Meeting of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

DISCUSSION: Dr. S. Warren Seides mentioned Freud's strongly held view that religion is a neurotic compromise which creates the illusion of a protecting father. The developmental level of the instinctual wishes involved in the compromise were seen by Freud as phallic-oedipal, and the objects of these wishes were seen as whole objects. Dr. Seides emphasized that preoedipal experiences, component instincts, and part objects can appear as part of religious and mythological symbols in the content of the later thoughts without being central to the origin of the symbol or to its current meaning. In determining genetic origins, timing is essential. Dr. Seides felt that Dr. Almansi had first defined several symbols as they appear in myth and religion and then had retrospectively placed their importance in the preverbal period. The Tetragrammaton and the Tables of the Law could plausibly symbolize other parts of the body. For example, the Tetragrammaton could represent a phallus, and the Tables of the Law could represent breasts, a face, a couple, or genitals. Thus different interpretations of the symbol could place its origin in a later developmental phase. Furthermore, symbolization is not thought to occur before twenty-two to thirty months of age, which is long after the preverbal stage. The punitive aspects of the hands in religious symbolism is consistent with later superego development and difficult to attribute to the infant in the symbiotic stage. The oceanic feeling of being one with the world, which relates to early experiences with the mother, was not considered by Freud to be a source of religious needs. Dr. Seides concluded that "oedipal level ambivalence, rather than preverbal experiences, seems more productive of the deterministic, causative mode of thinking in religious and mythological belief systems." Dr. Nathaniel Ross agreed with Dr. Almansi on the importance of exploring the nature of the earliest inner experiences of infants. Systematic obs