Psychology of religion: Encyclopedia II - Psychology of religion - Psychoanalytical studies

Psychology of religion - Psychoanalytical studies

Psychology of religion - Sigmund Freud: Oedipus complex illusion

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) gave explanations of the genesis of religion in his various writings. In Totem and Taboo, he applied the idea of the Oedipus complex (involving unresolved sexual feelings of, for example, a son toward his mother and hostility toward his father) and postulated its emergence in the primordial stage of human development.

In Moses and Monotheism, Freud reconstructed biblical history in accord with his general theory, but biblical scholars and historians would not accept his account, since his criteria of historical evidence was quite different from their own. His ideas were also developed in The Future of an Illusion. When Freud spoke of religion as an illusion, he maintained that it is a fantasy structure from which a man must be set free if he is to grow to maturity; and in his treatment of the unconscious, he moved toward atheism.

Freud's view of the idea of God as being a version of the father image, and his thesis that religious belief is at bottom infantile and neurotic, do not depend upon the speculative accounts of prehistory and biblical history with which Freud dressed up his version of the origin and nature of religion. Authoritarian religion, according to Freud, is dysfunctional and alienates man from himself.

Psychology of religion - Carl Jung: Universal archetypes

The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875–1961) adopted a very different posture, one that was more sympathetic to religion and more concerned with a positive appreciation of religious symbolism. Jung considered the question of the existence of God to be unanswerable by the psychologist and adopted a kind of agnosticism.

Jung postulated, in addition to the personal unconscious (roughly as in Freud), the collective unconscious, which is the repository of human experience and which contains “archetypes” (i.e. basic images that are universal in that they recur in independent cultures). The irruption of these images from the unconscious into the realm of consciousness he viewed as the basis of religious experience and often of artistic creativity. Some of Jung's writings have been devoted to elucidating some of the archetypal symbols, and include his work in comparative mythology.

Jung had a very broad view of what it means to be empirical. Suppose, for example, that I hear a voice from deity but you do not, even though we are sitting next to each other. If only one person experiences something, for Jung it is an empirical observation. For most contemporary scientists, however, it would not be considered an empirical observation. Because of this, there has been little research in the psychology of religion from a Jungian perspective.

Psychology of religion - Erich Fromm: Desire need for stable frame

The American scholar Erich Fromm (1900–1980) modified Freudian theory and produced a more complex account of the functions of religion. Part of the modification is viewing the Oedipus complex as based not so much on sexuality as on a “much more profound desire”, namely, the childish desire to remain attached to protecting figures. The right religion, in Fromm's estimation, can, in principle, foster an individual's highest potentialities, but religion in practice tends to relapse into being neurotic.

According to Erich Fromm, humans have a need for a stable frame of reference. Religion apparently fills this need. In effect, humans crave answers to questions that no other source of knowledge has an answer to, which only religion may seem to answer. However, a sense of free will must be given in order for religion to appear healthy. An authoritarian notion of religion appears detrimental.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Psychoanalytical studies", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki