Future Of An Illusion By Freud Essay

, Research Paper

In his book The Future of An Illusion, Freud (1928) struggled to create a theory that

would distinguish morality from religion so that people would still be able to know right

from wrong even if they did not believe in a God. According to Freud, humans belonged

to civilization to control nature and to regulate human relations. However, Freud claimed

that humans have often paid a great price for civilization; this price, he believed, was

neurosis. Consequently, humans began to look for some kind of compensation to confront

the neurosis. Freud’s theory maintained that religion often evolved as this compensation.

Freud suggested that religion and ethics, to this point, have acted to maintain civilization.

However, Freud also proposed that humans were helpless before the forces of nature and

thus “needed” something to protect them. Thus, he concluded that religion has sprung out

of helplessness and therefore was unhealthy to the individual. Based on this theory of

religion, Freud proposed the need to consider a way to sustain morality apart from

religion.

As is generally known, the central Freudian criticism of belief in God is that such a belief is

untrustworthy because of its psychological origin. That is, God is a projection of our own

intense, unconscious desires; He is a wish fulfillment derived from childish needs for

protection and security. Since these wishes are largely unconscious, any denial of such an

interpretation is to be given little credence. It should be noted that in developing this kind

of critique, Freud has raised the ad hominem argument to one of wide influence. It is in

The Future of an Illusion (1927, 1961) that Freud makes his position clearest:

Religious ideas have arisen from the same needs as have all the other achievements of

civilization: from the necessity of defending oneself against the crushing superior force of

nature. (p. 21)

Therefore, religious beliefs are:

…illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind . . . As

we already know, the terrifying impression of helplessness in childhood aroused the need

forprotection-for protection through love-which was provided by the father . . . Thus the

benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the danger of life. (p. 30)

Although such historical speculations fail to impress most people, Freud’s psychological

theories, appearing mostly in The Future of an Illusion, are a bit more credible. He made a

deliberate point of refusing to grant religion any sort of privileged status among human

endeavors. He put religion squarely in the middle of the larger context of human culture

and thus made it as accessible to scientific investigation as any other human conduct.

There were to be no sacred cows, no exemption from detailed analysis.

A number of different psychological motives underlying religious impulses are discussed

throughout the book and briefly in other works. A principle component for Freud was the

feeling of helplessness, occurring in a number of different areas, namely external dangers,

internal impulses, death, and society. As wish-fulfilling illusions, religious faith and gods

had specific tasks:

They must exorcize the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate,

particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings

which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.

The first, of course, would be the feeling of helplessness before the awesome and

unpredictable powers of nature – mortal dangers from the external world. We are

confronted in life by many uncontrollable dangers, from hurricanes to disease – a condition

which Feud likened to the situation children find themselves in. Children, however, look to

their parents to protect them from danger. Adults thus create gods for themselves

precisely because they had similar “gods” in their homes as they grew up. Freud regarded

the link between the two to as “incontrovertible.”

However, it should be recognized that this link served Freud, since the inclusion of

childhood moved the issue to the home turf of Freud’s psychoanalysis which focused

strongly on childhood traumas to explain adult neuroses.

Perhaps the greatest danger facing a person is their own eventual demise. Religion,

however, typically promises the existence of an afterlife and hence that there is no genuine

death. Not only is death not genuine, but the “true believer” can look forward to

wonderful rewards for their allegiance to the “true faith” as compensation for whatever

tribulations they endured on earth. This was an important theme for Freud, as he

considered civilization to be oppressive on human nature, engendering many forms of

neurosis. Although he considered it necessary for survival, it was at best a something to

endure and not appreciate.

Psychological Analysis: Obsessions <

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать