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Sigmund Freud: Religion As Neurosis 3 Sigmund Freud: Religion as Neurosis igmund Freud (1856-1939) was a towering presence in twentieth­ Scentury intellectual life. A thinker of fertile imagination and learned originality, he was a pioneering figure in the rise of psychology as a field of scientific inquiry. Perhaps more significantly, he has become, with Karl Marx, one of the two chief mentors of the modern mind. For some he is the icon of a revolution in sexual behavior and morality; for others, a fearless excavator of the depths of the human personality; for still others, the scourge of traditional religion and morality, and a somber prophet of the perils that shadow the future of civilization. Freud himself savored his position as outsider in a Victorian world, bent on disturbing the intel­ lectual peace of the establishment. That posture of the brilliant dissenter, the modern Socrates in a complacent Athens, was the signature stance of his career. In early years, Freud was an outstanding student, with a gift for lan­ guages, a capacious memory, and a keen interest in science. He pursued conventional medicine until he encountered Josef Breuer and Martin Char­ cot, two pioneers in the study of mental illness under whose influence he turned from physiological research on the brain to psychological study of the mind. In working with patients he developed a novel way of investigat­ ing-and treating-their disorders that he came to call "psychoanalysis:' The technique centered on listening to patients, who were encouraged to report, by free association, whatever came into the mind: intimate secrets, distressing anxieties, and especially the contents of dreams. Freud's reflec­ tions on these clinical conversations led to The Interpretation of Dreams, published in the year 1900-fittingly enough, for this was the book that launched the "Freudian revolution" and would leave its mark on the entire century to come. The Interpretation of Dreams introduced Freud's provocative idea of "the unconscious;' a mysterious realm of the mind, beneath the conscious 71 72 Introducing Religion Sigmund Freud: Religion as Neurosis 73 self, that is the storehouse of suppressed memories, images, and urges too mission. Critics dismissed it as unverifiable-a purely speculative venture socially disruptive or personally painful to disclose. Dreams are mecha­ in prehistory. But Freud made no apologies, and the book won for itself a nisms that release the repressed. Though they are natural features of the certain scandalous popularity. normal personality, they offer as well deep clues to the abnormal: to neu­ rotic or even psychotic disorders. Pscyhoanalysis was a theory as well as therapy. It was rooted in a new The Future of an Illusion (1927) concept of the human personality that replaced the old categories of body and soul with Freud's now famous threefold partition of the self into the The Future ofan Illusion is a work quite different from Totem and Taboo. It superego (carrying the moral demands of society), the id (reflecting the does not speculate about prehistoric humanity, but centers on something mindless urges ofthe body), and the ego (which strives to balance the con­ that psychoanalysis is better eqUipped to address: the "manifest motives" flict between the other two). In this scenario the self is not fixed; it is the of religiOUS belief at all times and places. It also has at least the makings site of an unceasing struggle of the ego to contain the conflicting pressures of a scientific argument-capable of at least some verification or disproof. of the superego and the id. This portrait of the human self divided lies at the We all know, says Freud, that the natural world is by no means friendly heart of the controversial theorem Freud introduced as the Oedipus com­ to our human aims and hopes. Disaster and disease ever threaten, and plex: the desire of the young child sexually to possess one parent combined ultimately death conquers all. None of us easily accepts this harsh truth. with hatred of the other as an unwanted rival. Oedipal issues apart, Freud We prefer the certitudes of childhood, when there was always a father found this idea of the personality in tension capable of illuminating every present to give comfort in the dark of night and reassurance amid the aspect of behavior, from the trivia of daily life to the great endeavors of art, dangers of the storm. As adults, we continue to crave that childhood secu­ literature, mythology, and, not least, religion. rity, though the world does not in fact offer it. Religion, however, pretends Though references to religious ideas and practices appear throughout we can return to childhood; it invents a Father God who assures us of his writings, Freud's main engagements with religion occur in three works: victory over every