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 downward 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 outlaw them. In Freud's words, "The strength of the incestuous wishes can be detected behind the prohibition against 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." Freud writes that for the individual "life is hard to bear," and beyond this there is "the painful riddle of death, against which no medicine has yet been found." And so to "make helplessness tolerable" man invents God and religion not because they are true but because we wish them to be true. " For Freud, one may say, Christianity is adult Disneyland. We forget that Freud is the author of this portrait of religion that is widely espoused in our time.
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"? Even Christians recoil from the severe demands of their ethical code. Recall the church father Augustine, who kept putting off his conversion to Christianity, praying to God, "Make me chaste, O Lord, but not yet." In other words, a project of wish-fulfillment would seem to dictate a much more libertine social morality than the one we find in the Old and New Testaments.
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 2 of 17)
16. 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 is much 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 8:17AM on Aug 12th 2008
17. If you're going to invent 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 except 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 8:24AM on Aug 12th 2008
18. Give it up, Jesse. You've been pwn'd!
GearHedEd at 8:27AM on Aug 12th 2008
19. Implying that religion is an invented game, Mojo?
GearHedEd at 8:29AM on Aug 12th 2008
20. I guess I'll just repost my criticism of Denish's July 2nd article, of which this is nearly verbatim.
Also, it seems like if you are going to repost something with changes, those changes would be significant?
18. "Wish-fulfilling humans" who get sick, suffer and die would come up with the concept of hell to explain what happens to the people who cause their suffering.
That didn't require much thought... I'm surprised you wouldn't see that given five minutes of thought. Oh, right, it doesn't support your position.
Ryan Anderson at 9:46AM on Jul 31st 2008
19. Also, do you really think religion existed at any point in isolation from priest who "enforce doctrinal obedience or institutional loyalty"? There is evidence that Neanderthals practiced religion. It's reasonable to conclude that there were Neanderthal priest who "enforce doctrinal obedience or institutional loyalty".
My point is that the 100% of the existence of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam has included the influence of priests seeking to control.
Ryan Anderson at 9:52AM on Jul 31st 2008
Ryan Anderson at 8:32AM on Aug 12th 2008
21. I said it a few blogs back (and then was quoted out of context by a Xian intent on proving me to be an idiot), that religion has its roots in the denial associated with the finality of death by those left behind (NOT commentary about the fear of death, as was ascribed to me). I went further, saying that "proof abounds" and was misquoted again to promote the rabid xian's agenda. The "proof" I spoke of refers to the fact of the finality of death, not the origin of religion as a coping mechanism. One needs only to visit the local cemetary to observe firsthand the proof of the finality of death.
GearHedEd at 8:33AM on Aug 12th 2008
22. Right on, Ryan. I knew I had read this before...
GearHedEd at 8:35AM on Aug 12th 2008
23. 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."
People do not want an absence of demands. Without struggles and hard-earned 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 8:40AM on Aug 12th 2008
24. I forget what I said about this article when it was posted before.
It was something about freud being a cokehead.
As far as I am concerned, if you are truly a god loving man then the demands of a christian life should not be so bad. It would certainly not be wishful for god not to exist so we could get out of the demands of a religious life.
Maybe I will push taoism and buddhism, since there are no demands. Nah. There is nothing to push.
MajorCack at 8:48AM on Aug 12th 2008
25. Dinesh,
This is another great blog from you, and you make many good points which I totally agree with. So, I would like to comment on the one item that I do NOT agree with.
"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."
I am totally against the overuse of prescription drugs to psyche out your brain, trying to cure depression. I went through this in the 1990s, getting several different pills intended to alleviate my feelings of depression, but all they did was make me into a zombie, feeling like my head was a balloon with too much air in it.
The only thing that worked, and really worked, was the SUPERNATURAL healing power of the HOLY SPIRIT, when I got Saved!
The secular world wants us to grow up behaving as if there is no God, and no rules of sexual morality. This, like failed communism, may sound reasonable to the unSaved mind, but the resulting depression and moral mayhem exacts a HIGH price on the individual and the society. The answer is NOT to go party more, the answer is moral restraint, responsibility, and discipline, which is what the Bible teaches. The crazy secular world teaches that partying is the answer, when it is the very problem itself. Life is about responsibility, not rejecting responsibility.
If you think about it, the current mental health industry tries to teach that normal behavior is now actually mental illness, (children are fidgety and easily distracted thus requiring Ritalin and sedation, etc.), while abnormal behavior is now normal and healthy, (sexual deviancy must be explored and experimented with, because partying your way to mental health seems TOTALLY reasonable to the Godless mind).
This is why I must disagree with the concept of "taking a pill to remove your depression." At best, a pill might distract you from the symptoms of depression, but the root of your depression is only cured by the teachings of Jesus, as we learn them in the Bible.
Rev 3:16 at 8:46AM on Aug 12th 2008
26. GearHedEd: Implying that religion is an invented game, Mojo?
Yes, exactly.
Mojomantra at 8:48AM on Aug 12th 2008
27. So Rev. Demential can be cured by Jesus? Can religion cure schizophrenia? There are acceptable uses for medication to treat behavior. However, I do agree that many normal people are using pills to supplement for healthy activity.
Allow me to correct you. The secular world is not trying to teach you that there is no god and immoral. What the secular world is trying to do is tell you to keep your religion in the privacy of your own life. The secular world is trying to prevent the "missionary approach" to government. I dont want our public schools to teach christianity. Why? Because thats not what my tax dollars are paying for.
I think Rev, you need to realize that people who do not believe in god, are not so depressed that they go party all the time. I personally have a job, go to the gym, am on a softball team thats in the playoffs tonight, have a healthy relationship with a human female, and have no interest in religion.
MajorCack at 9:04AM on Aug 12th 2008
28. Congrats on the promotion, Cap.... uh, MajorCack. LOL
GearHedEd at 9:06AM on Aug 12th 2008
29. DD claims that Freud's position is: "And so to 'make helplessness tolerable' man invents God and religion not because they are true but because we wish them to be true."
It would be refreshing to hear more people today express that smart view.
Instead, we hear this dullard drone from countless Christian zombies: "Have a blessed day..."
Mojomantra at 9:26AM on Aug 12th 2008
30. How could you not include Darwin, given the similarities of the triumvirate?
oj at 10:23AM on Aug 12th 2008