Note: you should know all the terms that appear in italics.

This short except (pp. 255-258) gives you a sense of Freud's efforts to move from the close study of human emotions to what those studies mean for his understanding of human behavior in the world.  As you recall from the last reading, Freud emphasized the "sub-surface" emotional life of most humans: the unconscious desires that underly and often motivate our daily behavior.  Dreams appealed to him partly because he believed that these desires become evident in dreams, albeit in censored forms.

Driven by forces we resist acknowledging--the desire for sex with inappropriate partners, etc.--mankind develops neurotic tendencies.  In this section,  Freud describes the neurosis-inducing features of civilized life and tries to figure out how best we can survive as Freudian people in a Lockean society.

A recent edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia describes this aspect of Freud's thought as follows:
 

The basic postulate of psychoanalysis, the concept of a dynamic unconscious mind, grew out of Freud’s observation that the physical symptoms of hysterical patients tended to disappear after apparently forgotten material was made conscious(see hysteria). He saw the unconscious as an area of great psychic activity, which influenced personality and behavior but operated with material not subject to recall through normal mental processes. Freud postulated that there were a number of defense mechanisms—including repression, reaction-formation, regression, displacement, and rationalization—that protect the conscious mind from those aspects of reality it may find difficult to accept. The major defense mechanism is repression,  which induced a “forgetfulness” for harsh realities. Observing the relationship between psychoneurosis and repressed memories, Freud made conscious recognition of these forgotten experiences the foundation of psychoanalytic therapy.... Dreams, which Freud interpreted as symbolic wish fulfillments, were considered a primary key to the unconscious, and their analysis was an important part of Freudian therapy.

To clarify the operation of the human psyche, Freud and his followers introduced a vast body of psychoanalytic theory. In considering the human personality as a whole, Freud divided it into three functional parts: id, ego, and superego. He saw the id as the deepest level of the unconscious, dominated by the pleasure principle, with its object the immediate gratification of instinctual drives. The superego, originating in the child through an identification with parents, and in response to social pressures, functions as an internal censor to repress the urges of the id. The ego, on the other hand, is seen as a part of the id modified by contact with the external world. It is a mental agent mediating among three contending forces: the outside demands of social pressure or reality, libidinal demands for immediate satisfaction arising from the id, and the moral demands of the superego...  Freud asserted that conflicts between these often-opposing components of the human mind are crucial factors in the development of neurosis.

Psychoanalysis focused on early childhood, postulating that many of the conflicts which arise in the human mind develop in the first years of a person’s life. Freud demonstrated this in his theory of psychosexuality, in which the libido (sexual energy) of the infant progressively seeks outlet through different body zones (oral, anal, phallic, and genital) during the first five to six years of life.

http://www.bartleby.com/65/ps/psychoan.html

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Freud begins by stating that the frustrations neurotics experience lead them to create "substitutive satisfactions" that upset his or her relationship with society or "cause him suffering in themselves"--a topic he now proceeds to explore.  He begins to explore the tensions that impede formation of a civil society.  Please re-read the second and third paragraphs on page 255.  Eros, the god of love, is clearly powerful here, but love (desire, the libido) is normally dyadic (two-partner).  Clearly a society in which partners cared more for each other than for anyone else will not hold together well: society requires an "aim-inhibited" libido that makes us all care for everyone around us.

But we don't!  Trying to figure out why not, Freud turns to Christian thought:  "Love they neighbor as thyself."  [256] He asks: "Why should we?"    He gives reasons why we should not love those around us, and then, after noting the Christian paradox, "I believe because it is absurd," asks why others should love us?  One reason they should not, is that we are all very aggressive creatures, and that civilization requires "being bad."  The point of the French quotation in column 2 here--"Let the honorable assassins begin!"--is that even the foes of the death penalty are hypocrites with blood on their hands.

Now Freud unveils his own theory of human nature, the result of years of analytic work:  homo homini lupus, "man is a wolf to man"  aggressiveness is universal. [257] Society, as a result, must expend immense energy in keeping this aggressiveness in check, in "inciting" people into "aim-inhibited relationships of love," etc.  Freud's discussion of Marxism is fairly straightforward.  Now [258] Freud discusses the "narcissism of minor differences,"  the state of primitive man, and the state of American culture.

I'm posing some questions in the Discussion Board that are intended to get you to work on this section.  But here is one worth starting with: is the last page optimistic or pessimistic?