Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century

Competitors or Collaborators?

David M. Black

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781134181476
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

What can be gained from a dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion?

Freud described religion as the universal obsessional neurosis, and uncompromisingly rejected it in favour of "science." Ever since, there has been the assumption that psychoanalysts are hostile to religion. Yet, from the beginning, individual analysts have questioned Freud's blanket rejection of religion.

In this book, David Black brings together contributors from a wide range of schools and movements to discuss the issues. They bring a fresh perspective to the subject of religion and psychoanalysis, answering vital questions such as:

• How do religious stories carry (or distort) psychological truth?
• How do religions 'work', psychologically?
• What is the nature of religious experience?
• Are there parallels between psychoanalysis and particular religious traditions?

Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic therapists, psychodynamic counsellors, and anyone interested in the issues surrounding psychoanalysis, religion, theology and spirituality.

PART ONE

The possibility of religious truth

1

BEYOND ILLUSION

Psychoanalysis and the question of religious truth

Rachel B. Blass

The relationship between psychoanalysis and religion has been changing since the mid 1980s. During this period numerous psychoanalytic books and articles have appeared that reject what is commonly presented as Freud’s reductionistic understanding of religion and his negative evaluation of it as an expression of infantile needs. While the view that religion should not be so simply reduced may have entered the mainstream of psychoanalysis, many of these newer writings on religion go further to claim that, from a psychoanalytic perspective, certain forms of religious belief and practice should be positively evaluated as a healthy development, an expression of a kind of achievement – emotional, moral, spiritual and cultural – that could be expected to emerge through a successful psychoanalytic process. The names associated with this shift are Michael Eigen, James Jones, Sudhir Kakar, William Meissner, Ana-Maria Rizzuto, Neville Symington and others, all of whom, interestingly, rely on the thinking of Donald Winnicott, although not exclusively so. The degree to which this positive evaluation has become integral to psychoanalytic thinking may vary according to geographical location, but I think one finds that, overall among analysts today, there is a much greater openness to and acceptance of certain religious beliefs and practices than ever before. In this chapter I will argue that this shift towards conciliation between psychoanalysis and religion is misleading. The conciliation is between psychoanalysis and religion in a specific sense of the term only. In this specific sense of religion the question most central to the traditional Judeo-Christian believer, the question of God’s existence, is not only bracketed, but also no longer considered relevant or meaningful. Religion is regarded not as an expression of knowledge or truth pertaining to the nature of reality, the transcendent reality of God, but more as a kind of self- or relational experiencing within a realm of illusion. Conciliation thus becomes possible because, in this postmodern, non-realist sense of religion, there is no longer room for the concern (which troubled Freud) that religious belief is a distortion of reality. I think, however, that, in focusing on religion in this new and limited sense, differences and tensions between psychoanalysis and religion are concealed and the distinct nature of psychoanalysis as concerned with reality and a search for truth is blurred. Paradoxically, perhaps, by blurring this distinct nature of psychoanalysis a meaningful common ground for psychoanalysis and religion in its traditional sense is also lost. My argument is composed of two parts. In the first and main section of the chapter, I describe the major shifts that have taken place in psychoanalysis’s approach to religion and some of the problematic implications and consequences of these shifts, both for psychoanalysis and for religion. I show how, in these shifts, the analytic concern with truth gets lost and how it is this concern that underlies the tension between psychoanalysis and religion from Freud’s time onwards. I go on to show that this concern can also meaningfully connect between psychoanalysis and religion. In the second section, by bringing to the fore a neglected dimension of Freud’s thought in his Moses and Monotheism (1939), I point to a deeper connection between the two. Through Freud’s attempt in that book to understand what underlies our conviction in ideas that are beyond scientific demonstration, a more complex understanding of psychoanalysis’s notion of truth evolves. Through this notion of truth, psychoanalysis and religion may be regarded as two opposite perspectives on the nature of the reality that lies at the foundations of our sense of an ethically compelling ‘Otherness’ within us. While both perspectives strive to grasp this truth, they will, according to Freud, inevitably fail to do so. I argue that it is in this shared failure that a place for dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion emerges without blurring the fundamental differences between them.

Freud’s notorious rejection of religion

Freud’s negative attitude towards religion is clearly stated and often cited. The basic text most commonly referred to in this regard is his The Future of an Illusion (1927). There, he points to the illusionary nature of religion – in other words, that the foundations and origins of belief lie in wishful thinking. And, while he acknowledges that this in itself does not put in question the value or truth of religion, he emphasises the infantile nature of the wishes involved. He writes that, when ‘a psychologist who does not deceive himself’ assesses the process of human development,

the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis.

