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 5 of 17)
61. 41.
ATHEISM IS A CATASTROPHIC FAILURE...for organized religion. As time goes by, it gets more difficult to put butts in pews.
JefFlyingV at 1:21PM on Aug 12th 2008
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Flying V,
You are right...
In fact it is prophesied that there will come a falling away from God , church, religion,christianity.
This is one of the signs of the end of time.
Observant at 4:40PM on Aug 12th 2008
62.
This is one of the signs of the end of time...for the church.
JefFlyingV at 4:46PM on Aug 12th 2008
63.
Jesus sinned too.
Blasphemy? No. The fifth commandment clearly states that one should honor one's father and mother. Jesus basically told his mother to "f--k off."
Matthew 12:46–50. “He was still speaking to the crowd when his mother and brothers appeared: they stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone said, ‘Your mother and your brothers are here outside; they want to speak to you.’ Jesus turned to the man who brought the message, and said, ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ and pointing to the disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, my sister, my mother.’ ”
So, there goes the whole sinless thing. Unless of course, you can arbitrarily change the definition of father and mother. If your mother wants to talk to you, and you ignore her, commandment broken.
So, now you think that this guy who died for you was without sin. Maybe Jesus was like a modern politician - changing the definition of words.
ex-christian at 4:51PM on Aug 12th 2008
64.
Furthermore, Jesus' insistance that his "new family" does the will of god - having his baby is just about the biggest following of his will that there can be, so his new definition STILL breaks the fifth commandment.
ex-christian at 4:56PM on Aug 12th 2008
65. From Dinesh's article:
"But I don't see why this group would come up with the concept of hell."
This would be a good point if Christians were telling everyone that Christians were going to hell and everyone else was going to heaven. Suspiciously, though, it is the other way around.
insaneatheist at 4:58PM on Aug 12th 2008
66.
InsaneAtheist -
Said the same in #7, but I like the way you put it better. Well done!
ex-christian at 5:11PM on Aug 12th 2008
67. 397. Hello naturalpuppy. You write:
::Supernaturalists must rely on premises that guarantee continuation of the mystery, but I, a naturalist, am not so constrained. I can think that "good" and "evil" are ethical labels for behaviors arising from concepts and emotions in our brains, and I can propose that those concepts and emotions that give rise to both good and evil are absolutely necessary for our survival and prosperity as individuals and as a species.
I often bring up the fact that given a naturalist view morality is something purely subjective, which means purely imaginary. Jesse********* Not a fact, Jesse, not subjective in the least, and not imaginary. Believers often, as you say, believe they are morally superior. I will attempt to disabuse you of this strange idea. np
Truth is the minds conformity to reality; we have truth when our concepts reflect reality. Jesse********* Unfortunately for believers, their truth is most often only backed by scripture. Truth should conform to facts. Facts are not subjective. Facts reflect reality. Facts are supported by empirical evidence, not the anecdotal evidence of scripture. np
If our concepts of morality, which must be anchored in an absolute "ought" -- that is, an ought that is universally binding -- do not reflect reality then morality IS purely subjective. Jesse******** Jesse, you have caught yourself in the philosophers' "is-ought" trap. An "ought" is teleologically subjective. Believers' "oughts" vary greatly among the thousands of different belief systems. Your "oughts" reflect only your belief. "Oughts are equated to dogma, not morality, but you are half correct about morality being purely subjective. Morality is best described as behavior that conforms to ethics, the best description of which is human standards of behavior. Believers' ethics, which you are equating with "oughts", are generally congruent with secular ethics up to a point, but they contain additional elements of control which vary widely among religions and belief systems. Naturalism, philosophic or methodological, has no "oughts". Naturalism subscribes to no teleology, conforming only to the ethics of reason, and rejecting the ethics of dogma. Naturalism reflects how nature "is".np
This means that no matter how deeply or intensely someone feels something is wrong, it is not, because nothing can be, really (in truth) wrong. What gets me, np, is that people state this view as if they are the mouth piece for reality apart from the reality of their own first person point of view. Jesse ********* I know of no one who supports that view, Jesse, but I know many who purport this to be the Naturalist view. They are the same ones who purport that Naturalists lack morals. Nothing could be farther from the truth. np
So, to bring people back to the actual fact that they are indeed speaking as a person I then put all this in practical terms (and here's where people start to have fits, blaming the messenger -- me). Jesse ******** I always speak as a person. I blame you for nothing except ignorance, or gulliblity, or need, or being unable to reason, and all believers suffer from one or more of those things. np
I say, for instance, that you, naturalpuppy, may feel or imagine that the holocaust was wrong (I think it safe to assume you do), but, according to you, according to the position you hold about morality, the holocaust was not really wrong. Jesse ********* Jesse, of course the holocaust was wrong. You have been indoctrinated by your apologists to hold the view that Naturalists don't exhibit morality and don't think anything can really be wrong. np
Then I ask, to test one's intellectual honesty, something like, do you, naturalpuppy, stick by your position and affirm that the holocaust was not really wrong? Jesse ******** My position is that the holocaust was wrong. Who's intellectual honesty are you questioning? np
Now, some people go on, wanting to escape from their logic (and why would one want to?), by replying something along the lines you've given above, that "concepts and emotions that give rise to both good and evil are absolutely necessary for our survival and prosperity as individuals and as a species." Jesse ******** Why, indeed, Jesse. Without tempered aggression--the evolutional competition within and among species, restrained by the evolutional requirement of attachment--humans could not survive. Our brains have evolved to use both of these utilities together to gain advantage. Together, they satisfy the requirements of natural selection. We would not survive as purely aggressive beings. We could not survive as purely altruistic beings. np
