What Hillel and Freud Both See When Gazing Into Moses' Face: A Response to Discussions

It is Erich Fromm, more than any other psychoanalyst, who most clearly and articulately asserts the position that good psychoanalysis and good religion are not in opposition, but rather, walk hand in hand—two responses to the same profound human yearning and impulse. On the plane of the history of ideas, Fromm is critical of Freud's choice to position the discipline of psychoanalysis within the context of the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, or physics) and not within the longer-standing humanistic and philosophical traditions that include religion, values, and ethics. Fromm (1947) saw Freud's choice to conceptualize psychoanalysis as a science, and not as a philosophy or a religion, as leading to the tendency within psychoanalysis to discredit all higher human values. Fromm wrote, “While psychoanalysis has tremendously increased our knowledge of man, it has not increased our knowledge about how man ought to live and what he ought to do. Its main function is that of debunking—of demonstrating that the value judgments and ethical norms of man are the rationalized expressions of irrational and often unconscious desires and fears; and they therefore have no claim to objective validity” (p. 16).

On the plane of clinical practice, Fromm (1980) saw modern conceptions of psychopathology as newer forms of ancient idolatrous ideas. Fromm writes, “The adult is in many ways no less helpless than the infant. Indeed, he can work and fulfill tasks ascribed to him by society, but he is also more aware than the infant of the dangers and risks of life. He knows of the natural and social forces he cannot control, the accidents he cannot foresee, the sickness and death he cannot elude. What would be more natural, under the circumstances, than man's frantic longing for an idol to worship, for a power that gives him certainty, protection, and love? If human beings could find that idol, that mother, that father, that god or goddess, that transference for the rest of their lives, life