Our reading for Monday talks a lot about Freud's view of religion, and I was surprised to see just how strongly of an athiest he really was. This article discusses and analyzes Freud's strong opposition to religion.
One of the major points that was brought up in many of the websites I visited about this talk about how Freud believed that religion is a result of, like many of the other things he believes, childhood experiences. He stated:
"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis." (Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, 1927)
While analyzing Freud's analyzations of people, I always find it interesting to analyze Freud himself. If he truly did believe all this, then I wonder if, according to him, Freud's reason for being an atheist himself comes from his own childhood traumas and the fact that he was Jewish and being punished for it during the twentieth century. Could the fact that he was kicked out of his homeland simply because of what he "believed in" at the time be why he so strongly opposed religion when he grew up? Did he believe in religion when he was younger? Could he just be so angry at religion itself for ruining his childhood, that he completely turns against it when he grows older? Either way, his interpretations are very interesting to read...
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I haven't gotten into the reading for Monday yet, so my comments may be preemptive. Taryn, this is an interesting discussion topic to begin. My first inclination is that for Freud to really believe what he preached, he had to be an atheist. When I try to imagine him presenting his ideas to a religious crowd, images of thrown tomatoes and scornful remarks abound. His focus on incestuous relationships, homosexuality, and all things sex must automatically make him an enemy in thought of the religious community. Whether or not his adamant atheism had anything to do with Jewish persecution I cannot yet say. But, just understanding something about the way Freud thought and worked makes his religious leaning no shock.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the article!
"religion is to be traced back to the small child’s long drawn out helplessness. The longing for the Father which constitutes the root of every form of religion inevitably calls up the entanglement of the Oedipus complex, including feelings of fear and guilt."
ReplyDeleteI thought this was really interesting. Religion was started to explain the unexplainable. The idea of God as a father figure really anthropomorphisizes (Not sure if thats a word...)the concept of God. But why father? why not mother? Mothers are typically the care givers, the "rock" of the household, the fathers are generally the defenders, the "breadwinners". Furthermore, God created life. It is the mother, not the father that carries the child. Freud offers the suggestion that it is out of guilt and it fits in with the Oedipal Complex. "The Christian doctrine of Atonement represents an acknowledgement of the guilty primeval deed. Christ’s sacrifice leads to reconciliation with God the Father. The crime to be atoned for is parricide". So in a sense by assigning God a father-like figure, we are begging for forgiveness.