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This paper has presented Freud's answer to his own question about how religious believers have been able to acquire their belief in a Divine Being. The author has taken Freud's writings as a whole, trying to articulate the prevailing line of his thinking. Some fascinating material, like the case history of Schreber (Freud, 1911) is not included because, although its richness and complexities deserve another paper, it does not add anything substantial to Freud's thinking. The even more interesting issue of actual belief in the existence of God is also left aside because—in Freud's terms and the author's—it does not belong to the unconscious level of mental life where a good part of the object representation dwell, awaiting, in their multipotential richness, to be awakened by a person's emotional needs. 'Belief (and doubt)', Freud writes in 1987, 'is a phenomenon that belongs wholly to the system of the ego (the Cs.) and has no counterpart in the Ucs.' (Freud, 1950, p. 255).
The focus of the paper is on the concept of object representation which, in Freud's account, is the indispensable mediator in the process of formation of the God image. Following Freud in his itinerary through the history of the race and the personal history of his patients, we have witnessed the paramount importance he attributes to the paternal imago. One of the object representations, that of the primeval father, has so powerful and lasting an influence in Freud's appraisal that no male child reaching the oedipal crisis may escape it. Moreover, the early object representations of an individual are endowed with such libidinal power that all future relations remain under their spell. As though these two types of object representations were not encompassing enough in their power to colour human experience, Freud attributes to them the compelling potential to blend and transform themselves into a God representation. God, then, extends their power to the furthest reaches of the universe. Finally, the religion created to modulate the feelings attached to the God representation regulates a large part of the cultural process.