The Evolution and Origin of Religion (lectured by Mr. Samanta Ilaṅgakon) 2011
According to Sigmund Freud, as he explained in the work 'Totem and Taboo', it is a well-known fact that many primitive people believe in concept, which is represented by a totem, a secret animal or plant. However, on ceremonial occasions this totem is killed and eaten. According to Sigmund Freud, this ritual appeared at the origin of religion. He said “God himself was an animal and had evolved from a totem”. 'Totem and Taboo' is an exhibition exploring the relationship between art and design.
The need for religion arises from child’s feeling of haplessness. When the child grows up and finds that he/she is destined to remain a child forever and that he/she can never live without protection against unknown mighty power, he/she creates for him/herself a God. Sigmund Freud’s theories assumed that the society has arisen out of the need for sex and aggressivity. He was born on 6th of May 1856 and died on 23rd of September 1939. In his book, he wrote four chapters such as ‘The Horror of Incest’, ‘Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence’, 'Animism, Magic and Omnipotence of Thoughts’ and ‘The Return of Totemism in Childhood’. Sigmund Freud finds a close connection between the father and the belief in God. He said “Youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down”.
To Sigmund Freud this very wish for a father has its basic role in the child’s infantile period. Due to their dependence on adults, for Freud religion has its origin in man’s helplessness in the face of the danger from the society and from nature. Thus man develops an illusion which is taken from his own individual experience as a child.
Sigmund Freud compares religion with the neurosis found in children. He thinks that the religious phase of culture will be replaced by scientific one. The religion is bound to disappear with the spread of knowledge and with man’s education of reality. Since Sigmund Freud believes that religion is an illusion. He is was sure to believe that the continuous connection of religion and ethics will lead to the destruction of our normal values.
Sigmund Freud’s theory, as of the founder of psychology, has explained the value of religion. He believed religion to be a psychological phenomenon. Therefore, he is the father of psychology of religion. As mentioned above, this topic is therefore very important with regards to Freud’s religion.
BONUS: Sigmund Freud on the Origins of Religion (from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/280547/sigmund_freud_on_the_origins_of_religion.html?cat=38 ) 2011
The pioneering psychologist Sigmund Freud had much to say regarding the topic of religion, particularly monotheism, despite his lack of expertise on the subject matter. Nonetheless, he brings about many arguments with which we must deal when investigating the nature and purpose of religion. Throughout his career Freud returned various times to the topic of religion. Each time he focused on slightly different aspects of the topic however, he consistently presents a very critical view of religion based on his theory of psychoanalysis and other personal opinions. While he presents many logical hypotheses, they remain largely untestable or to go against ethnographic data. Even more important to evaluating the ideas of Freud over this theme, is taking note of his inconsistency.
In his early work Totem and Taboo, Freud explores the origins of indigenous clan religions. Various clans here are referred to as totems. His attempts to isolate the origins of animistic religions mirror the work of Tylor and Frazer. His approach nonetheless is quite different. In this work Freud attributes the origin of religion to emotions such as hatred, fear and jealousy. These emotions are directed toward a father figure in the clan from the sons who are denied sexual access to the females. These emotions eventually drive the sons to murder the father resulting in the most important emotion in the forming of the totem, guilt. The father figure becomes the first totem when the sons realize their misdeed (Hicks 9).
With the creation of the sacred totem, also come taboos. Taboos are rules governing the treatment of totem animals, which come to represent the father, and interactions between members of the same totem or clan. These taboos are particularly strong in regards to incest. In short Freud attributes totem religions to be a result of extreme emotion, rash action and the resulting guilt. Tylor and Frazer on the other hand produce a much more deliberate view of developing religion. The natives they explain are consciously attempting to explain the world around them, creating a ritualistic magic based religion. Essentially Freud's theory of the origins of indigenous religions differs from the intellectualists' in the degree of volition he attributes to the natives in attempting to describe the world around them.
When moving on to further religious development, in Totem and Taboo Freud states, "All later religions are seen to be attempts at solving the same problem....all have the same end in view and are reactions to the same great event with which civilization began and which, since it occurred, has not allowed mankind a moment's rest." (Hicks 11). Here Freud is again referring to the original murder of the father. Only now he is attributing all religion to be rooted in the event. He speculates how the totem animal evolved into polytheistic gods then condensed again to a monotheistic father figure (Pals 68). Like the intellectualists, he traces a direct line from primitive forms of religion to modern forms. However once again, his method for justifying such is quite different that those of Tylor and Frazer.
In his later work The Future of an Illusion, Freud seems to abandon the idea that monotheism can be traced to the murderous origin of totemism. He claims the second book is a look to the future of religion as opposed to an attempt at describing its past (Pals 69). However, he clearly makes claims regarding the origin of monotheism in this work. Freud describes the origins of civilization as stemming from a need for protection from nature. Further, he explains the illusion that men create in order to cope with the reality of these forces. He states, "...a man makes these forces of nature not simply into persons with whom he can associate as he would with his equals-that would not do justice to the overpowering impression which those forces make on him-but he gives them the character of a father. He turns them into gods..." (Freud 21). Like in Totem and Taboo, Freud looks at the connection between monotheistic gods and earthly fathers. However, each work presents a quite different opinion of the father nature of God. In Totem and Taboo, God stems from a literal father. In The Future of an Illusion, men desired a father figure and wished him into existence through God.
