Imagination, Theolatry, and the Compulsion to Worship the Invisible (original) (raw)

God and Man in Freudian Psychoanalysis: A Critical Examination of Freud's The Future of an Illusion

Religious Inquiries , 2017

In this article, we have attempted to scrutinize Freud's psychological analysis of man and God. Four different interpretations of this Freudian analysis have been examined hereunder. Freud believes that religion is the outcome of wishful thinking or fear. Freud's views on the origin of religion have been stated in a detailed fashion in his works on psychoanalysis. His The Future of an Illusion is the focus of our study of his views on God and man in this article. Freud held that the idea of God is simply a subjective illusion, since theism is only the product of father-complex. He suggested that every child is helpless, and for this reason depends upon his human father. As the child grows up, he finds that he cannot depend on his father for protection from a hostile and intolerable world. Therefore, he concocts an idea of a divine being and projects his image of his father unto a cosmic scale. He then turns to this figment of his imagination for security and comfort.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSCENDENT OBJECTS AND RELIGION BASED ON FREUDIAN THEORY

Psicologia em estudo, 2023

Perhaps, man is the unique entity to have and establish relationships with certain 'objects' that go beyond their material reality, transcending it to designate another reality beyond the physical. Among them, we could characterize as 'Transcendent Objects' (e.g. God, par excellence, such as the Devil and other entities belonging to this universe, whether subject to acceptance, aversion or rejection) those responsible for constituting the basis for developing feelings and religious ideas, and they can also be understood (in their origin, sense and function) from the perspective of psychoanalysis. Therefore, delimiting our proposal of analysis, this article aimed to analyze such objects from the point of view of Sigmund Freud, thus, analyzing their origin in the processes of sublimation of sexuality and in the projective and identification processes that characterize the emotional development of the human being. Such understanding can assist in clinical intervention of cases where there is a personal relationship or a centrality of these objects in personal experiences, as well as with the area of psychology of religion in its investigations.

Beyond the Phenomenology of the Inconspicuous

Religions, 2021

How does spirit appear? In fact, it does not appear, and for this reason, we could refer to it, following Heidegger, as “inconspicuous” (unscheinbar). The Heideggerian path investigates this inconspicuous starting from the Husserlian method, and yet, this is not the only Phenomenology of the “Inconspicuous” Spirit: Hegel had already thematized it in 1807. It is thus possible to identify at least two Phenomenologies of the “Inconspicuous” spirit. These two phenomenologies, however, do not simply put forth distinct phenomenological methods, nor do they merely propose differing modes of spirit’s manifestation. In each of these phenomenologies, rather, what we call “spirit” manifests different traits: in one instance, it appears as absolute knowing, and, in the other, it manifests “from itself” as “phenomenon”. Yet how, exactly, does spirit manifest “starting from itself as phenomenon”? Certainly not in the mode of entities, but rather in the modality that historical phenomenology, whic...