I'm not sure if Spengler is right to blame Freud for all of the social miseries he mentions in the article, but at least he recognizes those miseries for what they are, and their proximate causes.
Few psychiatrists today defend Freud's sexual derivation of neurosis, but the amage was done. Sexual liberation remains the core of the social agenda of the left. In US politics, the most embittered battles are fought over gay marriage and abortion, not war and taxes. For adolescents in the industrial world, however, the battle was lost a generation ago. Seeking a sexual outlet in the companionship of one's peers now is more common than the search for romantic attachments among American adolescents.
and
Women enter adolescence with the expectation that they will be used but not loved. Men no longer need to feign affection to receive sexual favors; they merely need ask. It is no surprise that young women have come to despise their bodies, some to the point of destroying them. Women can expect only a brief flowering of beauty before age and child-bearing attenuate their sexual attraction. The love of a life partner, the shared love of their children, the honor of the community and the knowledge that the human life cycle is linked to something eternal are the consolations to women for the loss of their beauty.
and
Having cured society of repression by making sexual pleasure a commodity, enlightened opinion is shocked, shocked to discover an epidemic of depression. In consequence some 70 million Americans have taken anti-depressants. Psychotropic drugs, I hasten to add, work miracles for many who suffer from imbalances of brain chemistry, and I mean no criticism of psychopharmacology in general. But the vast numbers involved suggest that a spiritual ailment is epidemic for which anti-depressants cannot be the solution.
Thanks to Catholic Shinja.
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