Harmful Versus Beneficial Religion: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

Freud's analysis of religion bears on what he called its “truth-value” (Freud, 1927b, p. 37). The theme of his one full-length monograph on religion is that it is an “illusion,” something believed because it is wished for but for which there is no evidence. He thought that people are overwhelmed in facing the harshness of reality. They are irresistibly drawn to belief in a spiritual force because they yearn for consolation and protection, and they want to deny the finality of death to themselves and their loved ones (Freud, 1927b, pp. 24, 30, 49). But Freud did not long maintain his restraint in describing religion as an illusion, as something that might be true. He stated finally that it is a “delusion,” a belief that is false. At times, he noted, an “attempt to procure a certainty of happiness and a protection against suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is made by a number of people in common.” “The religions of mankind,” he asserted, “must be classed among the mass-delusions of this kind” (Freud, 1930, p. 81). Several commentators have underlined Winnicott's more positive conception of illusion, its necessary and valuable place in development, and the connection to religion of this view of illusion (e.g., Meissner, 1978; Rizzuto, 1979; McDarth, 1983; Ross and Ross, 1983; Ulanov, 2001; Jones, 2002), but all students of psychoanalysis and religion agree that Freud took a dismissive approach to religion because he was convinced that it was delusional.

Yet a close reading of Freud's consideration of religion reveals that he acknowledged another question as more basic: Is religion harmful or beneficial to the individual? “If [religion] had succeeded in making the majority of mankind happy, in comforting them, in reconciling them to life and in making them into vehicles of civilization, no one would dream to alter the existing conditions” (Freud, 1927b, p. 37). The underlying issue, he suggested, is whether religion works for