of the Western civilization. Freud had an advanced classical education and love of literature, so it is no wonder that this book was abound with analogies. We see clearly in this part of the book, Freud uses many Italic and Latin cultural structures and famous people to maintain the metaphor between a city to human mind (Freud 18).

In this part, Freud relied on the city of Rome to represent the historical birthplace of society, and to explain the bad effects civilization had on the human mind. Rome has been destroyed and rebuilt in the same spot countless times since it has been founded. Rome contains ruins from all previous eras, which are mentioned as metaphors extensively by Freud himself in the book. This allows one to observe every stage of its developmental history and character.

Moreover, for the observation of the development process of human mind, Freud uses Rome as a metaphor. Similar to Rome, our unconscious possess ruins and signs of past, which make up a similar multi-leveled structure of the mind as well. The mind is the safe keep for all of its earlier stages of development and it allows them to coexist with the later stages of development.

Using Rome as the psychological development of mankind takes the interaction of individuals in the society into account, not just the psychological traits of them. Like Rome, different character traits can clash through individual lifelines, and like Goth attacks on Rome, the psyche or our mind may be harmed, but to grow new perceptions and approaches.

Also we can see the metaphor extends until towards the end of the book. While mentioning the sense of guilt, the civilization acts as superego and the ego‘s need of punishment, Freud draws a conclusion by saying that civilization takes the command over individual‘s desire of aggression, by weakening it, “and by setting up an agency within him to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city” (Freud 84).

Furthermore, Freud finds another use of this metaphor in the book. He argues that the same space cannot have two distinct structures, but by thinking Rome as a structural representative, we need to put different buildings on one another but in a timely basis. Freud says that we have not yet mastered our characteristics of mental life even to put them in a picturesque manner. Indeed, we would think as the buildings as blurred objects if we think the same spot in a timeline, that still shows us how the respective priorities affect our perception; a blurred building can only mean a respectively less important era of the Rome, and a barely remembered feeling is that less important in human mind.

The mind of a person remains intact on normal circumstances and it learns every time and unlearns or corrects mistakes of itself. This can be compared to a demolition and rebuilding of a city, no real ill effects strike the mind, but a mere reestablishment occurs. Also Freud points out that the destructions which are never lacked in a history of a city can be compared to the serious illnesses. However Freud thinks that a city like London, which hasn’t really suffered a enemy attack cannot be a viable metaphorical device to the human mind. This can be argued as it is said above, even a peaceful human mind, learns and corrects itself, without having ruins in itself; thus a peaceful city will still be suitable.

Also with the third section of the book, we can extend the metaphor even more, that the section argues the paradox of civilization that it is created to protect us from unhappiness but also this protection is a source of discontent. A city is now not the human mind but both the civilization and the social superego that develops with the impositions of the ideals of society.

For the last words, this metaphor establishes an alive understanding of human mind comparing to a city, built and destroyed many times over the centuries. Also it shows that how incompetent we are to depict our mind graphically, and how our perception is still narrow. And lastly, Freud maintains a metaphor so useful, that we can read as anything we like; psyche, superego and the civilization itself.