Freud said that all we need for happiness is work and love. Agree?

I just need love.

Disagree.

Welcome to fluther @detinu. Your first point was for “disagree.” Maybe you’d like to add something to that and say what you need for happiness?

Love, from people and animals. I could sooo not work and be happy.

@Zen: People are complex and unique, no set of two general things will fit everyone’s needs to be happy. It’s an impossibility.

@detinu It’s Freud. Obviously, there is a lot behind it. But even at the surface level, if you have a job and are relatively happy there, and your life is filled with love, from your s/o and children, what more could one require?

I don’t need work. Not to be happy anyway. I can find plenty of other activities to keep me happy, thank you very much!

@essieness You’re welcome.

I need beer too.

@Dog Funny!

Yeah? Well, noted psychologist Dr. John Lennon said that all you need is love.

I could give love and make love and receive love without work and still be very happy. I guess I’m going to have to disagree with Freud on this one.

If you love yourself, you’re happy. Loving yourself takes work, so I guess I do agree.

Freud got some things right and not so much on others. Although the thought of this seems beautiful I would have to disagree. I need love to be happy, I do need work to be happy, but I also need fulfillment and community service and culture and food/shelter and so many other things. Perhaps they fit under the categories of work and love? I could see that I suppose.

Zen: I’d like to see the exact quote. My sense of Freud’s theories is very different.

Source

The Pleasure Principle and the Reality Principle–

Freud argues that the only purpose in life people agree upon is to be happy. In its purest form happiness can only be achieved through the pleasure principle (living for the satisfaction of all needs, for pleasure).

Unfortunately, the very best sort of happiness can only be had when there is “a sudden satisfaction of needs” that have been pent up for some time. If we satisfy each desire as it arises the happiness in satisfying that desire is lessened.

The Reality Principle comes into play when the extreme possibilities for suffering presented by the external world force an individual to consider himself happy because he has escaped suffering. Avoiding suffering becomes the goal.

Busywork, Love and decent feedings: I’d go for that (even though Freud was a kook).

i disagree sort of.
i think the experience of “good work” and the experience of “love” are essential for creating the only thing we need for happiness: Good memories.

Disagree: It is possible to have both and still not be happy, it is possible to have neither and be happy.

I think by work he meant a purpose in life – not just work for money. I also have heard it differently, that three areas one needs for fulfilment in life are work,love and play. (Not sure if that was Freud or anothher psychologist.) I think I do agree with that, although the proportions of what you are getting/giving to each aspect may shift at different times in your life.

mental note: i want to either abolish or change the concept of “work” or “effort”

Disagree. Especially because it’s Freud.

I don’t think “work” in this sense means a job. It means whatever you put effort toward in order to accomplish something that’s important to you. There is a generally held belief that meaningful work—which for most of us is not our paid employment—is one of the essentials for a satisfying life. That kind of work, yes, I’d agree is necessary for happiness. It is the opposite of indolence, hedonism, and self-indulgence, which are the way to despair.

It seems to me that the most fortunate people are those who would choose the same work and dedicate themselves to it whether they were paid or not. They are doing what they love, and in a very real sense that kind of work is indistinguishable from play. I listened to a group of world-class cosmic physicists on the radio this morning, and from their talk I knew they were such people. So are many artists, physicians, teachers, and craftspeople. But not very many office workers, clerks, service people, and assembly-line workers.

I think one of the great tragedies of our modern high-tech world is that so few people do have meaningful work. Most of what we work with is not real. It has no substance and no relation to life, and we never get a sense of completeness or worthwhile achievement. It is nothing but little virtual words and numbers and images that we push around on screens. Every morning and evening I drive past huge buildings in Silicon Valley and think about the fact that each of them is full of thousands of people doing things that are not real and have no meaning, and it is a disturbing thought. Of those, only a few are truly loving what they do. The rest—well, what kind of a world do we create when we hate our lives, live for escape, and self-medicate to endure the intervals, and what are we showing our children?

I am not sure about love. I think it matters more to some than others. But I do think you need your basic bodily needs met, or happiness is still a stretch.

with it being Freud, i can’t believe he left out blowjobs…

@Yarnlady You said that it is possible to not have any kind of work (in its broadest sense, I thin it means to be active) and also no love and still be happy?

I think you are just enjoying disagreeing with me, which is fine. I’d like to meet a person who is inactive and has no love in his life, and for him to tell me that he is happy.