(Freud 1927: 53)

Moreover, Freud does ultimately put in question the validity of religious claims:

Religious doctrines will have to be discarded … in the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which religion offers to both is all too palpable. Even purified religious ideas cannot escape this fate.

(Freud 1927: 54)

A few years later, in his Civilization and its Discontents (1930), he refers to religion most explicitly as delusionary. There, he speaks of the case in which ‘a considerable number of people in common … attempt to procure a certainty of happiness and protection against suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality’ and he adds that ‘The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass delusions of this kind’ (Freud 1930: 81).

The new psychoanalytic approaches to religion

Ever since the time these critical views were initially put forth, there have been voices coming from within psychoanalysis (in addition to the numerous ones coming from without) that have taken issue with Freud. The first of these analytic voices is that of Oskar Pfister, the Swiss psychoanalyst and Lutheran minister who was a major interlocutor of Freud’s on matters of religion. Pfister’s objections were made public at Freud’s request in his article ‘The illusion of a future’, published in German in Imago in 1928 (and significantly republished in English in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis sixty-five years later: Roazen, 1993). It is possible to follow a continuous, albeit rather thin, stream of critical writings that ensued in the following fifty years. Zilboorg, Erikson, Fromm and Loewald are the most prominent of the writers who explicitly rejected what was considered to be Freud’s central view of religion as illusionary, delusionary, infantile and neurotic. The more dominant trend, however, was the acceptance of this Freudian view (Kakar 1991: 56). Beginning approximately in the mid 1980s, a change in this trend began to take place. Among some of the more provocative book titles directly addressing the issue of psychoanalysis and religion that have appeared since then are The Birth of the Living God (Rizzuto 1979), The Psychoanalytic Mystic (Eigen 1998), The Analyst and the Mystic (Kakar 1991), Soul on the Couch (Spezzano and Gargiulo 1997), Emotion and Spirit (Symington 1994), Ecstasy (Eigen 2001), Terror and Transformation (Jones 2002), accompanied by some more low-key titles such as Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience (Meissner 1984) and Psychoanalysis and Religion (Smith and Handelman 1990). In these books, and in the numerous articles that have appeared during these years, religion is understood in the light of psychoanalytic theory (and especially through some of its recent developments) as a normal, healthy, positive phenomenon. The understanding expressed in these books reflects a broader sentiment within the psychoanalytic field in general of tolerance and acceptance of religious belief and believers. While psychoanalysis is, perhaps, one of the most atheistic professions in terms of official religious affiliation and practice of its members, there has nevertheless evolved a prevalent analytic attitude that considers religious belief and practice to be not beyond interpretation, but something not to be questioned by analysis – a kind of private, personal decision, which may be positively regarded if it allows for growth and well-being. This is in sharp contrast to an attitude that prevailed in the shadow of Freud’s The Future of an Illusion, an attitude in which Otto Fenichel (1938: 316), for example, could write of how, as his patients progressed in their analyses, they became gradually liberated from their religion and Helene Deutsch had to conclude, regretfully, that a Catholic nun she had treated so effectively for her obsessional neurosis was unable to accomplish a real cure since she remained within her religious order (1951: 189, cited in Leavy 1990: 50). I think that today, even if an analyst held such views on the success and failure of analyses, he may not feel completely free to state them openly in front of a contemporary psychoanalytic audience.¹ Why not? What changed? On the basis of a close study of all the recent books and articles that have appeared on psychoanalysis and religion, I think that it is possible to point to two basic changes that have taken place. First, new criteria and new findings are introduced, which allow for the conclusion that there is a connection between religion in some senses of the term and psychic well-being. What I refer to here is how many of the recent analytic writings on religion determine its value on the basis of the fact that religion may allow for the expression, and even reinforcement, of various desirable human capacities for relationship, such as trust, intimacy, care and community (Wallwork and Wallwork 1990: 161), and provide an important means for articulating basic aspects of self-experience. As James Jones, the very prolific American writer on psychoanalysis and religion, states,

religious moments … allow us to enter again and again into that timeless and transforming psychological space from which renewal and creativity emerge … [there,] we gain access again to the formative (and reformative) experience at the heart of selfhood.

