Freud, Religion, and Science

The struggle of human intellect in its attempts to reconcile the two distinct and seemingly irreconcilable frames of reference, that is, the rational and empirical and transcendency, must have begun with the dawn of mankind. It could not have been too distant in time from this point that some form of religion began to take shape. The conflict thus engendered initiated a cognitive and emotional conflict that has continued unabated to this day. Each era had its own ways of dealing with this eternal problem. The earliest stage of religion, that is, the animistic or pagan stage of religious worship, made it relatively easy for its adherents because it stressed the literal and concrete nature of the objects of their worship. Implicit in this worship was the investment in an object, one or several, seen or unseen, of powers that are denied to ordinary mortals thus endowing the objects with the qualities of a deity. Such investment, or projection, then necessitated an awareness of what the specific deity wants of the worshiper so that the deity's benevolence could be bestowed on the worshipper. The problem became more acute when transcendency, leading to a thoroughgoing supernaturalism, became the organizing focus of religious involvement. How does one explain and validate a belief in an invisible, inscrutable Power whose control over nature and man is unlimited and whose demand for unquestioned obedience and worship is absolute and categorical? More important, for purposes of this essay, why is there such an eternally enduring need in the first place and what is the source and content of this need? Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the founder of the psychoanalytic movement, used his discoveries about the human mind in an attempt to answer this question. Freud was only a more recent member of that long line of thinkers who dared to challenge established religion.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) and Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) ushered in an era of deductive logic th