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Home / According to Freud the Beginnings of Religion Morality and Art and Society Can Be Found in

According to Freud the Beginnings of Religion Morality and Art and Society Can Be Found in

Sigmund Freud'south views on religion are described in several of his books and essays. Freud regarded God as an illusion, based on the infantile need for a powerful father effigy. According to him, faith, necessary to aid us restrain vehement impulses earlier in the development of civilization, can now be set bated in favor of reason and scientific discipline.[ane]

Freud's religious groundwork [edit]

In An Autobiographical Study, originally published in 1925, Freud recounts that "My parents were Jews, and I have remained a Jew myself." Familiarity with Bible stories, from an historic period even before he learned to read, had "an enduring effect on the direction of my interest." In 1873, upon attending the University at Vienna, he first encountered antisemitism: "I found that I was expected to feel myself inferior and an alien because I was a Jew."[ii]

In a prefatory note to the Hebrew translation of Totem and Taboo (1930) Freud describes himself equally "an writer who is ignorant of the linguistic communication of holy writ, who is completely estranged from the religion of his fathers—as well equally from every other organized religion" but who remains "in his essential nature a Jew and who has no desire to change that nature".[iii]

Obsessive Deportment and Religious Practices [edit]

In Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices (1907), his primeval writing well-nigh organized religion, Freud suggests that religion and neurosis are similar products of the man listen: neurosis, with its compulsive behavior, is "an individual religiosity", and religion, with its repetitive rituals, is a "universal obsessional neurosis".[iv]

Totem and Taboo [edit]

In Totem and Taboo, published in 1913, Freud analyzes the tendency of primitive tribes to promulgate rules confronting incest within groups named for totem fauna and objects, and to create taboos regarding deportment, people and things. He notes that taboos (such every bit that regarding incest) still play a significant function in modern social club but that totemism "has long been abased as an actuality and replaced by newer forms". Freud believes that an original act of patricide—the killing and devouring of "the fierce primal begetter" was remembered and re-enacted as a "totem repast...flesh'southward primeval festival" which was "the beginning of so many things—of social organization, of moral restrictions and of religion".[5] Freud develops this idea further in Moses and Monotheism, his last book, discussed below. He further goes to attribute creation of gods to humans: "...we know that, like gods, [demons] are simply the production of the psychic powers of human being; they have been created from and out of something."[half dozen]

In An Autobiographical Report Freud elaborated on the core idea of Totem and Taboo: "This view of religion throws a especially clear low-cal upon the psychological ground of Christianity, in which, it may be added, the anniversary of the totem-banquet still survives with but little distortion in the form of Communion."[7]

The Future of an Illusion [edit]

In The Hereafter of an Illusion (1927),[8] Freud refers to religion as an illusion which is "perchance the nearly important item in the psychical inventory of a civilization". In his estimation, religion provides for defense against "the crushingly superior strength of nature" and "the urge to rectify the shortcomings of civilization which fabricated themselves painfully felt".[ix] He concludes that all religious beliefs are "illusions and insusceptible of proof".[10]

Freud so examines the issue of whether, without organized religion, people will feel "exempt from all obligation to obey the precepts of culture".[11] He notes that "civilization has niggling to fright from educated people and brain-workers" in whom secular motives for morality replace religious ones, only he acknowledges the existence of "the great mass of the uneducated and oppressed" who may commit murder if non told that God forbids information technology, and who must be "held down almost severely" unless "the relationship between civilisation and religion" undergoes "a fundamental revision".[12]

Freud asserts that dogmatic religious training contributes to a weakness of intellect by foreclosing lines of inquiry.[13] He argues that "in the long run nothing tin can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which organized religion offers to both is all besides palpable."[14] [15] The book expressed Freud's "hope that in the future science volition become beyond religion, and reason volition supersede faith in God".[16]

In an afterword to An Autobiographical Study (1925, revised 1935), Freud states that his "substantially negative" view of faith changed somewhat after The Future of an Illusion; while religion's "power lies in the truth which it contains, I showed that that truth was non a material just a historical truth."[17]

