SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
PASHMAN ON fREUD AND THE GENETIC fALlACY
LOWELL KLEIMAN
Suffolk County Community College
Mr. Pashman questions the legiti-
macy of the Genetic Fallacy by at-
tempting to show the relevance of
Freud's concept of projection to re-
ligion. If I understand Pashman cor-
rectly, he is making the following
claims:
1. Projection alone does not entail
God's non-existence.
2. Naturalism and Theism are two
theories.
3. Projection is relevant to God's
existence in conjunction with
either of these theories.
4. Projection is only relevant to
God's existence in conjunction
with some theory.
Of these four statements only the
first is entirely acceptable. But advo-
cates of the Genetic Fallacy have al-
ways claimed that projection does not
entail God's non-existence, so this is
nothing new.
Consider the third proposition which
is, in part, that projection is relevant
to God's existence when used in con-
junction with Naturalism. Pashman
argues as follows: The Naturalist
claims that the world can be explained
completely without God. Suppose that
for every religious explanation of some
event, a naturalist can point to some
non-religious alternative. Naturalism
would not yet be fully satisfied. To
the naturalist would remain the double
task of accounting for the availability
of religious explanations and why cer-
tain individuals are inclined to accept
them. That projection is a naturalistic
way of doing both shows the relevance
of this Freudian weapon against re-
ligion.
1 If w~ do not permit this possibility, then the disjunctive claim that the world can be
explained completely religiously or naturalistically would be trivially true.
63
SPRING, 1970
This is unacceptable. What exactly
does Pashman mean by "relevance"?
He is not clear. If he means that pro-
jection in conjunction with Naturalism
is sufficient to reject religion, then he
is wrong. Everything Pashman argues
may be correct, yet religion may still be
true. This is what advocates of the Ge-
netic Fallacy have always argued. I
fail to see how Pashman adds anything
to the controversy. Can he mean that
projection is necessary for the rejec-
tion of religion? But this too is wrong.
At best, he shows that projection is
necessary for the acceptance of Nat-
uralism. But Naturalism may ultimate-
ly fail. It may turn out that the world
cannot be completely explained nat-
uralistically. This does not mean re-
ligion will ultimately succeed. It too
may fail, if we allow the possibility of
some events that cannot be explained
at all.' Consequently, the success of
Naturalism is not necessary for the
failure of religion since religion may
fail without Naturalism's ultimate suc-
cess. If projection is necessary for
Naturalism and the success of Natural-
ism is not necessary for the failure of
religion, then Pashman has not shown
projection to be necessary for the fail-
ure of religion. Since Pashman has not
shown projection to be sufficient
either, then he has not shown the
relevance of projection against relig-
ion. Hence he has neither avoided the
Lowell Kleiman is currently Instructor of
Philosophy at Suffolk County Community
College and also Visiting Lecturer at Stony
Brook University. His interests are primarily
in Philosophical Psychology and Philosophy
of Religion. He is a member of the Execu-
tive Board of the Long Island Philosophical
Society.
SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Genetic Fallacy nor shown how genetic
arguments are not fallacious:
Next, consider the proposition that
Theism is a theory. Such an interpre-
tation is unorthodox and probably
would be unacceptable to any genuine
religious believer. God would come off
as a theoretical construct, or, at the
very least, something to be accepted
heuristically. If this is so, and if re-
ligious believers got wind of it, then
religion would cease to be practically
effective. The believer does not pray to
field forces or alpha particles, nor does
he seek salvation in wavicles. The
object of prayer must be conceived as
something personal, something that can
listen and understand and bring about
change, or at least be ultimately re-
sponsible. When the Jehovah Witness
refuses his dying son a blood transfus-
ion on grounds that it is not God's will,
surely he is not simply upholding a
heuristic model. He would have to be
perverse to take such a stand in the
name of such a God. We may think
the Jehovah Witness perverse. Surely
he cannot. Consequently, the believer
cannot conceive of God in the way
Pashman suggests. It is difficult to
understand, therefore, just how in this
way Freud is supposed to become rele-
vant to religion.
The fourth proposition I attribute to
Pashman is that projection is only
relevant to God's existence in conjunc-
tion with some theory. It follows that
someone who accepts neither Theism,
Naturalism, nor any special theory can-
not find Freudian analysis relevant.
There are many people in this position
and I take Pashman to be saying, along
with proponents of the Genetic Fallacy,
that Freud has nothing of relevance
to tell this group of the nature of re-
ligious belief. It seems to me, if pro-
jection is to be relevant to anyone, it
JPashman may mean by "relevance" something other than what I have presented. If so, then
he should tell us. Except for an unhelpful footnote, he has remained curiously silent on this
point.
'Freud, Collected Papers (5 vols.), London, 1924-50.
(Although this case is not directly connected with Freud's work in religion, it is useful in
understanding how psychoanalysis accounts for beliefs.)
