Sigmund Freud is no longer the revered figure he once was. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education noted that Freud is no longer routinely assigned even in psychology curricula. In a way, Freud is following the downpath path of that other great totem of the last couple of centuries, Karl Marx. It's hard to believe so many intelligent people spent their lives studying these two thinkers. Intellectuals, we have to conclude, are often fatally attracted to far-out theories that tease the mind but that bear little relation to what's actually going on in the world.
Marxism worked well in academic laboratories and only failed miserably when it was actually tried. Similarly for decades Freud spun out his elaborate theories, and they sounded so scientific and so modern and so avant garde. Depression? Well, that's because your sister abused you when you were four, and you have concealed from yourself the memory of it, but if you do hundreds of hours of therapy, you can excavate the source of your anxiety, and by coming to terms with it you can slowly overcome it. But today when you go to the doctor and are diagnosed with depression, he gives you a pill and you feel better. No need for most people to visit the therapist's couch.
Freud also argued that what we are secretly attracted to, we make into a taboo. Freud explained the "incest taboo" by saying that we secretly want to have sex with our mothers and our sisters, and so we repress those feelings and and outlaw them. The cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker pointed out the shortcoming of this theory. Pinker notes that by Freud's logic the fact that humans are averse to eating cow dung shows that we secretly want to eat it. Pinker's point is that there are sound evolutionary reasons both for avoiding cow dung and for avoiding incest. The former is unhealthy and attracts disease-carrying insects; the latter results in biological abnormalities. So natural selection produces humans who avoid both. Once again, Freudian fantasy is replaced with a much more plausible scientific alternative.
I've been reading Freud's The Future of an Illusion, where Freud makes the case that religion is a form of "wish fulfillment." We forget that Freud is the original author of this slogan that is so widely repeated in our time. How often do we hear people say, "People only believe in Christianity because they want it to be true." Well, let's examine this Freudian explanation in an entirely secular and rational way.
Imagine a bunch of people who have gathered in a room because they want to avoid life's difficulties--sickness, suffering, death--by making up a religion that will make them feel better. I can entirely see how such a group would come up with the concept of heaven. Heaven is a place where there is no suffering and no death. Eternal bliss would surely fit into my wish-fulfillment scheme.
But I don't see why this group would come up with the concept of hell. (We are not talking about why priests might later use the concept to enforce doctrinal obedience or institutional loyalty. We are talking about why wish-fulfilling humans would invent the concept in the first place.) Hell is not only worse than sickness but also worse than death, because death is merely the end, while hell implies eternal separation from God. I also don't see why seekers of wish-fulfillment would come up with Christian morality. Who needs the Ten Commandments or other such rules which make our lives more difficult by asserting a series of "Thou Shall Nots"? A mandate for wish-fulfillment would seem to dictate a much more libertine social morality.
Bottom line: Judaism and Christianity, not to mention the other great religions, hardly look like they are the product of mere wishful thinking. In fact, they posit a God and a moral universe that makes some fairly stern demands on humans. It's almost wishful to think that God does not exist, so that we can escape those demands. This is a point that does not seem to have occurred to poor Sigmund Freud.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 3)
1. DD says: Imagine a bunch of people who have gathered in a room because they want to avoid life's difficulties--sickness, suffering, death--by making up a religion that will make them feel better.
This might be better: Imagine a bunch of people who have gathered in a room because they want to find answers to the BIG QUESTIONS (What is life? Why is life? What is death?, Why is death? ) They are not "trying to avoid life's difficulties"--they are attempting to understand them. In that context it doesn’t seem particularly puzzling that if they are going to make up a religion that answers these BIG QUESTIONS and which includes rewards after death, they might include some penalty/ies for not following commonsense rules and standards that by their application and use would make life easier right then. By the inclusion of penalties they knew certain behaviours could possibly be suppressed and they could actually "avoid some of life’s difficulties."
Mojomantra at 11:47AM on Jul 30th 2008
2. How did this blog get here? I don't remember ever seeing it.
If you're going to make up a game to play(The Game of Life) always include the chance of losing as well as the chance of winning. If you don't have both then what do you have besides a boring game? There has to be a struggle--a challenge.
If one can't "earn" the reward by overcoming some struggle then the reward has lost its' value and meaning.
Mojomantra at 12:09PM on Jul 30th 2008
3. DD asks: How often do we hear people say, "People only believe in Christianity because they want it to be true."
Not very often and definitely not often enough.
Mostly I hear people say, "Have a blessed day."
Mojomantra at 12:37PM on Jul 30th 2008
4. Freud was a cokehead who probably wanted to do his mom. Taking Freud and trying to use it to make athiests look retarded, is desperate.
People who invented Hell, invented it because in order for people to adopt specific behaviours, there must be a contrast between the good behaviour, and the bad behaviour.
Take the Saved and the Sinners. How would you know if you were saved unless there was someone who was not saved. No one would try to live in a good way if they knew that any action would still result in paradise. Hence Hell was born.
