Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:53:25.594Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Religion as Projection: A Re-appraisal of Freud's Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert Banks
Robert Banks
Affiliation:
Research Fellow, The Australian National University, Canberra
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

To mount a critique of Freud's views on any polemical issue is almost always a risky business. This is partly because one remembers the fate of so many of his earlier critics. As Phillip Rieff so delightfully puts it, ‘much of Freud's polemical writing is so superior to that of his opponents, that it takes on the character of a totem feast in which the most powerful sons are carved up with swift clean strokes, the father, meanwhile, justifying his action at every stroke’. There is also the possibility that exposure to psychoanalytic theory of one's own presuppositions and views will result in their being transformed into something quite different or to their being quite psychoanalysed away. Nevertheless the task must be undertaken. Freud's approach to religion has had too pervasive an influence upon modern thought to be ignored. Also, its complexity and potential have not always been sufficiently discerned by those who, especially from a Christian point of view, have sought to grapple with it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 1973 , pp. 401 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 401 note 1 Rieff, P., The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, 1966, 98–99.Google Scholar

page 402 note 1 Freud, S., ‘The Psychopathology of Everyday Life’, The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (hereafter cited as Complete Works), Vol. VI (1901), 258–9.Google Scholar

page 402 note 2 Freud, S., ‘Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices’, Complete Works, vol. IX (1906–8), 127.Google Scholar

page 402 note 3 ibid., 127.

page 402 note 4 Freud, S., ‘Leonardo da Vinci’, Complete Works, Vol. XI (1910), 123.Google Scholar This recognition of both its psychological and biological roots was later re-iterated in his Civilisation and its Discontents, 1930. 168.

page 403 note 1 Freud, S., Totem and Taboo: Resemblances between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics, 1913, 106–7, 156–7.Google Scholar

page 403 note 2 A summary of the way in which he formulated his views on religious origins was later provided by himself, Freud in Moses and Monotheism, 1939, 205–7.Google Scholar

page 404 note 1 In a preface to Theodor Reik's investigation of the significance of ritual, Probleme der Religions-psychologie I: Das Ritual, 1919, Freud commented on the ramifications of the views outlined in Totem and Taboo in somewhat broader terms. All the later religions, he suggests, ‘have the same content and on the one hand they are concerned with obliterating traces of that crime or expiating it or by bringing forward other solutions of the struggle between the father and the son, while on the other hand they cannot avoid repeating once more the elimination of the father’. His 1923 analysis of ‘A Seventeenth Century Demonological Neurosis’, Complete Works, Vol. XIX (1923–1925)Google Scholar, not only confirmed his earlier view concerning the importance of the Oedipus-complex in the genesis of religious ideas, but encouraged him in his belief that originally God and the Devil were a unity only later separating off in their different ethical and functional directions.

page 404 note 2 Totem and Taboo, 261 n. 95. See further comments on pp. 166 and 244 of the same work.

page 405 note 1 Totem and Taboo, 129–130, 147–150.

page 405 note 2 Freud, S., The Future of an Illusion, 1927, 43.Google Scholar

page 405 note 3 ibid., 52.

page 406 note 1 Freud, The Future of an Illusion, 55–58.

page 406 note 2 ibid., 98.

page 407 note 1 Freud, S., Civilisation and its Discontents, 1930, 1–10.Google Scholar

page 407 note 2 ibid., 16.

page 407 note 3 ibid., 18.

page 408 note 1 Freud, S., Civilisation and its Discontents, 1930, 19.Google Scholar

page 408 note 2 In ‘The Question of a Weltanschauung’, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Complete Works, Vol. XXII (1932–6), 158–182Google Scholar, religion again came up for discussion but for the most part Freud only re-iterated or slightly elaborated the views expressed in his previous two works. So far as the question of a Weltanschauung is concerned, he suggested that psychoanalysis was unable to construct one of its own. As a specialist science within the wider study of psychology it must accept the one implied in all scientific activity. In disallowing the compatibility of the scientific, religious, philosophical and artistic portraits of the world, Freud insists that only religion is to be taken seriously as a rival of science. Art ‘is almost harmless or beneficent; it does not seek to be anything but an illusion’. Philosophy ‘behaves like a science and works in part by the same methods; it departs from it, however, by clinging to the illusion of being able to present a picture of the universe which is without gaps and is coherent, though one which is bound to collapse with every fresh advance in our knowledge’. Unlike it, religion is not an esoteric pursuit but ‘an immense power which has the strongest emotions of human beings at its service’. It not only ‘undertakes to give them information about the origin and coming into existence of the world’ but ‘assures them of its protection and of ultimate happiness in the ups and downs of life’ and ‘directs their thoughts and actions by precepts which it lays down with its whole authority’. (pp. 160–61).