Harold Bloom calls The Future of an Illusion "1 of the peachy failures of religious criticism." Bloom believes that Freud underestimated religion, and that as a outcome his criticisms of it were no more than convincing than T. S. Eliot'south criticisms of psychoanalysis. Blossom suggests that psychoanalysis and Christianity are both interpretations of the world and of human being nature, and that while Freud believed that religious beliefs are illusions and delusions, the same may be said of psychoanalytic theory. In his view naught is achieved with regard to either Christianity or psychoanalysis by listing their illusions and delusions.[18]

Culture and its Discontents [edit]

In Civilization and its Discontents, published in 1930, Freud says that man's need for religion could be explained by "a awareness of 'eternity', a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded—as it were, 'oceanic'", and adds, "I cannot find this 'oceanic' feeling in myself".[19] Freud suggests that the "oceanic feeling", which his friend Romain Rolland had described to him in a alphabetic character, is a wish fulfillment, related to the child'southward egoistic need for protection.[20]

James Strachey, editor and translator of this and other works of Freud, describes the chief theme of the work every bit "the irremediable antagonism betwixt the demands of instinct and the restrictions of civilization".[21] Freud also treats ii other themes, the evolution of civilization recapitulating individual development, and the personal and social struggle between "Eros" and "Thanatos", life and expiry urges.[22]

Freud expresses deep pessimism about the odds of humanity's reason triumphing over its subversive forces. He added a final sentence to the book in a 1931 edition, when the threat of Hitler was already becoming apparent: "Just who tin can foresee with what success and with what result?"[23]

Atheist political commentator and author Christopher Hitchens cited this book as a reason behind Freud being i of his most influential figures. Hitchens described the book as a "pessimistic unillusioned tale of realism," noting that Freud "wasted little fourth dimension in identifying [the need for religion] as infantile" and pointing out a summary by Freud's biographer Ernest Jones that "Man happiness, therefore, does non seem to be the purpose of the universe."[24]

Moses and Monotheism [edit]

Moses and Monotheism was Freud's last book, published in 1939, the year of his decease. In it, Freud makes certain guesses and assumptions nearly Moses as a historical figure, particularly that he was not born Jewish but was adopted by Jews (the opposite of the Biblical story) and that he was murdered by his followers, who so via reaction formation revered him and became irrevocably committed to the monotheistic idea he represented.[25] [26] [27]

Marking Edmundson comments that in writing Moses and Monotheism, Freud, while not abandoning his atheism, perceived for the get-go fourth dimension a value in the abstruse course of monotheism—the worship of an invisible God, without Jesus or saints—adept past the Jews.[28]

And so the mental labor of monotheism prepared the Jews — as it would eventually prepare others in the Due west — to achieve distinction in law, in mathematics, in scientific discipline and in literary art. Information technology gave them an advantage in all activities that involved making an abstract model of experience, in words or numbers or lines, and working with the abstraction to achieve control over nature or to bring humane order to life. Freud calls this internalizing procedure an "advance in intellectuality," and he credits information technology directly to faith.

In Moses and Monotheism, Freud proposed that Moses had been a priest of Akhenaten who fled Arab republic of egypt after the pharaoh's death and perpetuated monotheism through a dissimilar religion.[29]

According to Jay Geller, Moses and Monotheism is full of "false starts, deferred conclusions, repetitions, rationalizations, defensive self-justifications, questionable methods, and weak arguments that are readily best-selling equally such past Freud."[thirty]

The Question of a Weltanschauung [edit]

The after developments in Freud's views on religion are summarized in his lecture on the Question of a Weltanschauung, Vienna, 1932. There he describes the struggles of science in its relations with three other powers: art, philosophy and religion.

Fine art is an illusion of some sort and a long story. Philosophy goes astray in its method. Organized religion constructed a consequent and cocky-contained Weltanschauung to an unparalleled degree. By comparison science is marked by certain negative characteristics. Amid them it asserts that there are no sources of noesis of the universe other than the intellectual working over of advisedly scrutinized observations, and none that is derived from revelation, intuition or divination.