However, I am not a species, neither are you; a species is an abstraction, so there must be some link in the chain which binds individuals to an ought concerning the species -- Jesse ******** I don't understand what you mean. A species is not an abstraction. We both belong to the species homo sapiens. np
but you've already stated there is no such "ought". In other words, in order for you to say we ought to conform our actions to promote the survival of the species you have to provide an "ought" that, as I said before, is universally binding; ******** Jesse, there is no "ought"; there is only "is". We are the way we are because we have built in self-correcting, self-limiting mechanisms--brains that are synthesized by nature (our genetic material) and nurture (all the invoronmental influences acting on us since our conceptions). Neuroscientists are now confirming what naturalists have observed. We think and act the way we do to satisfy our brains' requirements to generate chemicals that reward themselves. Both aggressive and altruistic emotions and behaviors together satisfy those requirements. Our brains don't possess free will, Jesse. They are constantly conflicted.They are compelled to do as the influences of nature and nurture dictate. np
but, again, you've already denied that a prescriptive statement can be true, so apparently you're stuck with the unfortunate position that nothing -- meaning every particular thing we think evil, like murder, rape, etc.; that nothing is really wrong. Again I ask, do you affirm this, np? Does nothing within you seek an out? ******** Jesse, don't confuse naturalism with nihilism. Morality exists, but it doesn't exist as something imposed or prescribed. It exists as an essential human condition afforded our brains by the process of natural selection..There are sometimes pathologic disorders of nature or dificiencies in nurture which can contribute to behavior that doesn't conform to human standards. Behavior such as this is the result of disease or considered to be immoral.. Some is correctable. Some is not. np
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Good and evil are ethical labels. Humanity has not survived and proliferated because of prescribed, dogmatic ethics, but because of the evolution of the human brain by means of natural selection.
naturalpuppy at 6:14PM on Aug 12th 2008
68. Rev, being a Christian does not automatically mean you won't have to deal with mental-health issues, or that you won't need medication. I've suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder all my life and taken antidepressants since I was nine, and I'm a Christian (I also have mild autism; I sure as heck don't "party"). If Christ healed you, that's great (He's certainly capable), but salvation is not necessarily an automatic cure for mental illness. The brain is an organ and can fail to function properly like any other. We are probably too quick to medicate as a society, but some of us really need psychiatric drugs, and Christ can work in conjunction with them.
Cecilia at 6:38PM on Aug 12th 2008
69. I was making a road trip when I stopped at a truck stop to grab a bite. As I was eating, a 5 year old next to me said to me, "We're going to Disneyland." I then asked his father when they were going. He said, "We're not, he says that to everyone." I then said, "The power of wishful thinking."
P.S. Augustine was a weirdo. During his sinner days he had a kid ask him what he was doing with his life. This had a profound effect on him. You should try it sometime. Walk up to some random person and ask them what they're doing with their life.
P.P.S Augustine's mother didn't die until he finally accepted Christianity. Her dying wish. Weird!
MrWiteKES at 6:39PM on Aug 12th 2008
70. Is losing faith in god a sin?
Because Jesus supposedly did on the cross at the end...
"father why have you forsaken me?"
Ryan Anderson at 6:46PM on Aug 12th 2008
71. 58. Freud was a genius, even though he wasn't absolutely right about everything. His once-associate Karl Jung was even smarter. The main contribution that these two gave us is that some knowledge is inborn. It's called "instinct", and science still hasn't studied it properly.
Bob at 4:19PM on Aug 12th
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Believers often lump Freud, Marx and Darwin together because they were atheists and made such a big impact during their time.
They fail to recognize that Darwin's reasoning was scientific, and deductive, whereas Freud and Marx reverted to the old rationalists' intuitive, inductive reasoning that completely ignored any scientific method, even as incomplete as it was then.
It was the Cartesian inductive reasoning, e.g. "Cogit Ergo Sum", that underscored the requirement for something better.
Freud and Jung should have known better, but were in love with themselves, much as modern Christians are.
naturalpuppy at 6:54PM on Aug 12th 2008
72. So what is your point DD?
That someday people won't read your stuff anymore and consider you a "great intellectual"?
oh, never mind that's already happened.
TJ at 6:54PM on Aug 12th 2008
73. 31. whatyourname - you are in more danger of hell fire than Christ. Only a fool says there is no God.
Man_in_Wilderness at 10:31AM on Aug 12th 2008
xxx
Matthew 5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but **whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire**.
xxx
I'd say you're in double jeopardy since you're angry at your brother without a cause as well.
You don't know jesus any better than any other human and your way of worshipping is obviously not suited to all christians per history and current events. Are they all fools too?
Clif Kuplen at 7:00PM on Aug 12th 2008
74. Freud sure got a lot of pussy. I miss the good ol' days when sexual harassment simply meant that you weren't gonna hit it. I bring this up in the midst of the UMKC tenured physc teachers resigning. But when cocaine was socially acceptable everyone humped like rabbits. The same with LSD. We need to all just do it in the road. Christianity in a nutshell is simply something we should all try to be, but aren't. We are all but animals doing the best we can.
MrWiteKES at 7:10PM on Aug 12th 2008
75. P.P.S Augustine's mother didn't die until he finally accepted Christianity. Her dying wish. Weird!
MrWiteKES at 6:39PM on Aug 12th 2008
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Enjoyed the post.
naturalpuppy at 7:11PM on Aug 12th 2008