The Future of an Illusion by Freud
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:
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... thinking.
With both religion and science, it is not that the source determines the value of an idea - a
great idea can have a nonrational source, and a poor idea can have a rational source. What
is key is just how much influence that source continues to hold over the idea in question.
Scientists can and do come across revolutionary ideas intuitively, but their intuition and
wishful thinking are supposed to remain disciplined. Ideas are supposed to be open to
rational critique, demonstration and verification. Convictions, no matter how strong, must
be capable of being refined, modified and even abandoned if necessary. Scientific thinking
can thus be differentiated from religious thinking, since religion rarely if ever allows for
such an atmosphere to hold sway.
Works Cited
Freud, S. (1927/1961). The future of an illusion. New York: Norton.
Many aspects of our lives, including culture and religion, are fabricated on the basis of conjectures. Although these facts may remain unproven, little harm is inflicted from the possibility of misinformation. Contrarily, in the case of science, the smallest error can lead to severely misguided results and an inability to reach a solution. Dora An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria by Sigmund Freud exemplifies this situation, as Freud reveals an incomplete analysis relying on a slew of unjustified conjectures. During Dora’s time of treatment, Freud consistently ignores her denials and impresses his frequently outlandish theories on her, which ultimately leads to her early termination of treatment. Freud fails to cure Dora due to his flawed diagnosis upon unsupported conjectures and his embodiment of the patriarchal authoritativeness that lead to her hysteria.
Both Lewis and Freud agreed that the question of god’s existence and our response must be asked. Though each man had drastically different worldviews and answers, they each sought to learn and understand the other’s worldview. Nicholi points out that Lewis may have had an advantage in the understanding of the unbeliever’s worldview due to the fact that until the age of 30, he claimed to be “even more certain of his atheism than was Freud” (2002, Pg. 81). In his adult life, Freud had no dramatic change of worldview from believer to unbeliever like Lewis had. This fact may give Lewis a slight upper hand in the understanding of the unbeliever’s worldview; however, Freud was still one of the greatest minds of his times and his work proves a strong (though negative) understanding of the believer’s worldview.
Freud’s theory was developed from speculation based on
“The Illusionist” is a short story by Steven Millhauser, which was adapted into a movie directed by Neil Burger in 2008 which both take place in Vienna. The short story’s plot revolves around Eisenheim and his relationship between himself and the state, which is still featured in the movie. Eisenheim’s illusions also cause him a bit of trouble; in the short story the cause of trouble is an illusion, which produces two spirits by the name of Rosa, Elis, and a boy who appears to be no older than eight. In the movie adaptation, the final straw that causes the Crown Prince to finally pursue persecution of Eisenheim is the illusion that again, produces a spirit, which turns out to be his dead fiancée. Because of Inspector Uhl’s growing obsession of Eisenheim, throughout the movie and the short story, it further ignites the blur between what is the reality and what is his illusion. Uhl’s obsession over Eisenheim and his illusions helps blur the reality around him.
Erich Fromm in his psychoanalytical approach to religion is distinct from the earlier works of Sigmund Freud. Fromm defines religion as “any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion.” Fromm argues that irreligious systems including all the different kinds of idealism and “private” religions deserve being defined as a “religion.” Based on Fromm’s theory, it is explained that there is no human being who does not have a “religious need,” almost every part of human life reflects religious need and its fulfillment, in fact he states it to be “inherent” in man.
...en civilization and the individual. Living in a nation still recovering from a brutally violent war (Germany), Freud began to criticize organized religion as a collective neurosis, or mental disorder. Freud, a strong proponent of atheism, argued that religion tamed asocial instincts and created a sense of community because of the shared set of beliefs. This undoubtedly helped a civilization. However, at the same time organized religion also exacts an enormous psychological cost to the individual by making him or her perpetually subordinate to the primal figure embodied by God.
In the midst of his already successful career, Sigmund Freud decided to finally dedicate a book of his to religion, referring to the subject as a phenomena faced by the scientific community. This new work, Totem and Taboo, blew society off its feet, ultimately expanding the reaches of debates and intellectual studies. From the beginning, Freud argues that there exists a parallel between the archaic man and the contemporary compulsive. Both these types of people, he argues, exhibit neurotic behavior, and so the parallel between the two is sound. Freud argues that we should be able to determine the cause of religion the same way we determine the cause of neurosis. He believes, since all neuroses stem from childhood experiences, that the origins of this compulsive behavior we call religion should also be attributed to some childhood experiences of the human race, too. Freudian thought has been dominant since he became well known. In Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, religion becomes entirely evident as a major part of the novel, but the role it specifically plays is what we should question. Therefore, I argue that Freud’s approach to an inborn sense of religion and the role it plays exists in The Last of the Mohicans, in that the role religion plays in the wilderness manifests itself in the form of an untouchable truth, an innate sense of being, and most importantly, something that cannot and should not be tampered with.
and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) Freud’s perspective in this theory is very
Freud for Historians. By Peter Gay. (Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. vii + 252. Preface, bibliography, acknowledgments, index.)
Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 333.
Goodwin, A. (1998). Freud and Erikson: Their Contributions to the Psychology of God-Image Formation. Pastoral Psychology, 47(2), 97-117. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
His research on children was lacking, as was his use of empirical studies, his research was male-dominated and also lacked universality. The theory of the id, ego and superego develops from birth into childhood; therefore, the use of case studies on adults and the lack of empirical study does not seem feasible enough to have developed this theory. First of all there is no guarantee that the memories of these adults in their childhood would be accurate, there was not any factual, re-testable data so it lacked reliability and validity, secondly each case and person’s experience is different and therefore cannot be used to determine the development of an entire population. Freud’s theory was further biased due to him overlooking social and environmental aspects, which prevent universality; he was a European man who researched other upper middle class Europeans whose everyday living and circumstances differed greatly from others in society.
Freud originally attempted to explain the workings of the mind in terms of physiology and neurology ...(but)... quite early on in his treatment of patients with neurological disorders, Freud realised that symptoms which had no organic or bodily basis could imitate the real thing and that they were as real for the patient as if they had been neurologically caused. So he began to search for psychological explanations of these symptoms and ways of treating them.
Psychoanalysis had its beginning with the discovery that a person in complete physical health could experience an illness with physical symptoms that stemmed from things trapped in the subconscious known as hysteria. Charcot, a French neurologist tried to liberate the mind through hypnosis. A Viennese physician, Josef Breuer, carried this purging further with a process based on his patient, Anna O., revealing her thoughts and feelings to him. Sigmund Freud took Breuer’s method and made generalizations that grew into conceptualizations and eventually into the theories of psychoanalysis. Freud would listen to his patients, and then use these thoughts to interpret what was happening in the unconscious part of their mind. This was explained as bringing the unconscious to consciousness so it could be dealt with through therapy. Breuer and Freud’s successes with this method led to the foundational publication of Studies in Hysteria in 1895. Freud continued his practice of theory until it became the system of psychology known as psychoanalysis, a system that is the single most influential theory of psychotherapy in our time. A brief look into psychoanalysis is seen through the foundations of Freud’s theory.
… Freud's own existence as a person pointed beyond the deterministic presuppositions of his theory … Freud's own largeness and depth of humanity as a man surpassed his scientific theories.1