page 409 note 1 It is worth noting here that in Civilisation and its Discontents, 99, Freud had suggested that Jesus Christ was quite possibly a mythological rather than historical figure, one ‘called into being by an obscure memory of the primal event’.

page 409 note 2 Freud, S., Moses and Monotheism, 149.Google Scholar

page 410 note 1 This summary is drawn mainly from Schmidt, W., The Origin and Growth of Religion: Facts and Theories, ET 1931, esp. 112–5.Google Scholar

page 410 note 2 Moses and Monotheism, 207. ‘I am not an ethnologist, but a psychoanalyst. It was my good right to select from ethnological data what would serve me for my analytic work. The writings of the highly gifted Robertson Smith provided me with valuable points of contact with the psychological material of psychoanalysis and suggestions for the use of it. I cannot say the same for the work of his predecessors’. Other psychoanalysts have also occasionally rejected ethnological convictions. The only figure among them who merits any sort of attention is Geza Roheim, a psychoanalyst with anthropological training who, dispensing with some aspects of Freud's theory, attempted to shore it up by proposing a new set of anthropological arguments. See, for example, his ‘Psychoanalysis and Anthropology’, Psychoanalysis Today, 1948, 383 ff.Google Scholar

page 411 note 1 Ernst Sellin's lone exegetical stance here, originally advanced in his book Mose and seine Bedeuting für die israelitisch-jüdische Religionsgeschichte, 1922, appears to have been withdrawn before Freud wrote Moses and Monotheism. See further Jones, Ernest, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, vol. III, 1957, 401.Google Scholar On the other points here relating to Moses see, inter alia, Rowley, H. H., ‘Moses and the Decalogue’, Men of God, 1963, 1 ff.Google Scholar

page 411 note 2 Moses and Monotheism, 95.

page 412 note 1 Cf. Freud's comment to the effect that ‘this state of affairs is made more difficult, it is true, by the present attitude of biological science which rejects the idea of acquired qualities being transmitted to descendants. I admit, in all modesty, that in spite of this I cannot picture biological development proceeding without taking this factor into account’ (Moses and Monotheism, 160).

page 412 note 2 This has now been made considerably easier as a result of the publication of Kline's, P.Fact and Fantasy in Freudian Theory, 1972.Google Scholar It is an extremely comprehensive survey of the experimental research that has been carried out so far which, since Kline is on the whole a Freudian himself, is not vitiated by a hidden polemic against the latter's theories. Though at times there is a tendency to plead Freud's case when the evidence does not strictly warrant it, for the most part his evaluations appear to be soundly based.

page 413 note 1 Sears, R. R., Survey of Objective Studies of Psychoanalytic Concepts, 1943, 136.Google Scholar

page 413 note 2 Kline, P., op. cit., 348.Google Scholar

page 413 note 3 Malinowski, B., Sex and Repression in Savage Society, 1927Google Scholar and A. Parsons, Belief; Magic and Anomie: Essays in Psychosocial Anthropology. For a more positive assessment of the place of the Oedipus Complex see, however, Stephens, W. N., The Oedipus Complex Hypothesis in Cross-Cultural Evidence, 1962Google Scholar who concludes on the basis of his study that ‘the probability is high that this hypothesis …is approximately valid’ (p. 185). His earlier survey ‘A Cross-Cultural Study of Menstrual Taboos’, Genet. Psychol. Monogr., 64, 1961, 385–416Google Scholar argued in favour of the widespread presence of the castration-complex.

page 413 note 4 See the detailed examination of their findings in Kline, P., op. cit., 170–181.Google Scholar

page 414 note 1 Sears, R. R., op. cit., 121.Google Scholar

page 414 note 2 It was first mentioned in a letter to Fliess written early in 1895 in a draft of a paper published, minus much of the material on projection, the following year. See ‘Draft H’, Complete Works, vol. I (1886–1899), 209.Google Scholar

page 414 note 3 See Kline, P., op. cit., 184–187.Google Scholar

page 415 note 1 See Kline, P., op. cit., 349Google Scholar

page 415 note 2 Allport, G., The Individual and his Religion, 1951, 122.Google Scholar

page 416 note 1 Allport, G., The Individual and his Religion, 1951, 116.Google Scholar Compare the view that Freud's atheism could well have derived from a negative father-complex. So, among others, Zilboorg, G., ‘Denials and Assertions of Religious Faith’, Faith, Religion and Modern Psychiatry, 1955, 11 off.Google Scholar Probably the first to approach Freud's thought in this way was his onetime disciple Maylan, T., in his book Freuds tragischer Complex, 1929.Google Scholar

page 416 note 2 Eliade, M., The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion, 1960, 49–50.Google Scholar The most precise exposition of the roles played by the primal and natural fathers in the formulation of religious belief occurs in his study ‘A Seventeenth Century Demonological Neurosis’, Complete Works, Vol. XIX (1923–5).Google Scholar There Freud suggests that in the life of the individual ‘the ideational image belonging to his childhood is preserved and becomes merged with the inherited memory traces of the primal father to form the individual's idea of God’. (p. 85).

