Emile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud

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Emile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud

Emile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud are European sociologists who studied and wrote about the affect of industrializations and with society. Emile Durkheim is known to many in the humanities and academic fields. Freud is familiar to anyone who has studied intellectual and scientific history. Durkheim and Freud believed understanding the rules of society was vital for human survival. Durkheim compares to Freud in some aspects to religion. Both Emile and Freud were of European descent.

Emile went on to study the rules of society in order to better understand it. He found the broken link to when a crime or problem arose. He related this back to scientific theory which enabled the social group to play a huge role in sociology. The value of the smaller individual tasks led to a greater whole. When one group produces something very efficiently and soundly, they are relied upon by other groups which form an interaction between the groups. Yet the groups are independent, they rely on each other in order to function.

"Religion is something eminently social" (Pals 108). Durkheim feels that religion has been transmitted through years from birth.

Psychoanalysis, upon which Freud's ideas about religion rests, is not as scientific as people have assumed. Although Freud was successful in getting people to realize that there can be hidden psychological motives behind religion and religious beliefs, it is clear that religion involves much more.

Religious beliefs are expressions of symbolism to social realities; without those social realities serving as a foundation, religious beliefs would not make sense. Many have disputed this attitude, arguing that religion is more than just an expression of social rea...

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...t is the center of the Catholic faith. When we receive the Eucharist, we eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus Christ, who suffered and died on the cross for us. Eucharist is considered a meal and a sacrifice and this is a sacrament that is performed at every Catholic Mass during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is also called Holy Communion.

Even with these similarities Durkheim and Freud are very different in many ways. Both have their own opinions and beliefs about religion and communion listed and explained in these paragraphs.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund

1946 Totem and Taboo, New York: Vintage Books

1967 Moses and Monotheism, New York: Vintage Books.

Durkheim, Emile

1915 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

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