(Jones 1991: 134)

These writings suggest that such capacities and experiences can be regarded as relevant factors in determining the value of religion only in the light of post- Freudian psychoanalysis, which replaces oedipal notions of maturity with notions of maturity that focus on interpersonal relatedness and self-experience (with varying degrees of differentiation and intensity). But the new, positive appreciation of religion rests not only on the evolution of psychoanalytic notions, but also, at times, on the evolution of religious ones. At the far end of the spectrum of changes that are introduced, spiritual development and encounter with the sacred become synonymous with analytic kinds of transformation of intentions and self-experiencing. For example, Symington, in his 1994 book on psychoanalysis and religion, redefines religion and spirituality so that, in their mature forms, they are compatible ‘with the denial of God’s existence’ (p. 88) and equated with willing the good, disciplining one’s intentions and upholding a morality based on freedom and responsibility for the other. Thus he can ask, ‘If the goal of psychoanalysis is the transformation of bad actions into good, [and he does argue that this is indeed its goal] is it not right to call this a spiritual aim?’ (p. 181). And he can readily answer positively, adding that both theology and psychoanalysis have yet to recognise that ‘the greatest spiritual encounters’ (p. 130) occur between patient and analyst. Moreover, being a practice geared towards the transformation of narcissism into concern for others, psychoanalysis is the pinnacle of mature religiosity and a much-needed substitute for the failed primitive religions of revelation (p. 75). Coming from a very different angle and seemingly relying on the writings of Lacan, Bion and Winnicott, Michael Eigen speaks of the ‘holiness’ of therapy (1998: 42), and the ‘mystical’ and ‘sacred’ (2001: 37) nature of psychoanalysis and the self-experiencing that these allow for. He tells us that psychoanalysis is, for him, at times ‘a form of prayer’ (Eigen 1998:11). Never really defining what holiness, mysticism, sacredness and prayer are, it becomes apparent that he is using these terms to refer to a general and vague kind of openness to experiencing. In a rather ecstatically written (albeit typical) section of one of his books, he responds to the question of what he means by God, and states, ‘God could be anything … to blank oneself out and be totally open to whatever currents pulse this way or that … whether you’re into body, or emotion … Taoist or Buddhist, whatever, it feels good’ (Eigen 1998: 193, the last two ellipses appear in the original). The second change that has taken place in the psychoanalytic understanding of religion is of a more epistemological kind, and focuses on the issue of illusion. What is argued is that what stood in the way of Freud’s acceptance of religion was his negative and limited attitude to illusion, which allowed him to slide too smoothly from illusion to delusion. The problem, according to this view, was not only that Freud failed to appreciate the value of the wishes contained in the illusory religious beliefs (this would be tied to the first kind of change that I have just noted), but also that Freud did not fully grasp the meaning of illusion. This point is very central to the basic thesis of this chapter. According to the new literature on religion, when illusion is fully grasped – that is, when it is properly understood in terms of transitional space and phenomena – the question of the validity of religious belief that seemed to trouble Freud becomes irrelevant. Not only is there no possible move from illusion to delusion, in the sense that the fact that religious belief is founded on a wish does not allow one to conclude that the belief is false, but also the fact that a belief is an illusion implies the irrelevance of the question of falsity. Perhaps the statements most cited in this context are taken from Winnicott’s article ‘Transitional objects and transitional phenomena’ (1953). There, he describes how the mother allows

the infant the illusion that what the infant creates really exists. This intermediate area of experience, unchallenged in respect of its belonging to inner or external (shared) reality, constitutes the greater part of the infant’s experience, and throughout life is retained in the intense experiencing that belongs to the arts and to religion.

(cited in Winnicott 1971: 16)

In other words, what characterises illusion is its necessity, its positive valuation as the ground of culture and creativity and, most importantly in this context, the fact that ‘the question: “Did you conceive of this or was it presented to you from without?” … is not to be formulated’ (Winnicott 1971:14). Here, the question of the objective reality of God is not bracketed for the sake of understanding the personal meanings attributed to him, but rather there is no such question. While to insist on the objective reality of a religious illusion would be, according to this Winnicottian perspective, a kind of dogmatism that verges on madness, to insist on the relevance of the question of the objective reality of such illusions (as did Freud) would be ignorance that verges on positivism, here meaning a kind of misguided belief that there is value to the distinction between true and false in such matters.² Both the change in terms of the criteria that determine the value of religion and the change in terms of its epistemological status allow for a dramatic change in psychoanalysis’s general attitude towards religion. On the one hand there is a pervasive tolerance of religious belief associated with its lying in a realm of personal participation that can never be questioned, and on the other there is, among some analysts, a special appreciation of religion as a realm for the expression of higher individual and cultural capacities and experiences. However, all of this is only towards religion in the mature sense of the term and maturity here becomes increasingly associated with what is viewed as valuable by the analytic theories that come to reassess religion. In other words, it may be seen that analytic theories that consider maturity in terms of self-experience value only those kinds of religion that focus on experiencing. Analytic theories that consider maturity in terms of interpersonal or cultural relatedness of various forms value religions of the kind that stress these forms of relatedness. And, most importantly from my perspective,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One: The possibility of religious truth
• Part Two: Religious stories that tell psychological truth
• Part Three: The nature and psychological functioning of religious experiences
• Part Four: Echoes between psychoanalysis and specific religious traditions
• Index