page 416 note 3 Cf. also Kaplan, A., ‘Freud and Modern Philosophy’, Freud and the Twentieth Century, ed. Nelson, B., 1957, 227.Google Scholar It is perhaps questionable whether, as he suggests, for Freud genetic propositions are only ‘instruments for interpretation, not premises for demonstrative syllogisms’.

page 417 note 1 See further the comments of Lee, R.S., Freud and Christianity, 1948, 135.Google Scholar

page 418 note 1 Yeaxlee, B., Religion and the Growing Mind, 1939, 49.Google Scholar

page 418 note 2 Cited in Wood, H. G., Belief and Unbelief since 1850, 1955, 96.Google Scholar

page 418 note 3 Zilboorg, G., ‘Some Denials and Assertions of Religious Behaviour’, Psychoanalysis and Religion, 1962, 155.Google Scholar

page 419 note 1 Totem and Taboo, 44.

page 419 note 2 ibid., 120–1.

page 419 note 3 Freud therefore approved the familiar correlation between an increase in neurosis and the waning of religious faith, though the implications he drew from it were quite different to those of Jung for whom it became the starting-point for the development of a more ‘religious’ psychology. See further Freud, S., ‘The Future of Psychoanalytic Theory’, Complete Works, Vol. XI (1910), 146.Google Scholar

page 420 note 1 Dalbiez, R., Psychoanalytical Method and the Doctrine of Freud, II, 1941, 317.Google Scholar

page 420 note 2 Civilisation and its Discontents, II. There are good grounds for thinking that what Freud particularly had in view here was the characteristic religious outlook of the Viennese Catholicism of his day with its emphasis upon authoritarian dogma and elaborate ritual. So, among others, Riesman, D., ‘Freud, Religion and Science’, Individualism Reconsidered and other Essays, 1954, 399Google Scholar and Edwards, D. L., Religion and Change, 1969, 113–14.Google Scholar

page 420 note 3 Pruyser, P. W., ‘Some Trends in the Psychology of Religion’, The Psychology of Religion, ed. Strunk, O. Jnr, 1971, 101.Google Scholar

page 421 note 1 Pfister, O., Christianity and Fear, 1948, 22.Google Scholar

page 421 note 2 Allport, G., op. cit., 60.Google Scholar

page 422 note 1 Freud, S., ‘An Autobiographical Study’, Complete Works, Vol. XX (1925–6), 70.Google Scholar

page 422 note 2 The tentative character of some of his remarks concerning the future in The Future of an Illusion, 84–92 is relevant here but such a possibility is most explicitly stated in Civilisation and its Discontents, 23. Speaking of the infantile nature of religion and its incompatibility with reality, he comments that ‘it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life’. Civilisation and its Discontents. 9 and Totem and Taboo, 166.

page 423 note 1 ‘Draft H’, Complete Works, vol. I (1886–1889), 209.Google Scholar

page 423 note 2 ‘Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia’, Complete Works Vol. XII (1911–1913), 66.Google Scholar

page 423 note 3 Totem and Taboo, 108–9.

page 423 note 4 Further reference to the role of projection in neurosis occurs in Freud's paper on ‘The Unconscious’, Complete Works, Vol. XIV (1914–1916), 184Google Scholar in dreams in ‘The Metapsychology of Dreams’, op. cit., 232–33 and in jealousy, paranoia and homosexuality in ‘Some Neurotic Mechanisms in …’, Complete Works, Vol. XVIII (1920–1922), 223 ff.Google Scholar

page 423 note 5 For an introduction to the developments in these two circles see further Brown, W. C., Freud and the Post-Freudians, 1961Google Scholar and Abt, L. E. and Bellak, L., Projective Psychology, 1950.Google Scholar

page 424 note 1 See Zilboorg, G., Faith, Religion and Modern Psychiatry, 116Google Scholar and Rieff, P., The Mind of a Moralist, 1959, 257.Google Scholar

page 424 note 2 Cf. Psychoanalysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister, ed. Meng, H. and Freud, E. L., 1963, 117.Google Scholar The full text is as follows: ‘Let us be quite clear on the point that the views expressed in my book form no part of analytic theory. They are my personal views, which coincide with those of many non-analysts and pre-analysts, but there are also many excellent analysts who do not share them.’

page 424 note 3 Stace, W. T., Religion and the Modern Mind, 1953, 226.Google Scholar

page 425 note 1 The first comment comes from ‘An Autobiographical Study’, Complete Works, Vol. XX (1925–1926), 67–8Google Scholar and the second from ‘Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego’, Complete Works, Vol. XVIII (1920–1922), 122.Google Scholar

page 425 note 2 Dalbiez, R., op. cit., II, 289.Google Scholar