On relations betwixt science and philosophy and science and organized religion Freud has this much to say in one judgement: "It is non permissible to declare that science is ane field of homo mental activeness and that organized religion and philosophy are others, at least equal in value, and that science has no business organisation to interfere with the other two: that they all have an equal claim to be true and that everyone is at liberty to cull from which he will depict his convictions and in which he will place his belief." And then he goes on to say that such an impermissible view is regarded as superior and tolerant, but that it is non tenable, that it shares all the pernicious features of an entirely unscientific Weltanschauung and that it is equivalent to i in practise.

With respect to religion in detail he explains that a religious person had in one case been feeble and helpless. A parent had protected him. Later such a person gets more insight into the perils of life and he rightly concludes that fundamentally he yet remains just as helpless as he was in his childhood.

Then he harks back to the mnemic paradigm.[31]

Responses and criticisms [edit]

In a 1949 essay in Commentary mag, Irving Kristol says that Freud exposed what he believed to be the irrationality of faith without bear witness, but has not substituted annihilation beyond "a mythology of rational despair".[32]

In a 1949 volume entitled Christianity afterwards Freud, Benjamin Gilbert Sanders draws parallels betwixt the theory of psychoanalysis and Christian religion, referring to Jesus Christ every bit "the Peachy Psychiatrist" and Christians' love for Christ equally "a more positive form of the Transference".[33]

Karen Armstrong notes in A History of God that "not all psychoanalysts agreed with Freud's view of God," citing Alfred Adler, who believed God was a projection which had been "helpful to humanity", and C.G. Jung, who, when asked whether he believed in God, said "Difficult to answer, I know. I don't need to believe. I know."[34]

Tony Campolo, founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, observes that "With Freud, God, and the need for God-dictated restraints, had been abolished,"[35] resulting in an increase in social chaos and unhappiness which could have been avoided by adherence to faith.

A number of critics draw the parallel between religious behavior and Freud's theories, that neither can be scientifically proven, but just experienced subjectively. Lee Siegel writes that "you either grasp the reality of Freud'south dynamic notion of the subconscious intuitively – the way, in fact, you do or practise not grasp the truthfulness of Ecclesiastes – or y'all cannot take that it exists."[36]

Encounter also [edit]

  • Freud and Philosophy
  • The Foundations of Psychoanalysis
  • Theories of Faith