The arguments of God's origin presented by Sigmund Freud in Totem and Taboo offer a unique theory on the development of religion. It is important to keep in mind that despite his tedious efforts to describe a detailed scenario at the dawn of civilization, it is still just a theory. Freud provides his readers with no evidence that the situation he described ever transpired. Further he provides no explanation of how knowledge of this event somehow spread to all humans everywhere prompting them to form religious doctrines. His theory presented in The Future of an Illusion seems slightly more plausible, but requires more in depth criticism than is currently allowed. For the given purpose it will suffice to point out that his complete theory on the origin of God changed from his previous work, lending little credit to either.
References:
Freud, S. The Future of an Illusion. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961
Hicks, D. Ritual and Belief. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2002.
Pals, D. Eight Theories of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2006.
Sigmund Freud was born to Jewish parents in the heavily Roman Catholic town of Freiburg, Moravia. Throughout his life, Freud endeavored to understand religion and spirituality and wrote several books devoted to the subject, including Totem and Taboo (1913), The Future of an Illusion (1927), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), and Moses and Monotheism (1938).
Religion, Freud believed, was an expression of underlying psychological neuroses and distress. At various points in his writings, he suggested that religion was an attempt to control the Oedipal complex, a means of giving structure to social groups, wish fulfillment, an infantile delusion, and an attempt to control the outside world.
Freud’s Jewish Heritage:
While he was very up front about his atheism and believed that religion was something to overcome, he was aware of the powerful influence of religion on identity. He acknowledged that his Jewish heritage as well as the antisemitism he frequently encountered had shaped his own personality. "My language is German. My culture, my attainments are German. I considered myself German intellectually, until I noticed the growth of anti-Semitic prejudice in Germany and German Austria. Since that time, I prefer to call myself a Jew," he wrote in 1925.
Religion According to Freud:
"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." --Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,1933.
"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis." --Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, 1927
"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. [...] If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity." –Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 1939
Freud’s Criticism of Religion: From Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) :"A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it."
From The Future of an Illusion (1927):"Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect."
From Civilization and Its Discontents (1930):"The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. It is still more humiliating to discover how a large number of people living today, who cannot but see that this religion is not tenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions."
"The different religions have never overlooked the part played by the sense of guilt in civilization. What is more, they come forward with a claim...to save mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin."
The need for religion arises from child’s feeling of haplessness. When the child grows up and finds that he/she is destined to remain a child forever and that he/she can never live without protection against unknown mighty power, he/she creates for him/herself a God. Sigmund Freud’s theories assumed that the society has arisen out of the need for sex and aggressivity. He was born on 6th of May 1856 and died on 23rd of September 1939. In his book, he wrote four chapters such as ‘The Horror of Incest’, ‘Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence’, 'Animism, Magic and Omnipotence of Thoughts’ and ‘The Return of Totemism in Childhood’. Sigmund Freud finds a close connection between the father and the belief in God. He said “Youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down”.
To Sigmund Freud this very wish for a father has its basic role in the child’s infantile period. Due to their dependence on adults, for Freud religion has its origin in man’s helplessness in the face of the danger from the society and from nature. Thus man develops an illusion which is taken from his own individual experience as a child.
Sigmund Freud compares religion with the neurosis found in children. He thinks that the religious phase of culture will be replaced by scientific one. The religion is bound to disappear with the spread of knowledge and with man’s education of reality. Since Sigmund Freud believes that religion is an illusion. He is was sure to believe that the continuous connection of religion and ethics will lead to the destruction of our normal values.
Sigmund Freud’s theory, as of the founder of psychology, has explained the value of religion. He believed religion to be a psychological phenomenon. Therefore, he is the father of psychology of religion. As mentioned above, this topic is therefore very important with regards to Freud’s religion.
BONUS: Sigmund Freud on the Origins of Religion (from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/280547/sigmund_freud_on_the_origins_of_religion.html?cat=38 ) 2011
The pioneering psychologist Sigmund Freud had much to say regarding the topic of religion, particularly monotheism, despite his lack of expertise on the subject matter. Nonetheless, he brings about many arguments with which we must deal when investigating the nature and purpose of religion. Throughout his career Freud returned various times to the topic of religion. Each time he focused on slightly different aspects of the topic however, he consistently presents a very critical view of religion based on his theory of psychoanalysis and other personal opinions. While he presents many logical hypotheses, they remain largely untestable or to go against ethnographic data. Even more important to evaluating the ideas of Freud over this theme, is taking note of his inconsistency.
