The Adoration of the Crucified

One cannot understand the contributions of post-Freudian psychoanalytic studies on religion without drawing Freud into the discussion. Some psychoanalytic studies investigate the possibility of extrapolating Freud's ideas on religion. Are his religious intuitions and categories as universal as he seems to pretend? Are they appropriate for understanding religions he didn't investigate personally? (“Psychoanalysis Meets Buddhism”, Parsons, this volume; “Hinduism and Psychoanalysis”, Meckel, this volume; “The Paternal Metaphor Revisited in Post-Freudian French Religious Psychoanalytic Anthropology”, Devisch, this volume) In addition, there are the psychoanalytic studies mainly motivated by a dissatisfaction with Freud. This dissatisfaction has many faces. One of the most important psychoanalytic critiques directly echoes the critiques of religious believers. Freud's ideas on religion are not only one-sided, but basically misrepresent religion. His ideas, according to this critique, keep religion confined to negative categories such as repression, moral discipline and social adaptation. He has no eye for the vitalizing and ecstatic forces of religion that can come to the foreground in, for example, the liturgical celebration of life and its power to deeply transform the self. And although Freud knew that religion can be inspired by mystical surrender, he never integrated this insight into a more systematic description and analysis of religion.

My contribution is based also on the idea that Freud gives an incomplete and distorted presentation of religion. However, I am not interested in giving a descriptive overview of the different aspects he neglects. Rather, I focus on one element only: the vitalizing power of religion. Here, I try to explore why Freud could not really understand that religion can set free forces that affirm life. Why didn't Freud grasp the vitalizing energy of religion? Why couldn't he understand religion in terms of drives expressing themselves, which is quite different from religion serving repression? Freud's ideas on religion are strongly connected with his theory of sublimation. For Freud, sublimation is a healthy alternative to a neurotic, perverse or psychotic response to the demands of the sexual drives and the restraints of human culture. In sublimation, drives can manifest their creativity, and this vital creativity is their health. Freud wants to explain how sexual drives can be transformed into non-sexual activities without loosing their natural élan or driving character. Religion is also a transformation of sexual drives. Though his theory of sublimation was meant to articulate the creative power of the drives, apparently Freud didn't see how religion could fall under this general idea of sublimation. For him, religion was always linked more strongly to repression than to a vital expression of drives. He doubts that religion has the flexibility necessary for a resourceful interaction with its ritual rules and doctrines and for relieving the weight of its rigid commands and prohibitions. For Freud, religion cannot overcome its own reactive character.