Religious Conflicts in Psychoanalysis – A Case Study

The history of the relation between and mutual influence of psychoanalysis and religion has undergone a somewhat checkered history. Freud's rather biased, prejudicial, agnostic and antireligious perspectives have subsequently proven to be ill-founded and by-and-large misleading (Meissner, 1984). The subsequent developments in this field have moved in the direction of separating the wheat from the chaff in the freudian account of religion and defining what is authentically psychoanalytic as opposed to religious prejudices and misconceptions. More current trends in the practical dealing with religious issues and conflicts in the psychoanalytic process have tended to be more open and accepting of the patient's religious beliefs and orientations, while at the same time remaining attuned to the role of unconscious determinants and neurotic resolutions that may be playing a role in influencing the patient's religious views and/or practices. In this sense, the analyst remains open to and accepting of the patient's belief system, while seeking to identify, explore, understand, and interpret — and thus hopefully help the patient to resolve — the neurotic influences that can distort the patient's religious stance and pervert what should be a source of strength and psychic support of a given religious system into a burdensome, often guilt-inducing, and personally undermining set of convictions.¹ So stated the therapeutic task is not always without its vicissitudes. Some religious belief systems incorporate varieties and degrees of such unconsciously determined and decidedly pathological concepts and formulations that little more room is left for the development of a more mature and psychologically adaptive religious orientation. In such cases, the analysand may have to choose between psychologically more mature and adaptive resolutions discovered in the analytic process and the less mature and neurotically determined beliefs and practices of his espoused religious belief system. Often this discrimination is neither simple nor easy. It cannot be made in any simple or straightforward way by an appeal to evidences based on the cold, hard light of reality as known in naturalistic or scientific terms. The reason for this is that the analysand's belief system is not sustained by such evidences but by the faith commitment he makes to his credo. We might read this as a contradiction between the analysand's psychic reality (i.e., the belief system) in opposition to the material reality of a secularized world view — as would Freud (1927/1961). But, as I have argued elsewhere (Meissner, 2000, 2001), the connotations of psychic reality may well extend to include both frameworks equally well. The basis of this discrimination, then, would rest not on the opposition of belief versus reality, but on the determination of what in the religious belief system can be regarded as relatively reasonable, mature, adaptive, and promoting psychological health, integrity, and spiritual identity as opposed to elements that reflect unconscious and neurotic underpinnings that do more to distort and undermine authentic religious perspectives than not. Even if religious beliefs are not based on real and naturalistic evidences, the religious belief system cannot all the same legitimately and validly incorporate contradictory or illogical tenets.² The issue for the patient is whether and to what extent he can sustain his authentic religious belief and commitment in the face of the erosion or abandonment of less mature and neurotic elements within the belief system.