hardship, even death itself. It offers us an illusion-a Totem and Taboo (1913), The Future of an Illusion (1927), and Moses and form of belief arising merely from the immature wish that it be true. So, Monotheism (1939). Selections from each of these works are provided in for humanity to persist in religiOUS belief is to regress to its childhood, a this chapter. condition that psychoanalysis can identify as neurotic. Religion, Freud thus concludes, is "the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity:' Its appeal lies not in its rationality, but in the nonrational, purely emotional Totem and Taboo (1913) attachment to an illusion-a childish belief we hold simply because we wish it to be true. , Totem and Taboo is a work Freud regarded as one of his best, though it is less a book than a set ofloosely linked essays influenced by evolutionary theory and the anthropological studies of Frazer, Tylor, and their associates. In it Moses and Monotheism (1939) he proposed a historical circumstance that shocked middle class sensibili­ ties. Among early humans, who lived in hordes, like apes and chimpan­ Though The Future of an Illusion was potentially Freud's most persuasive zees, the younger males grew jealous of their own father, murdered him, statement on religion, it was not his last. His fascination with antiquity and took possession of his females. In fear afterward, they imposed a taboo drew him late in life to his own Judaism and its foremost figure, the against any new rebellion, and, assailed by guilt, they turned the father into Prophet Moses, who, Freud guessed, had taken the idea of the one holy a god, worshiping him in the form of an animal totem. Thus, out of the God from the Egyptian Pharoah Akenaton and given it to the Hebrews primal murder of the father have come both the oldest of humanity's moral as they escaped from slavery. They grew tired of the hardships incurred, commands-against murder (of the father) and incest (with his females)­ however, and in a desert rebellion, Moses was murdered. His monotheism as well as the beginnings of religion. It was a darkly fantastic story-cal­ was very nearly erased by a new and more violent religious creed, ugly by culated to outrage the guardians of conventionality; and it succeeded in its comparison with the original faith now lost, but suited to conquest of the 74 Introducing Religion Sigmund Freud: Religion as Neurosis 75 land of promise. In the time of the great Hebrew prophets, however, the anyone absent himself from the killing and the meal. When the deed is done, first faith was dramatically restored and reaffirmed. The original God of ~he slaughtered animal is lamented and bewailed. The mourning is obligatory, Moses returned to replace the God of vengeance and war and give shape Imposed by dread of a threatened retribution. As [British biblical scholar: ed.] to the true Judaism for the ages. For Freud, the parallel between the tur­ Robertson Smith ... remarks of an analogous occasion, its chief purpose is to bulent history of the Hebrews and what psychoanalysis finds in individual disclaim responsibility for the killing. personalities is striking. In a case of neurosis, a traumatic event is forcibly . But .the mourning is followed by demonstrations of festive rejoicing; every repressed, only to return later on, often in a surprise eruption: a "return of InstInct IS unfettered and there is license for every kind of gratification. Here the repressed:' Similarly, in the fortunes of the Hebrews, no less than the we have easy access to an understanding of the nature of festivals in general. murder in the primeval horde, a key psychic drama of the individual per­ A festival is a permitted, or rather an obligatory, excess, a solemn breach of a sonality is played out in communal form on the stage of history. Society's prohibition. It is not that men commit the excesses because they are feeling dynamics mirror those of the individual. happy as a result of some injunction they have received. It is rather that excess Needless to say, this imaginative recreation of ancient Jewish history is is of t?e essence of a festival; the festive feeling is produced by the liberty to do as open to question as Freud's earlier speculations about a prehistoric tribal what IS as a rule prohibited. murder. But that has not displaced the fascination with his ideas that persists . What are we to make, though, of the prelude to this festive joy-the mourn­ undiminished to the present day-among the current advocates of psycho­ Ing over the death of the animal? If the clansmen rejoice over the killing of the analytiC theory, on the pages of journals in literary and social criticism, and totem-a normally forbidden act-why do they mourn over it as well? in themes and ideas that continue to circulate in popular culture.
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