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Essays on psychology of religion
Sigmund Freud and religion
Essays on psychology of religion
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Sigmud Freud is a famous psychiatrist who studied the mental and behavioral changes of his patients. He develops methods through the analysis of his patients, basing conflicts off the dreams and fantasies they have. Unlike Freud, his friend Rolland believes due to his religious foundation, he is at one with the universe, or the “sensation of eternity”. Eternity means a time without an end, religions defines it to live forever. Rolland uses that as an outlet to at one with the universe. Skeptically Freud disagrees, he believes to be “oceanic” one must be at comfort of their pleasure. Freud reflects wryly on the views of Rolland and acknowledges religion as a playtime for pleasure. Plausible for Freud’s argument would be a baby. When an infant is born, instincts activate allowing the baby to know something just happened. Aware that he/she no longer lives in the mother, the baby still communicates through yells and comfort to receive the comfort and affection of mother. One comfort or pleasure can be the …show more content…
Once the thought of the food recurs periodically; hormones are raised. When you finally get the food that was once fantasized all intense hormones are released and and pleasure taken from is eating it. Freud seems to not refer as pleasure as pain but as distraction, can pleasure hurt us well maybe so. Freud’s account of our feeling of “self” is plausible. With Roland, he used religion to feel “self”, but not everyone will go the same experience with him. Freud was able to prove the Pleasure Principle is the outlet for many who attempt to “oceanic” through their comfort. Freud agrees the religion is a pleasure to an extent, he feels just like hobbies and comfort religion is nothing but a playtime pleasure. As Freud continues, he develops theories that helped elevate the term for what is means to be at one with the universe called
Religion has been a controversial topic among philosophers and in this paper I am focusing
Both Lewis and Freud agreed that the question of god’s existence and our response must be asked. Though each man had drastically different worldviews and answers, they each sought to learn and understand the other’s worldview. Nicholi points out that Lewis may have had an advantage in the understanding of the unbeliever’s worldview due to the fact that until the age of 30, he claimed to be “even more certain of his atheism than was Freud” (2002, Pg. 81). In his adult life, Freud had no dramatic change of worldview from believer to unbeliever like Lewis had. This fact may give Lewis a slight upper hand in the understanding of the unbeliever’s worldview; however, Freud was still one of the greatest minds of his times and his work proves a strong (though negative) understanding of the believer’s worldview.
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
“In this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is more correct to say: Originally the ego includes everything, later it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling - a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable connection of the ego with the external world.” (Freud pg.4) Freud in this comment explains what goes through one’s self to feel oceanic through religion.
In the first two chapter of the book, Freud explores a possible source of religious feeling. He describes an “oceanic feeling of wholeness, limitlessness, and eternity.” Freud himself is unable to experience such a feeling, but notes that there do indeed...
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.
To a certain extent I can agree with Freud’s views on natural instinct. Without manmade laws and “coercion” or rules that are presented by God, civilization would not survive or even have been born. Yet, as is the case with many other people, I disagree with his views on religion. I do not believe that religion was created by man, but by a higher being. It is impossible for me to believe that science will destroy religion because for every question science answers many more questions arise. The more science reveals about nature the more apparent it is to me that only a higher being could have created everything. As Freud states I am one of the unpersuadable.
from wrong even if they did not believe in a God. According to Freud, humans belonged
Freud believes the purpose of life is the pleasure principle, that the satisfaction of instinct spells happiness for us (p.28). His idea is for mankind to come together in unity, his idea is for a Utopian world such as Huxley describes in Brave New World. Love one’s neighbor as oneself, a famous quote from our Bible, Freud disregards as counter to human nature. Instead Freud concedes that guilt is the ruling power over humans, not guilt of misguided actions but rather fear of authority or the super ego. He believes people should follow their instincts, he does not believe humans are conscious of their decisions and the affects. He warrants the use of drugs because they follow along with his pleasure principle. To my dismay much of Freud’s teaching can be seen in today’s world. Gone are the ways of the Bible, which defines love as a sacred act shared between one man and one woman. Instead today, love is about pleasure, casual sex outside marriage is just one example. Freud does not believe in religion, he relates humans to apes as Darwin’s theory of Evolution defines. He opposes Sartre’s view, by saying we are not in control of our actions and cannot take responsibility of our
[1] Sigmund Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1961 (62). Hereafter cited parenthetically.
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.
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology with his mentor, Sigmund Freud. Both Freud and Jung addressed the influence of religion and religious experience toward humans projection of the unconscious. However, they disagreed in the extent of how religion influences projection. On one hand, Freud believed that religion is “a projection of unconscious wishes and desires” (Kessler, 148); strictly harmful and dangerous to the maturity of a person. Freud claims that as long as a person is bound by a religion, he/she cannot be considered matured. On the other hand, Jung believed that religion can be beneficial and act as a buffer for the maturity process. Jung supports the notion that a person’s unconscious projection is “the self-archetype that plays a positive role in helping the ego to integrate conflicting desires and finally gain a peaceful wisdom as a realized self” (Kessler, 151). This paper will utilize Jung’s version of psychoanalytical theory to compare and contrast the case studies of Moses and Jonestown.
The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic principles of Freud’s theories and to raise the main issues.
Goodwin, A. (1998). Freud and Erikson: Their Contributions to the Psychology of God-Image Formation. Pastoral Psychology, 47(2), 97-117. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
During Freud’s time of theology his main focus was humanity. He predominately spent his time studying and observing the functioning of humans and the forces and drives of why individuals respond to things the way they do. Part of his studies also dealt with relating individual’s forces and drives to early experiences had during the growing stages of life. The term Freud decided to use to summarize his entire concept of study was Psychodynamics. The fundamental concept, Psychodynamics, is an approach that underlies human’s behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experiences.