We Are Never So Defenseless Against

From Chapter IV of Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Sigmund Freud's most sustained engagement with social and political life. The argument is that love (Eros) binds people into dependent relationships and thereby creates the greatest exposure to suffering: the beloved can be lost through death or abandonment, and the love-relationship makes us uniquely vulnerable because it places our happiness in another's hands. Freud does not conclude that love should be avoided — he saw it as one of the central sources of human meaning — but he insisted that its dangers be faced without illusion.