Editor’s note: Although FFRF columnist James Haught died, sadly, on July 23 at age 91, we are lucky to still have a bunch of pieces Jim gave us to use — some fresh and others previously published — that we will be sending out till we exhaust this treasure trove.
Sigmund Freud, who died 84 years ago this week, is recognized worldwide as the chief founder of modern psychiatry. The public is generally unaware, though, that Freud was a fervent crusader against religion, which he deemed an obstacle to human intelligence.
“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires,” he stated.
Biographer Philip Rieff remarked: “Religion may have been the original cure; Freud reminds us that it was also the original disease.” And British Jewish leader Jacob Meitlis recalled that Freud, his friend, felt that “all religions were matters created by human beings, and he could discern no trace of sanctity in any of them.”
Again and again in his writing, Freud contended that small children have awesome images of their fathers as powerful protectors and punishers, and that, years later, this fantasy of the Great Father, still buried in the subconscious, attaches itself to the imaginary God of religion. Thus, unwittingly, believers worship the submerged infantile memory of their fathers. Repeatedly, Freud called religion a “universal obsessional neurosis.”
Freud’s scientific realism developed at an early age. A brilliant student, he entered medical school under physiologist Ernst Brucke, who taught that the human psyche is purely biological, not mystical or divine. This helped shape his notions on religion. “Religions originate in the child’s and young mankind’s fears and need for help; it cannot be otherwise,” he remarked.
Throughout his career of analyzing human behavior, Freud attempted to apply scientific methods to understanding fears, feelings and fantasies. Today, his methods have been partly abandoned, yet he is known as the principal pioneer in grasping the submerged elements of human nature. That’s why his perspective on religion comes from a place of learning.
“Neither in my private life nor in my writings have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever,” he proclaimed.
So many years after his death, the thinking of this brilliant mind still deserves respect.
One Response
Freud was largely a charlatan. He faked his data and outright lied about many of his case studies. He destroyed a woman’s face (one of his famous case studies, named Dora) because he decided that he would try sinus surgery for mental illness. His theories have done enormous damage to survivors of sexual abuse and to women in general. The place to start is with Jeffery Masson’s book on him. Masson was the head of the Freud archives and was genuinely shocked by what Freud did.
This is not someone that I would ever use to promote rationalism or defend atheism.