Marcuse begins his treatise with an explanation that his title and his approach in the treatise are an attempt to reframe the contributions of modern philosophy to an optimistic view of social behavior. He begins to unfold this idea by expressing the idea that perhaps what we mean by words like "moral" and "civic" is actually a repression of our animal, biological instincts. He says that industrial society, especially modern capitalism, has stunted the progress of social acceptance of our biogenetic instincts. His solution is sex positivity, an acceptance of eros as a tool for freeing oneself from the burden of "progress" as shown in capitalism.
Marcuse outlines the relationship between erotic fulfillment and the cause of productivity, saying that instructing someone to become productive depends on the redirection of their sexual energy—so they can't be allowed sexual release, or else their drive for progress is diminished. In other words, Marcuse believes that the urge for success and progress, especially in capitalistic environments, is essentially misplaced sexual frustration.
He then argues that this active repression of erotic fulfillment is the tool of the wealthy and powerful to indict and enslave the poor, causing them to re-contextualize their mistreatment as their own fault. If they want the reward, they'll have to work for it, while secretly wealthy people and powerful people enjoy lives of lavish erotic fulfillment.
He then discusses the views of Kant and Schiller and justifies his ideas to their observations, before finally answering the obvious question of Carl Jung's ideas, which stand directly opposed to Marcuse's interpretation of the collective unconscious. He dismisses Jung's ideas for being essentially mythological and not scientific.