CaptainCack at 12:44PM on Jul 30th 2008
5. I feel like I've just stepped into the aol Twilight Zone blog.
Where is everybody?
Oh well, I did post a link to this blog on DD's latest...so for the time being...I'll just mumble on...
"eternal bliss" WTF is that about? Wouldn't that never-ending bliss get old after a couple of centuries (years, months, days, hours?)
Mojomantra at 12:47PM on Jul 30th 2008
6. How did you find this blog if it isnt posted?
CaptainCack at 12:52PM on Jul 30th 2008
7. CaptainCack: Thanks for the company, it was getting lonely around here...I didn't say it wasn't posted. I found it by clicking on DD's Name (link) at top of any post. It then shows all of DD's posts by date, 15 to the page. This blog was stuck(added)in between two other old ones.
Go figure.
Mojomantra at 12:57PM on Jul 30th 2008
8. DD says: It's almost wishful to think that God does not exist, so that we can escape those demands. This is a point that does not seem to have occurred to poor Sigmund Freud.
Without the sound of the minor chords, wouldn't the major chords be too bright, too sugary?
People do not want an absence of demands. Without the struggles and achievements life's rewards would be too easy... too shallow and sweet..
This is a point that does not seem to have occurred to poor DD.
Mojomantra at 1:10PM on Jul 30th 2008
9. Although I agree that current thinking tends to include somewhat broader and, perhaps, better understanding of the multiplicity of underlying causes for "neuroses" than Freud's theories held, his suggestion that religion is largely "wish fulfillment" continues to both make sense and to describe effectively the way most modern religions seem to work. 1) this recognizes that religions are created by men (not by a "God"), and that they obviously answer a deep-seated need for cultures to try to deal with the vagaries and hardships of life in general. To suggest, as does Dinesh, that such wish fulfillment would not require a "Hell" or rules like the Ten Commandments is a specious argument, inasmuch as threat of "punishment" for those who do not propitiate God by certain behaviors only heightens the "promise" of a reward for palying "by the rules". Whether or not it is true that modern psychology/psychiatry can deal with these issues without long term analysis and psychotherapy seems to me to have no particular bearing upon the validity of describing religion as an effort to "make things better, at least in the enxt life".
Harvey at 1:31PM on Jul 30th 2008
10. "It's all good." I hear this a lot. No, it's not all good.
It's sweet and sour a lot of the time.
Sometimes it's bitter.
And what if I don't want to have a "blessed day"
What if I want to have a "mixed blessings" day...
or even a mostly OK day but with a touch of "cursed" to it.
Have a damned day.
Mojomantra at 1:34PM on Jul 30th 2008
11. Weird fellas !
Just more proof that DD is wack?
mac at 2:25PM on Jul 30th 2008
12. Harvey says: this recognizes that religions are created by men (not by a "God"), and that they obviously answer a deep-seated need for cultures to try to deal with the vagaries and hardships of life in general.
You hit it on the head, Harvey.
Also, people are curious. Enquiring minds want to know... the unknowable...we want to solve the unsolvable and answer the unanswerable... and when we couldn't, and when we can't, we've just made up some shit that sounded/sounds good. And when the same old tired stories are told long enough and often enough they take on the appearance of TRUTH.
Have an amusingly ironical day with a touch of bittersweet demonical undertones.
Mojomantra at 2:01PM on Jul 30th 2008
13. I think he posted this yesterday (July 29th), but typo'd the date. AOL took it from there and inserted it where it thinks he told them, so it never showed up in the most recent posts listed in the page footer.
Toad at 2:03PM on Jul 30th 2008
14. "Well, that's because your sister abused you when you were four, and you have concealed from yourself the memory of it, but if you do hundreds of hours of therapy, you can excavate the source of your anxiety, and by coming to terms with it you can slowly overcome it. But today when you go to the doctor and are diagnosed with depression, he gives you a pill and you feel better. No need for most people to visit the therapist's couch."
===================================================
Statements like this are scary. No need to talk to anyone about your problems, just do drugs, albiet prescription drugs, but drugs nonetheless. We are in a society that values the quick fix. So if you have mental problems, pop a pill, and then kill 20 people when you forget to take it.
Psychiatry, while I am not an advocate of it for most people, is a concept where people talk to other people who force you to confront yourself. Simple as that. No psychiatrist will tell you that your actions are stupid and that you are worthless. No. They get you to discover these things on your own. Giving pills are just an easy way out and will help the downfall of behavior in the US.
CaptainCack at 2:26PM on Jul 30th 2008
15. Look at this Gonesh question:
"We are talking about why wish-fulfilling humans would invent the concept (hell) in the first place.)"
jeez!
The obvious reason for hell for any group is fulfillment of a wish for justice or revenge that could not be meted out in life due to disempowerment.
If a person killed your offspring, raped your wife, stole your land and prospered, your only hope for justice is in an afterlife.
How could someone like Gonesh, who is presumably intelligent enough to be admitted to a college be so dense he'd not figure out something like that? Who could he possibly be trying to put that over on?
Clif Kuplen at 2:58PM on Jul 30th 2008