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The compulsive behavior of neurotics or psychotics is frequently described by psychiatrists and psychoanalysts as a ritual. This concept was first delineated by Freud in his article, “Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices,” and was further elaborated in Totem and Taboo and The Future of an Illusion. It found its logical extension in the preface to Reik's Ritual, where Freud described the “ceremonials and prohibitions of obsessional patients” as “a private religion.”
Freud's acknowledged atheism has colored his pioneering studies of religion, and psychoanalysts have only recently begun to extricate Freud's prejudices from his more fruitful contributions. It is equally important to differentiate the various methods, problems, and goals which constitute psychoanalysis. Best known as a therapeutic technique, psychoanalysis is also a theory of culture and a science of human behavior.
The different aspects of psychoanalysis should be kept in mind when ritual is being discussed. Thus, no harm is done if a neurotic symptom (for example, compulsive handwashing) is described in the therapeutic situation as a ritual. But it is misleading to make such a symptom homologous with socially patterned behavior and then to erect a theory of culture on a clinical metaphor.
A careful reading of Freud will reveal that he was consciously discussing analogies, not homologies. And, although Freud described religion as “the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity,” he also noted that “this analogy does not exhaust the essence of religion.”
It has become progressively clearer that religion and