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As Norbert Elias himself recognized, the influence of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis on his work is well established. However, Elias’s relationship to Freud’s work raises many questions. While the sociologist turned to it to support his thesis of the civilization process, he did not hesitate to make various criticisms. One of the last texts of Elias, “Freud's concept of society and beyond it,” discusses and analyzes Freudian theory and concepts for the first time in his work. The aim of this article is, first, to clarify the terms of this criticism, to explain less its intrinsic veracity than its significance for Elias’s work. The article explores the dichotomy between individual and society, which are opposed to each other, and revives Elias’s project to overcome this dichotomy with a detached consideration of psychoanalysis.