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ Armstrong, Karen. A History of God (New York: Ballantine Books 1993) p. 357 ISBN 0-345-38456-3
  2. ^ Freud, Sigmund, An Autobiographical Report (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989 [1952]) pp. 13–fourteen. ISBN 0-393-00146-vi
  3. ^ "Freud, Sigmind Totem and Taboo (New York: W.Due west. Norton & Co. 1950) p. xi ISBN 0-393-00143-1
  4. ^ Gay, Peter, editor, The Freud Reader (New York: W.West. Norton & Co. 1995) p. 435 ISBN 0-393-31403-0
  5. ^ Freud, Sigmind Totem and Taboo (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1950) pp. x, 142 ISBN 0-393-00143-1
  6. ^ Freud, Sigmund "Totem and Taboo" (affiliate two, kindle edition)
  7. ^ Freud, Sigmund, An Autobiographical Written report (New York:W.W. Norton & Co., 1989 [1952]) pp. 130–131 ISBN 0-393-00146-6
  8. ^ Freud 1961, p. 14
  9. ^ Freud 1961, p. 21
  10. ^ Freud 1961, p. 31
  11. ^ Freud 1961, p. 34
  12. ^ Freud 1961, p. 39
  13. ^ Freud 1961, p. 47
  14. ^ Freud 1961, p. 54
  15. ^ Gay, Peter. Freud: A life for our fourth dimension (New York: Norton, 1998) p. 535 ISBN 0-393-31826-5
  16. ^ Mary Grand. O'Neill and Salman Aktar, eds, On Freud's 'The Hereafter of an Illusion' (London: Karnac Books, 2009) p. x ISBN 978-1-85575-627-4
  17. ^ Freud, Sigmund, An Autobiographical Written report (New York:W.Due west. Norton & Co., 1989 [1952]) pp. 130–131, 138 ISBN 0-393-00146-6
  18. ^ Blossom, Harold. The American Religion: The Emergence of the Mail-Christian Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, pp. 34–35.
  19. ^ Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents (New York: Norton 1962), pp. 11–12 ISBN 0-393-09623-eight)
  20. ^ Fisher, David, Cultural Theory and Psychoanalytic Tradition (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers Rutgers University 2009) p. 117 ISBN 978-1-4128-0859-0
  21. ^ James Strachey, "Editors' Introduction", in Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents (New York: Norton 1962), pp. 11–12 ISBN 0-393-09623-8)
  22. ^ Lee Siegel, "Freud and His Discontents", in The New York Times for May eight, 2005 https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/books/review/08SIEGELL.html?pagewanted=print Accessed January 25, 2011
  23. ^ Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents (New York: Norton 1962), pp. 92 and editor's footnote ISBN 0-393-09623-8)
  24. ^ Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents (New York/London W.W. Norton 2010), pp. 9-xx introduction ISBN 0-393-30451-5)
  25. ^ Stratton, Kimberly B. (Baronial 2017). Copp, Paul; Wedemeyer, Christian Thousand. (eds.). "Narrating Violence, Narrating Cocky: Exodus and Collective Identity in Early Rabbinic Literature". History of Religions. University of Chicago Press for the University of Chicago Divinity Schoolhouse. 57 (ane): 68–92. doi:x.1086/692318. ISSN 0018-2710. JSTOR 00182710. LCCN 64001081. OCLC 299661763.
  26. ^ Freud, Sigmund, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage Books 1967
  27. ^ Mark Edmundson, "Defender of the Faith?" The New York Times September 9, 2007 https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/magazine/09wwln-lede-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 Accessed January 24, 2011
  28. ^ Mark Edmundson, "Defender of the Faith?" The New York Times September nine, 2007 https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/magazine/09wwln-lede-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 Accessed January 24, 2011
  29. ^ S. Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXIII (1937-1939), "Moses and monotheism". London: Hogarth Press, 1964.
  30. ^ Jay Geller, "A PALEONTOLOGICAL VIEW OF FREUD'South STUDY OF RELIGION: UNEARTHING THE LEITFOSSIL CIRCUMCISION" Mod Judaism thirteen (1993): 49–seventy http://mj.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/i/49.full.pdf Accessed January 25, 2011
  31. ^ Freud, Sigmund, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, New York: W. West. Norton and Company, 1965, pages 195-202.
  32. ^ Irving Kristol, "God and the Psychoanalysts: Tin can Freud and Religion Exist Reconciled?" Commentary Magazine Nov 1949 http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/god-and-the-psychoanalysts-br-em-can-freud-and-religion-be-reconciled-em--906 Accessed Jan 24, 2011
  33. ^ "Freudian Christianity", Time Mag, February vi, 1950 [1] Accessed January 24, 2011
  34. ^ Armstrong, Karen. A History of God (New York: Ballantine Books 1993) p. 357 ISBN 0-345-38456-3
  35. ^ Tony Campolo, "Religion Later Freud", Huffington Post Jan 31, 2007 http://world wide web.huffingtonpost.com/tony-campolo/religion-later on-freud_b_40071.html Accessed January 24, 2011
  36. ^ Lee Siegel, "Freud and His Discontents", in The New York Times for May 8, 2005 https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/books/review/08SIEGELL.html?pagewanted=print Accessed January 25, 2011

Sources [edit]

  • Freud, Sigmund (1961) [1927], Strachey, James (ed.), The futurity of an illusion, Norton, ISBN978-0-393-00831-9

External links [edit]

  • "Freud and Religion" at the Freud Museum
  • Sigmund Freud: Religion article in the Net Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud%27s_views_on_religion