64
SPRING, 1970
should be relevant to someone who has
not already made up his mind. The
naturalist is already against religion,
the theist against Naturalism. Freudian
thinking, Pashman tells us, becomes
relevant only after the fact. The in-
teresting question is, can Freud help us
decide either in favor of, or against,
religion before we accept Naturalism,
Theism or some similar program?
Before answering this question, a
few words about Freudian explanations
are needed. It is assumed by Mr. Pash-
man, as well as advocates of the Genetic
Fallacy, that Freud's explanations are
causal. Consider what this means in
the particular case of Hans, the sub-
ject of Freud's study, 'Analysis of a
Phobia in a Five-Year-Old-Boy.'· Hans,
we are told, exhibits extreme anxiety
in the presence of horses pulling load-
ed carts. He expresses the belief that
these horses will "fall down" (i.e., col-
lapse under the strain). Freud ex-
plains how the child has acquired this
belief in terms of the Oedipal Complex,
emotional conflict and Hans' repressed
wish for his father's death. If these
items are understood as pieces in a
causal explanation, and we accept this
explanation as a reason for not taking
Hans' belief seriously, we may be ac-
cused of committing a Genetic Fallacy.
However, it would be a complicated
matter to show just how the above
items cause a belief about the ill health
of horses. People may be caused to
believe many things. "Brainwashing"
and hypnosis are methods of doing
this. But nothing of this sort enters
into Freud's explanations.
There is a simpler way of interpret-
ing Freudian explanations. We may
understand them as providing reasons
for symbolic behavior. For example,
suppose instead of explaining Hans'
belief as caused by his repressed wish,
SOUTHERN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
we understood the expression of his
belief as a symbolic way of expressing
that wish. Thus, Hans is doing two
things, harboring a wish about his
father, and expressing this wish sym-
bolically in terms of fear of horses col-
lapsing. Now, we may understand
Freud as explaining both rationally.
The child wishes his father's death be-
cause he sees the father as a rival for
the mother's affection. But the father
is also seen as strong and threatening.
Consequently, Hans cannot express his
wish directly so he does it symbolically.'
Suppose now on the basis of this ex-
planation we refuse to accept serious-
ly Hans' belief about horses. Do we
commit a Genetic Fallacy? No. We
are not rejecting his belief by citing
its causal origins. Weare simply rec-
ognizing that Hans really has no be-
lief about horses, only a repressed wish
which he symbolically expresses in the
form of a belief. The Genetic Fallacy
controversy is avoided altogether.
Analogously, it may be argued, Freud
dismisses religious belief without cit-
ing causal origins. The expression of
a religious belief is understood as a
symbolic manifestation of something
else, possibly the rejection and venera-
tion of one's own father. In short,
Freud fails to take seriously religious
beliefs because believers have no "re-
ligious beliefs." Moreover, there are
no "religious believers," only repressed
people giving expression to their re-
pressions in a peculiar symbolic way.
Now, it seems to me, if someone were
toying with the idea of accepting re-
ligion, after reading Freud, he would
have good reason for not doing so."
Consequently, Freudian psychoanalysis
of religious believers can provide good
reason, outside of any special theory,
for rejecting religion.
, This is not to suggest that Hans is doing this consciously, that he could say this is what he is
doing if asked.
"Unless, of course, he desired a symbolic way of expressing his repressed feelings about his
father. But if he could do this, it would be odd to call his feelings repressed and difficult to
see how religion could be of any service.
65
SPRING, 1970
One final remark. If I am arguing
that a religious belief is only a sym-
bolic vehicle for the expression of re-
pressed wishes and desires, then the
expression "religious belief" becomes
vacuous. But Freud provides us with
a paradigm to fill the apparent va-
cancy - the primitive's belief in, and
worship of, a totemic animal or plant.
In this view, modem "believers" are
using the trappings of primitive, su-
perstitious rites to express deep psy-
chological disorders. The important
point is that it is generally accepted
today that these totemic beliefs are
false. Hence, an important force be-
hind Freud's dismissal of religion is
this: if the paradigm of religious be-
lief is totemic worship and it is gen-
erally agreed that totemic beliefs are
not to be taken seriously, then it would
be odd to take seriously contemporary
Judeo-Christian religious belief. Given
this background, Freud found remote
the possibility of Judeo-Christian be-
liefs turning out to be true, which is
why he did not concern himself much
with the traditional proofs. Of course,
Freud does not show religious beliefs
to be false. But there are many ways
to cast aspersions without showing a
proposition to be false.
In conclusion, Mr. Pashman and I
both agree that dismissing Freud as
having committed a Genetic Fallacy
against religion is an oversimplication.
Mr. Pashman believes that the rele-
vance of Freud to religion can be un-
derstood in terms of some general the-
ory. I have indicated some difficulties
with this view and have tried to show
how the Genetic Fallacy controversy
may be avoided, and how Freud's
analysis may provide good reason for
rejecting religion outside of the kind
of theory Pashman attempts to employ.