Theories of Religion - Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) saw religion as an illusion. By illusion Freud means a belief that people want very much to be true. Unlike Tylor and Frazer, Freud attempted to explain why religion persists in spite of the lack of evidence for its tenets. Freud asserted that religion is a largely unconscious neurotic response to repression. By repression Freud meant that civilized society demands that we cannot fulfill all our desires immediately, but that they have to be repressed. Rational arguments to a person holding a religious conviction will not change the neurotic response of a person. This is in contrast to Tylor and Frazer who saw religion as a rational and conscious, though primitive and mistaken, attempt to explain the natural world.

Freud not only tries to explain the origin and persistence of faith in individuals but in his 1913 book Totem and Taboo he even developed a speculative story about how all monotheist religions originated and developed. In the book he asserted that monotheistic religions grew out of a homicide in a clan of a father by his sons. This incident was subconsciously remembered in human societies.

In his 1939 book Moses and Monotheism Freud proposed that Moses' monotheism derived from Akhenaten. This view is not supported by biblical accounts and differs from scholarly theories.

Freud's view on religion was embedded in his larger theory of psychoanalysis which has been criticized as unscientific. Apart from theorizing, Freud's theories were developed by studying patients who were left free to talk while lying on a sofa. Though Freud's attempt to the historical origins of religions have not been accepted, his generalized view that all religions originate from unfulfilled psychological needs are still seen as offering a credible explanation in some cases.