Sigmund Freud shocked the Victorian world with his provocative discoveries of the subconscious, and what it means in determining human nature. Now referred as The Father of Psychoanalysis, Freud developed groundbreaking theories exploring the roots of neurotic symptoms and the conflict between the human Id and Super Ego. Freud also in his research looks at the concept of religion, and its effect on the human state, and what it provides for the human psye. Publishing five accounts: Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices, Totem and Taboo, The Future of and Illusion, Civilizations and its Discontents, Moses and Monotheism. Freud’s criticisms of religion are very enticing, and seem to have some truth in them. Unfortunately some of the facts seem to be lacking resulting in a underdeveloped thesis that can’t be proved, or disproved. I think Freud had some great ideas about the philosophy of religion, but the lack of evidence in his highly detailed account of its origin leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Freud’s first account of religion appears in Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices. He suggests that Religion, and neurosis, are similar products stemming from the human mind. Neurosis, with its compulsive behavior, is “an individual religiosity" , and religion, with its repetitive rituals, is a “universal obsessional neurosis” . Freud has always been fascinated with the idea of repetition and what that means for the human subconscious. He often links the idea of repetition to early stages of development in both Biolodomy and Ontogeny. When looking at religion repetition is practiced heavily. Looking at just Christianity, you go to church every Sunday; you have holidays like Christmas and Easter every year, and the rituals that fol...
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...ge of a fatherly protector. We then transfer the image into a deity and make it into something contemporary and real. The affective strength of this image and the persistence of our need for protection jointly sustain our belief in God. In order to receive this protection however, we must adapt ourselves to certain restrictions on our instinctual wishes. Our love of God and our consciousness of being loved by God are the foundation of the security with which we are armed against the dangers of the external world and of our human environment
Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund, James Strachey, and Albert Dickson. The Origins of Religion: Totem and Taboo, Moses and Monotheism and Other Works. London: Penguin, 1985. Print.
Freud, Sigmund, James Strachey, and Anna Freud. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth, 1955. Print.
Throughout this essay I will demonstrate how religion has played a role in the lives of humans as well as explicate the reasoning behind the true nature of the creation of religion by a psychopath.
Similar to Marx, Freud believes humans simply make up the idea of God in explanation to things science could not disprove. Humans take relationships from our Earthly fathers and compare it to our Heavenly father. According to Freud, “Religion is an attempt to master the sensory world in which we are situated by means of the wishful world which we have developed within us as a result of biological and psychological necessities.” (H/R,p.26) Science can neither prove or disprove religion. Freud chooses to believe science and claims religion is only comforting and hopeful thinking to our purpose after
Erich Fromm in his psychoanalytical approach to religion is distinct from the earlier works of Sigmund Freud. Fromm defines religion as “any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion.” Fromm argues that irreligious systems including all the different kinds of idealism and “private” religions deserve being defined as a “religion.” Based on Fromm’s theory, it is explained that there is no human being who does not have a “religious need,” almost every part of human life reflects religious need and its fulfillment, in fact he states it to be “inherent” in man.
To draw a parallel of obsessional neurosis with religion, established disconcerting similarities between compulsive acts and religious practices that, in his view, aimed essentially the same thing: remove the guilt by a ritualistic compensatory restoration. Both the religious obsessive as in the main formula would be similar to what happens psych- scroll in a dream - through which the trivial details of the ritual activity become more important, since they are forcibly expelled the truly meaningful content. Regarding this analogy, Freud concludes that we can conceive of obsessional neurosis as a pathological match against religious formation, featuring obsessional neurosis as an individual religiosity and religion as a universal obsessional neurosis.
...en civilization and the individual. Living in a nation still recovering from a brutally violent war (Germany), Freud began to criticize organized religion as a collective neurosis, or mental disorder. Freud, a strong proponent of atheism, argued that religion tamed asocial instincts and created a sense of community because of the shared set of beliefs. This undoubtedly helped a civilization. However, at the same time organized religion also exacts an enormous psychological cost to the individual by making him or her perpetually subordinate to the primal figure embodied by God.
In the midst of his already successful career, Sigmund Freud decided to finally dedicate a book of his to religion, referring to the subject as a phenomena faced by the scientific community. This new work, Totem and Taboo, blew society off its feet, ultimately expanding the reaches of debates and intellectual studies. From the beginning, Freud argues that there exists a parallel between the archaic man and the contemporary compulsive. Both these types of people, he argues, exhibit neurotic behavior, and so the parallel between the two is sound. Freud argues that we should be able to determine the cause of religion the same way we determine the cause of neurosis. He believes, since all neuroses stem from childhood experiences, that the origins of this compulsive behavior we call religion should also be attributed to some childhood experiences of the human race, too. Freudian thought has been dominant since he became well known. In Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, religion becomes entirely evident as a major part of the novel, but the role it specifically plays is what we should question. Therefore, I argue that Freud’s approach to an inborn sense of religion and the role it plays exists in The Last of the Mohicans, in that the role religion plays in the wilderness manifests itself in the form of an untouchable truth, an innate sense of being, and most importantly, something that cannot and should not be tampered with.
middle of paper ... ... the name of ‘super-ego’. The parents’ influence naturally includes not only the personalities of the parents themselves but also the racial, national and family traditions handed on through them, as well as the demands of the immediate social milieu which they represent. "[2] Conscience, then, may be argued to be little more than the inherited traditions of the community and family in which one is brought up and which lives in one’s super-ego for the rest of one’s life. This, naturally, undermines any claim that there is a connection between God and human conscience.
Contemporary Psychology, 36, 575-577. Freud, S. (1961). The Species of the World. The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. London: The Hogarths.
Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Ed. James Strachey. Trans. James Strachey. Standard. Vol. 22. London: Hogarth Press, 1964.
Founder of physco-analysis, Sigmund Freud suffered from a very traumatic and difficult childhood that left a legacy of fear, insecurity and unbalance. Like many bright children in his predicament, he escaped. Freud relied on his impressive literary skills. As a young boy he lived in a world of books and imagination. Sigmund was drawn to tales ...
Freud, S., Strachey, J., Freud, A., Rothgeb, C., & Richards, A. (1953). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (1st ed.). London: Hogarth Press.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the developer of psychoanalysis. His work created psychoanalytic views of human nature. He interpreted the individuality as a closed energy method, made up of conscious and unconscious parts, defense systems, unconscious instincts, anxieties, and biological drives. Biological instincts and childhood experiences determine who a person will be. Therefore human nature was seen as biologically driven and determined, instead of a combination of learned behaviors to be exploited or a certain possibility for self-actualization.
The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic principles of Freud’s theories and to raise the main issues.
works of Sigmund Freud. Ed James Stachey. Trans. James Strac hey. London: Hogarth press, 1961. 1-19. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Ed. and Trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1962.