Paper Topic:

Critique of Frued (Religion and Psychology)

HYPERLINK "http /www .faithnet .org .uk /Science /Psychology /freud .htm Sigmund Freud is part of a group of thinkers who have reacted against religion in its formal expression (E .g . Church , liturgy , the belief that God lives in the heavens etc , but at the same time seeks to internalize key religious concepts and then relate them to the human psyche . However , unlike modern non-realists who see value in religion as a means for promoting certain social and moral values in society (see HYPERLINK "http /www .faithnet .org .uk /highestideals .htm " God as the

Sum of our Highest Ideals , Freud saw religion as an immediate expression of some deeper human problem , which needed to be 'cured . Although Freud was Jewish he never practiced his religion and in fact he believed that all religion was an illusion , which had developed to suppress certain neurotic symptoms in humans . He writes '[Religion] must exorcise the terrors of nature , [Religion] must reconcile men to the cruelty of fate particularly as it is shown in death , and [Religion] must compensate them for the sufferings which a civilized life in common has imposed on them (Freud quoted by Storrs

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Religion , he claims , has ruled civilization for many thousands of years and had time to show what it can achieve . If it had succeeded in altering conditions and made the majority of people happy and reconciled them to life no one would dream of changing the situation . But , Freud asks , what do we see happening ? Most importantly , however , is that Freud thinks that our acceptance of religion , as the universal neurosis safeguard believers who have a high risk of certain neurotic illnesses

Freud must have been impressed by the universal nature of religious phenomena , being on the interface between the biological and social realms . No doubt he suspected that religion , like literature articulated in a disguised way some of the psychological truths he discovered in his own work . It could even be argued that the confrontation with religion was a spur to the development of psychoanalysis itself "In point of fact I believe that a large part of the mythological view of the world , which extends a long way into the most modern religions is nothing but psychology projected into the external world . The obscure recognition . of psychical factors and relations in the unconscious is mirrored - it is difficult to express it in other terms , and here the analogy with paranoia must come to our aid - in the construction of a supernatural reality , which is destined to be changed back once more by science into the psychology of the unconscious . One could venture to explain in this way the myths of paradise and the fall of man , of God of good and evil , of immortality , and so on , and to transform metaphysics into metapsychology

To Freud the historical truths put forward in religion have become so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth . He compares religion to the practice...

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