Sexuality and civilisation: Weber and Freud

Abstract

The nineteenth century in Britain saw the culmination of a prolonged as well as steep rise in population, rapid urbanisation and technological developments in production. The inevitable disruption of traditional modes of work organisation and of the social relations that accompanied them, as well as the emergence of a fully fledged new ruling class, meant that this was truly the century of what Kumar has called 'the great transformation' (Kumar 1978). Yet it was not free of its insecurities and contradictions-particularly about the hegemonic status of the bourgeoisie, and of the effectiveness of their ideologies. As Peter Gay has reminded us: 'what the bourgeois had in common was the negative quality of being neither aristocrats nor labourer, and of being uneasy in their middle class skins' (Gay 1984:3). While being principal actors and prime movers in the upheavals of old certainties associated with modernity, they were also at the vortex of its psychological consequences. A key feature of the great transformation was, therefore, the move to establish and disseminate new moral imperatives as the basis for a new social coherence. It is in the context of these imperatives of 'the civilising process' (Elias 1982) that the contributions of Weber and Freud will be examined.