The meaning of work may be in dispute, but I have done volunteer work with a man who was completely paralyzed, and except for the staff, lived alone. He wrote letters and watched movies and was entirely as happy as a person can be in that condition.

There was also a client at the home who never developed beyond the mental ability of a three year old, barely potty trained, and he was happy.

If by happy, you mean doesn’t want change, than no one is, including those with love and work.

@Yarnlady What I understand from this quote, and what this exchange here has only strengthened, is that one usually assigns happiness with all kinds of things… the eternal “pursuit of…”

I think that at its most basic and fundamental, perhaps even naive and innocent, if we have work (whether charity, labour or high tech – in other words, being preoccupied happily with something we enjoy doing) and we are loved by someone (even if, in the case of your work with those unfortunate people – they had you) – then we should be happy. That it, if we love and are loved, and fill our time with labour of love, then we should be happy. If not, then nothing else will make us happy.

Now you may interpret this however you want: this is how I have interpreted it. And being someone who is loved, and has a job that I love, I am happy.

:-)

@Zen Yes, my original answer presupposes a very narrow definition of work and love.

Carl Gustav Jung said: “Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.”

@Zen: I’d still like to see the actual quote, please.

@Mattbrown: Thanks for showing us what Jung wrote.

@gailcalled You could have googled it by now, but here are two versions:

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
– Sigmund Freud

Love and work… work and love, that’s all there is.
– Sigmund Freud

Now if you are going to say Aha! He didn’t say it exactly like that! Then I shall say that over his lifetime, I’m sure he did – as that is how both quotes can be interpreted. How else? Besides, it wasn’t the point of this thread. What is yours?

Ah yes, a link

I tried to Google but found only his rather more complex quotes.
And I am not going to say “Aha,” but I do like attribution or the hint that you are interpreting something.

I would respond to Zen differently than I would respond to a quote of Freud’s.

My psychiatrist wrote a book called “Work and Love: The Crucial Balance,” by Jay B. Rohrlich, M.D. http://www.wiseowlbooks.net/si/011246.html

Rorhlich takes the contemporary view that women work as well as men. Freud concentrated on men, penises, penis envy and the Oedipus complex (about men and their mother.)

@Zen Like @gailcalled I also tried to search the internet and I was unable to find that quote. Thanks for the link.

Well, i don’t think so…what if you had work and love, but no free time/money to do other stuff you really wanted to do? I have work and love, but i’m not as happy as i can be by far!

@BellyJ – That’s not fair – dig a little deeper, dear. If you have work, you have money. If you are happy with your work, and also have love, what more could you need? Good luck with the house.

@Zen Well, work doesn’t always bring in enough money for the things you want. AND, isn’t not so easy finding a work that you LOVE, and that makes decent money. ALSO, maybe work and money and love are fine, but you have a family member that always manages to bring you down in the dumps again – or other stuff like that. Love and work are 2 of the most important ones i think, but there is more to it imo.
And tnx! :)

@JellyB Muah. May you always have enough love and money in your life for everything you desire.

@Zen TY! Same to you of crouse! :)

Whether or not this is Freud’s actual philosophy (thanks, gailcalled!), I don’t agree. I can generate satisfying work for myself. What I need is the needs of myself and my loved ones met, and access to the things I enjoy and appreciate in the world. My loved ones include other species and beautiful places, as well. So I need wild animals and their habitats to be safe and thriving.

I agree that life can be split into those two categories, as vague as they are. However, being happy isn’t as simple as having something to do and something to love. It’s too easy to look around and see someone else, who has more to do, or has more to love.

I think it’s more accurate to say that all we need to be happy is to stop trying so hard to be happy.

@Pol_is_aware “stop trying so hard” is on the right track, when people are trying too hard to “find” happiness somewhere, but it is right inside us. I have made a pledge to be happy every single day for the rest of my life.

@Pol_is_aware I never try to keep up with the Joneses, and I am happy with the little things that bring me joy. I have enough money from my work, and all the love I need from my kids and friends.

Things bring me down sometimes, like everyone, but in general, if I have work, and the love of my (healthy) kids and friends – wel, I’m happy.

Does this make me naive, or simplistic? Maybe, based on some of the things I’ve read here. But I really feel that way.

:-)

That’s not the only thing Freud said.

@Zen “simplistic” you say that like it’s a bad thing. More people should be like that, especially the simplistic part.

you also need God.