Freud’s premise is that any form of government, ultimately, is repressive of human nature. I disagree with this because when I think of someone’s nature, I think of someone being as they are with based on what is available to them. This premise coined by Freud implies that people are not their true selves, simply based on government and the laws and regulations that are put in place and enforced. The reason that I disagree that government represses human nature is for the simple fact that crime still exists as do law abiding citizens.
Because crime still exists, this challenges Freud’s premise. If our nature was repressed based on governmental statutes and limitations then people would not wilfully commit crime out of fear of the consequences that are put in place based on the crime. I do believe; however, that human nature is influenced by and heavily reflective of a person’s environment. What the government says has nothing to do with whether a person is inherently good or inherently bad, but the nature of a person is situational. I do not believe that all people have a nature to be good or that all people have a nature to be bad. I think human nature is too broadly generalized and is a heavily categorized concept both claiming to be composed of humankind and also claiming to be shared by all humans instead of being classified exclusively to the individual.
To further support my claim I would like to present the following example: Jeffrey Dahmer was an American killer and sex offender whose nature presented itself at an early age when he “played” with animals. Eventually, he began killing for pleasure. So if human nature is repressed based on government, then why did Dahmer mobilize into such a menace? Of course this example may seem as more of a case study, considering the majority of Americans are not both killers and sex offenders, but in the same way we can argue that all Americans are not law abiding citizens either. Human nature is a concept that inaccurately encompasses humans as a whole to have the same exact nature, whether it be “good” or “bad”.
