Ryan Hays Dissertation

In presenting this dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I agree that the Library of the University shall make it available for inspection and circulation in accordance with its regulations governing materials of this type. I agree that permission to copy from, or to publish, this dissertation may be granted by the professor under whose direction it was written when such copying or publication is solely for scholarly purposes and does not involve potential financial gain. In the absence of the professor, the dean of the Graduate School may grant permission. It is understood that any copying from, or publication of, this dissertation which involves potential financial gain will not be allowed without written permission. _________________________________________ Ryan Hays Fashioning Our Own Freuds: Psychoanalysis and Religion By: Ryan Hays Doctor of Philosophy The Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts ________________________________ Angelika Bammer, PhD Advisor ________________________________ Kevin Corrigan, PhD Committee Member ________________________________ Robert Paul, PhD Committee Member Accepted: ________________________________ Lisa A. Tedesco, PhD Dean of the Graduate School ________________________________ Date Fashioning Our Own Freuds: Psychoanalysis and Religion By: Ryan Hays Bachelor of Arts, DePauw University, 1998 Master of Divinity, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2001 Advisor: Angelika Bammer, PhD Committee Members: Kevin Corrigan, PhD Robert Paul, PhD An abstract of A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts 2008 ABSTRACT Was Sigmund Freud a militant atheist or an unconscious Christian or something in between? This study calls into the question the very idea that Sigmund Freud has a ‘true’ position on religion. It illustrates the extent to which different assumptions, strategies and formations lead to strikingly different historical representations of Freud: 1) Freud as neither enemy nor ally of religion (Erich Fromm); 2) Freud as Jewish mystic (David Bakan); 3) Freud as reconciler of psychoanalysis and religion (Ana-Maria Rizzuto); 4) Freud as militant atheist (Peter Gay); and 5) Freud as unconscious Christian (Paul Vitz). My thesis is that we do not find Freud in history as much as we fashion a Freud with history. What is more, the Freuds we fashion inevitably bear the impress of our own beliefs and biases. In the end, I seek to expose these types of historical representations of Freud and religion for the Rorschach test they are: they tell us more about our selves and our interpretive communities than they ever will about Sigmund Freud’s ‘position’ on religion. Fashioning Our Own Freuds: Psychoanalysis and Religion By: Ryan Hays Bachelor of Arts, DePauw University, 1998 Master of Divinity, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2001 Advisor: Angelika Bammer, PhD Committee Members: Kevin Corrigan, PhD Robert Paul, PhD A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts 2008 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend a special thanks to Kevin Corrigan and Robert Paul for all of their support, encouragement and advice over the years. I will never be able to hear or use the phrase “life of the mind” again and not think exclusively of them. No turn of phrase, no matter how eloquent or erudite, will ever capture the debt of gratitude that I owe to my advisor, Angelika Bammer, and my wife, Virginia. This study is dedicated to them. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter One Freud as Neither Enemy nor Ally of Religion…………………………………………...13 Chapter Two Freud as Jewish Mystic…………………………………………………………………..49 Chapter Three Freud as Reconciler of Psychoanalysis and Religion……………………………………73 Chapter Four Freud as Militant Atheist……………………………………………………………….111 Chapter Five Freud as Unconscious Christian………………………………………………………...139 Chapter Six Fashioning Our Own Freuds……………………………………………………………164 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...187 Oscar Nemon and Sigmund Freud on July 24, 1931 Michael Molnar, trans., The Diary of Sigmund Freud 1929-1939 (New York: Scribner, 1992) 1 INTRODUCTION On July 24, 1931, a young sculptor by the name of Oscar Nemon had two notable guests in his garden. The first was standing with the stillness of a statue and would know a life only eight more years in the making. The second was being fashioned on the fly and would long outlast both its famous model and its young maker. The first guest was Sigmund Freud and the second guest was a double of the first—a clay bust of Freud that Nemon was sculpting in the professor’s presence. In the days that followed, Freud informed a friend that Nemon’s visual representation was “an astonishingly lifelike impression” of him.1 But Freud’s housekeeper, Paula Fichtl, respectfully disagreed, stating that Nemon had crafted a Freud who looked much angrier than the man she knew.2 Freud