In his early work Totem and Taboo, Freud explores the origins of indigenous clan religions. Various clans here are referred to as totems. His attempts to isolate the origins of animistic religions mirror the work of Tylor and Frazer. His approach nonetheless is quite different. In this work Freud attributes the origin of religion to emotions such as hatred, fear and jealousy. These emotions are directed toward a father figure in the clan from the sons who are denied sexual access to the females. These emotions eventually drive the sons to murder the father resulting in the most important emotion in the forming of the totem, guilt. The father figure becomes the first totem when the sons realize their misdeed (Hicks 9).
With the creation of the sacred totem, also come taboos. Taboos are rules governing the treatment of totem animals, which come to represent the father, and interactions between members of the same totem or clan. These taboos are particularly strong in regards to incest. In short Freud attributes totem religions to be a result of extreme emotion, rash action and the resulting guilt. Tylor and Frazer on the other hand produce a much more deliberate view of developing religion. The natives they explain are consciously attempting to explain the world around them, creating a ritualistic magic based religion. Essentially Freud's theory of the origins of indigenous religions differs from the intellectualists' in the degree of volition he attributes to the natives in attempting to describe the world around them.
When moving on to further religious development, in Totem and Taboo Freud states, "All later religions are seen to be attempts at solving the same problem....all have the same end in view and are reactions to the same great event with which civilization began and which, since it occurred, has not allowed mankind a moment's rest." (Hicks 11). Here Freud is again referring to the original murder of the father. Only now he is attributing all religion to be rooted in the event. He speculates how the totem animal evolved into polytheistic gods then condensed again to a monotheistic father figure (Pals 68). Like the intellectualists, he traces a direct line from primitive forms of religion to modern forms. However once again, his method for justifying such is quite different that those of Tylor and Frazer.
In his later work The Future of an Illusion, Freud seems to abandon the idea that monotheism can be traced to the murderous origin of totemism. He claims the second book is a look to the future of religion as opposed to an attempt at describing its past (Pals 69). However, he clearly makes claims regarding the origin of monotheism in this work. Freud describes the origins of civilization as stemming from a need for protection from nature. Further, he explains the illusion that men create in order to cope with the reality of these forces. He states, "...a man makes these forces of nature not simply into persons with whom he can associate as he would with his equals-that would not do justice to the overpowering impression which those forces make on him-but he gives them the character of a father. He turns them into gods..." (Freud 21). Like in Totem and Taboo, Freud looks at the connection between monotheistic gods and earthly fathers. However, each work presents a quite different opinion of the father nature of God. In Totem and Taboo, God stems from a literal father. In The Future of an Illusion, men desired a father figure and wished him into existence through God.
The arguments of God's origin presented by Sigmund Freud in Totem and Taboo offer a unique theory on the development of religion. It is important to keep in mind that despite his tedious efforts to describe a detailed scenario at the dawn of civilization, it is still just a theory. Freud provides his readers with no evidence that the situation he described ever transpired. Further he provides no explanation of how knowledge of this event somehow spread to all humans everywhere prompting them to form religious doctrines. His theory presented in The Future of an Illusion seems slightly more plausible, but requires more in depth criticism than is currently allowed. For the given purpose it will suffice to point out that his complete theory on the origin of God changed from his previous work, lending little credit to either.
References:
Freud, S. The Future of an Illusion. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961
Hicks, D. Ritual and Belief. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2002.
Pals, D. Eight Theories of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2006.
Sigmund Freud was born to Jewish parents in the heavily Roman Catholic town of Freiburg, Moravia. Throughout his life, Freud endeavored to understand religion and spirituality and wrote several books devoted to the subject, including Totem and Taboo (1913), The Future of an Illusion (1927), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), and Moses and Monotheism (1938).
Religion, Freud believed, was an expression of underlying psychological neuroses and distress. At various points in his writings, he suggested that religion was an attempt to control the Oedipal complex, a means of giving structure to social groups, wish fulfillment, an infantile delusion, and an attempt to control the outside world.
Freud’s Jewish Heritage:
While he was very up front about his atheism and believed that religion was something to overcome, he was aware of the powerful influence of religion on identity. He acknowledged that his Jewish heritage as well as the antisemitism he frequently encountered had shaped his own personality. "My language is German. My culture, my attainments are German. I considered myself German intellectually, until I noticed the growth of anti-Semitic prejudice in Germany and German Austria. Since that time, I prefer to call myself a Jew," he wrote in 1925.
Religion According to Freud:
"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." --Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,1933.
"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis." --Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, 1927
"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. [...] If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity." –Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 1939
Freud’s Criticism of Religion: From Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) :"A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it."
From The Future of an Illusion (1927):"Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect."
From Civilization and Its Discontents (1930):"The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. It is still more humiliating to discover how a large number of people living today, who cannot but see that this religion is not tenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions."
"The different religions have never overlooked the part played by the sense of guilt in civilization. What is more, they come forward with a claim...to save mankind from this sense of guilt, which they call sin."
