GOD, FREUD AND RELIGION by Dianna T. Kenny

Author:Dianna T. Kenny
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-64965-6
Publisher: Routledge

Contemporary psychoanalysis and religion

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

(Nietzsche, 1882, section 125)

In addition to critiques arising from disciplines outside psychoanalysis, there are those coming from within, which cast a searing light onto the religious works themselves in order to identify the errors and gaps in Freud’s reasoning (e.g., O’Neil & Akhtar, 2009). Akhtar (2009) complains that Freud’s strident disregard for God had the effect of bracketing any psychoanalytic enquiry either in analysts themselves or in their patients, except to investigate the psychic meaning of adherence to a belief in an illusion. Such was Freud’s conviction that psychoanalysis is an atheistic science, those professing religious beliefs were not accepted for psychoanalytic training in the early days of the ‘movement’. Why, asks Akhtar, does Freud, the ‘Godless Jew’, have such a preoccupation with the subject and why does he debate with himself so vehemently (in the guise of an argumentative interlocutor) in The Future of an Illusion? Because, concludes Akhtar, this work is a battleground on which Freud plays out his opposing selves, and his ambivalence about God. Many of us who have devoted time to an examination of this question will empathize with Freud’s conflicted stance and will feel less judgemental towards him than Akhtar. Or perhaps we will concur with Jung and Winnicott that the question of God’s existence is not to be asked.

Akhtar juxtaposes Bion’s concept of God with Freud’s. Freud’s God is, according to Akhtar, anthropomorphized – Freud demolishes a Judeo-Christian god who is ‘up there’. In contrast, “Bion’s God is everywhere. Freud’s God is sculpted in human terms. Bion’s God is painted in the watercolour of wisdom … sings through the murmur of the wind and floats on the waves of rivers and oceans … Bion’s God is inescapable” (Akhtar, 2009, p. 5). These sentiments make for evocative poetry but what do they mean? How are they helpful conceptually? This view of God, and this hymn of praise to Bion (dare I declare it hero worship or hagiography?), is nothing other than nature deified. This naïve conception of God is characteristic of the natural religions of primitive cultures and very young children, hence not helpful in advancing any inquiry into the nature of God.

Contemporary psychoanalytic critiques of Freud’s theory of religion can be subdivided into three main groups:

1. Those which are in agreement with Freud’s central thesis that God is an illusion and atheism is the only defensible position (e.g., Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997; Fenichel, 1938).

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