responded by insisting that he was “angry with humanity,” and to this day the sculpture is known by that very description.3 My thesis takes its cue from this image: what Oscar Nemon did with clay and a scalpel, writers do with history and narrative—we fashion our own Freuds. I will argue that we do not find Freud in history as much as we make a Freud with history. And nowhere is this Freud-fashioning more apparent than in the field of psychoanalysis and religion, whereby multiple authors examine the same Sigmund Freud and render strikingly different representations—from David Bakan’s ‘Freud as Jewish mystic’ to Peter Gay’s ‘Freud as militant atheist’ to Paul Vitz’s ‘Freud as unconscious Christian,’ to name but a few. My goal is to expose these types of historical representations of Freud and religion for the Rorschach test they are: they tell us more about our selves and our interpretive communities than they ever will about Sigmund Freud’s ‘position’ on religion. 2 To engage some of the broader issues at stake in this study, and to keep my reflections from morphing into the type of neatly packaged story that constitutes most discussions of Freud, a pattern that I seek to interrogate at the end of this study, the remainder of this section is structured around a series of questions. Is this study worth reading? It is not unwise to wonder if the world really needs another study of Sigmund Freud. After all, the documentation devoted to him is said to surpass the extant material on any other human in history.4 What makes this study not only useful but also unique is its approach to Freud. Since his death in 1939, scholars of various stripes have approached the subject of Freud and religion in much the same way: no matter how idiosyncratic the argument, it almost always includes a historical representation of Freud’s position on religion. The problem is that too few of these studies ever stop to ask: why do we assume that Freud has a clear, consistent, continuous position on religion in the first place—especially when his encounters with religion were often ambiguous, contradictory and discontinuous? To ask this question is to realize that Freud cannot get from a singular statement, act or experience to an essential position without help from us. When we narrate Freud’s position on religion we impose, rather than expose, things like coherency, continuity, order, meaning, intention, structure and significance. Thus envisaged, the question of whether Freud ‘really’ is, for example, a militant atheist or an unconscious Christian misses the mark entirely. Since a Freud is as much made as found, the more pointed question to ask is: how does one go about fashioning a Freud as militant atheist as opposed to a Freud as unconscious Christian? Perhaps it is obvious then that 3 here I am concerned less with what Freud said or sensed about religion and more with what others represent him as saying or sensing about religion. This study lays bare the assumptions, strategies and formations that animate five narrative historical representations of Freud and religion. It also speaks to some of the environmental conditions that helped to shape these five representations, and considers how each representation plays within various interpretive circles. By tracking the multiple Freuds that exist in and for various communities, this study doubles as a thumbnail history of how psychoanalysis and religion have interfaced over the years. Such a contribution proves especially important because this is a field of study (the psychoanalytic study of religion and the religious-based study of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically-oriented thinking) that boasts thousands of books and articles to its name, not one of which constitutes a thorough history of its development.5 How is it that a field devoted to the interface of psychoanalysis and religion—two disciplines that espouse the examined life—can live such an unexamined existence? I will argue that this field has been so preoccupied with fixing Freud’s place in history that it has failed to adequately articulate, much less analyze, its own historical development. Why these five representations of Freud? This study focuses on five narrative historical representations of Freud and religion: . Freud as neither enemy nor ally of religion (Erich Fromm) . Freud as Jewish mystic (David Bakan) . Freud as reconciler of psychoanalysis and religion (Ana-Maria Rizzuto) . Freud as militant atheist (Peter Gay) . Freud as unconscious Christian (Paul Vitz). 4 Each representation corresponds to the theories of a single author, but all have an almost archetypal character to them. Indeed, most discussions of Freud and religion fall somewhere within this spectrum of five. An exception to this pattern might be the literature on Buddhism, which tends to focus less on the figure of Freud and more on the tenets of psychoanalysis.

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