Religion as ‘universal obsessional neurosis of humanity’? Re-reading Freud on religion

Ulrike Kistner

doi:10.4102/hts.v77i2.6723

Abstract

In his writings on culture, Freud stipulates a close relation between religion and psychopathology, and obsessional neurosis in particular. In this article, I would like to explore the nature of that relation. How is it articulated, and how is it transformed in the course of Freud’s work over four decades, between 1894 and 1939? (How) can cultural (i.e. by definition, collective) phenomena be understood on the basis of symptoms described for individual psychology? On what basis can categories of individual psychology be extended to the analysis and history of cultural and societal formations? What perspectives can psychopathology open up for the analysis of culture? Is religion ‘the cure’, or ‘the symptom’? Or are there grounds for breaking open the relation between psychopathology and religion as it has increasingly solidified in the course of Freud’s work, and has been hotly contested ever since? This article works its way through these questions, and proposes to open some paths of investigation on the subject that are inherent in psychoanalytic theory, but have been prematurely closed off by Freud himself, as well as his adepts and critics.Contribution: This article critically engages with Freud’s most (in)famous statements on the relation between psychopathology and religion through an exposition of the articulations of this relation, as they change with the introduction of particular concepts and theories.

Highlights

Contribution: This article critically engages with Freud’s mostfamous statements on the relation between psychopathology and religion through an exposition of the articulations of this relation, as they change with the introduction of particular concepts and theories
As Celia Brickman has shown, tracking the references, Freud relied on 19th-century social-evolutionist ethnographies for his accounts of the formations of psyche and society: from Edward Burnett Tylor, he drew a stagist account based on the distinction between animism and religion; from James Frazer’s work, he gleaned the notion of the evolution of human thought from magic through religion to science, and the elaboration of the relation between totemism and exogamy; and from William Robertson Smith, he adopted the notion of animism as evolutionary stage of religion, and the ideas of the totem sacrifice and meal as first religious act constitutive of primitive group membership
In its full formulation, the supposition of the comparison reads: ‘It might be maintained that a case of hysteria is a caricature of a work of art, that an obsessional neurosis is a caricature of a religion and that a paranoic delusion is a caricature of a philosophical system’ (Freud 1912–13a:SE XIII:73)

Summary

Introduction

Contribution: This article critically engages with Freud’s most (in)famous statements on the relation between psychopathology and religion through an exposition of the articulations of this relation, as they change with the introduction of particular concepts and theories.

Objectives

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Conclusion