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 7 of 17)
91.
tomb enlighten us with your wisdom.
JefFlyingV at 10:22PM on Aug 12th 2008
92. Now....getting back to truth and the realities of modern science. Since many "Christians" think they have the high road when it comes to honesty I'll ask them to honestly answer the following question: -
Which group has by far the more "believes" in popular, unproven notions of ghosts and astrology....theists or atheists ?
The answer - Thiests - and they go beyond the low road of psychobabble into the debts of fairytalebabble.
By the way, the term "psychobabble" was coined a few decades ago by the author of the book with the same name. He concluded that one day "psychologists will stop talking and actually do things to help people". From then until now, millions of people have self-reported that they had benefited from psychotherapy, which in many cases
in these MODERN TIMES is just self-awareness helped on by a trained professional who is usually more objective about human faults and failures than our religious leaders are.
We could all use a greater degree of self-awareness, thiest and athiest alike, and in few places is this more evident than in Dinesh D'Souza's self-congratulatory blogs glued together with straw.
WhatzInAName at 10:24PM on Aug 12th 2008
93. I always miss it when DD has a new blog up. Nobody ever goes back and mentions it.
Anywho, I see Freud and Jung as the yang and yin of psychiatry. Between the two of them, there is balance. Both are rife with errors. But a synthesis of the two can be of help in understanding the human psyche. Like so much in life, one has to judge with a descriminating eye using lateral thinking. Discard the useless stuff and notice the things that ring *true.*
Saint Brian the Godless at 10:56PM on Aug 12th 2008
94. DD says above:
"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."
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Uh, they came up with hell so that they could force others to believe as they did for fear of damnation, and to provide the "stick" in their carrot-and-stick conditioning technique that is known as the Bible. With no fear of hell, there's nothing preventing the faithful from questioning their religion. And we can't be having that, what with it being a lie and all.
Saint Brian the Godless at 11:04PM on Aug 12th 2008
95. Neither Steven Pinker nor the author of this article understands what Freud meant by “taboo”. It is ridiculous to compare eating cow dung to engaging in incest. Eating cow dung, while it is certainly disgusting and unwise, is not taboo. Sleeping with one’s mother, however, certainly is. Whether Freud was right or wrong about taboo and the repressed desires they represent is of course debatable. But one can’t debate about the legitimacy of Freud’s views on taboo if one does not know what a taboo is.
Reader at 11:07PM on Aug 12th 2008
96. Saint Brian, Dinesh D'Souza usually posts new blogs late Sunday nights, when us mere mortals are resting.
WhatzInAName at 11:11PM on Aug 12th 2008
97. There's a good question as to whether the people that came up with the religion are the same group that initially believed in it.
The first group came up with it to control the much larger and dumber second group. They're dead now, but the lie lives on.
Saint Brian the Godless at 11:07PM on Aug 12th 2008
98.
WhatzinAName
...my brain!?!? That's my second favorite organ! W. Allen,"Sleeper".
Enjoyed reading your posts.
JefFlyingV at 11:33PM on Aug 12th 2008
99. LOL...thanks JetFlyingV, that's a funny quote from Woody Allen. Speaking of comedians, notice how "Renzo" always is always absent when Dinesh is busy posting a remix of his straw man rants?
WhatzInAName at 11:48PM on Aug 12th 2008
100. 87. To What's in a name and the rest of you atheist/pagan fools. Your arguments, like your hearts, are circular.
That's why it's called the circular system.
Your argument while not circular is non-sensical.
The phrase 'circular logic' at least has the word logic in it while non-sensical is just a fancy way of saying stupid.
tmo at 12:15AM on Aug 13th 2008
101. t is ridiculous to compare eating cow dung to engaging in incest. Eating cow dung, while it is certainly disgusting and unwise, is not taboo.
xx
It's even eaten in a sense since it's used as the fuel for tandoori cooking and the smoke flavors the food. Also it's the secret ingredient that makes hashish malleable and even burning.
Clif Kuplen at 1:14AM on Aug 13th 2008
102. Also it's the secret ingredient that makes hashish malleable and even burning.
Clif Kuplen at 1:14AM on Aug 13th 2008
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It figures you'd know that, you fucking poymath.
I tried hash twice years ago and loved it. Joke's on me.
Eyew! Thanks again for that 'enlightenment.'
:-)
Saint Brian the Godless at 1:36AM on Aug 13th 2008
103. Uh, polymath, clif. Not poymath.
I'm getting a new keyboard. Already on order. I have to hammer some of them to get them to work.
Saint Brian the Godless at 1:38AM on Aug 13th 2008
104. 100. 87. To What's in a name and the rest of you atheist/pagan fools. Your arguments, like your hearts, are circular.
That's why it's called the circular system.
Your argument while not circular is non-sensical.
The phrase 'circular logic' at least has the word logic in it while non-sensical is just a fancy way of saying stupid.
tmo at 12:15AM on Aug 13th 2008
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"Your arguments, like your hearts, are circular.
Your argument while not circular is non-sensical."
-So are they circular or not? Or both? And what's having a "circular heart" mean? It doesn't really make any sense as a pejorative. You sound confused.
"Your argument while not circular is non-sensical.
The phrase 'circular logic' at least has the word logic in it while non-sensical is just a fancy way of saying stupid."
-You said it. Your phrase. Why'd you use it? You like using fancy words? You feel a need to in order to sound more intelligent?
If you consider the word "nonsensical" to be a fancy word, why didn't you ever go to high school?
All you've just told me can be boiled down to "You're Stupid!"
Thank you for the intelligent christian opinion. I'll make a note of it, right next to my note about how dumbed-down you tend to be.
Saint Brian the Godless at 1:49AM on Aug 13th 2008
105. We could all use a greater degree of self-awareness, thiest and athiest alike, and in few places is this more evident than in Dinesh D'Souza's self-congratulatory blogs glued together with straw.
WhatzInAName at 10:24PM on Aug 12th 2008
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Amen Brother!!! Can I get a witness???!!!
Saint Brian the Godless at 1:54AM on Aug 13th 2008