The Pleasure Principle

Jonas and Basil: It is always a joy to see you so enganged is seeking truth. Hear is a view from some of my readings that I thought relavent so a conversation regarding secular humanism: Freud's history of the super ego.

So basically, man as a primitive hunter-gatherer has little to no ethical understanding beyond very basic survival laws, ie, hurting myself yeilds no benificial outcome for the betterment of myself. Then women enter the picture and man finds that keeping a woman around has more pleasurable oppurtunities than random "relations". And thus, the family structure is founded. Men gets pleasure, women get protection. Then man discovers more safety in packs instead of a lonely, nomadic lifestyle and turns his attention to building a civilization. As generataions pass, and laws are made to keep peace within the civilization, man teaches itself what it can and cannot do.

Freud relates a story about several sons who realize they are better off without being controlled by their father. So they band together and murder their father. But without authority to maintain civility, they are forced to create their own authority, aka, something to keep their "ego" in check. The "super-ego" (conscience) is then developed to serve that purpose. But unlike an outside authority figure who can only address and castigate one's actions, the super ego knows and claims authority over one's thoughts as well. (Freud draws a weak connection to Christ and sins of the mind).

What is interesting about his theory (at least the part I've mentioned here) is that everything is about love as expressed through the ego. He uses the term "love", but the inherent selfishness of his idea hardly warrents the use of this word (at least from our prospective). So the ego looks for pleasure and the super ego regulates the ego's desire and protects it from being self-destructive. However, a highly developed "conscience" according to Freud, can become an impediment to man's desire as it can become too overpowering. His examples are the saints, tauted as holy and righteous men and women, but quite the opposite. Their sacrificial lifestyles prevent happiness as derived from their ego and world, and are forced to hope for something spiritual (which to Freud is an absolute waste of time.)

So my question: Freud's ehtics seem to amount to a regulation of the natural pleasure in the world so as not to overstep one's boundries. Would this be closely aligned to what Jonas refers to as "The Nietzschean?"