Flow:

Life of Freud (Background)

Life:
 Freud was born in 1856 in Moravia ( A part of central Europe)
 His family was Jewish
 In his childhood days, he found something that opens his mind in which at the
same time, it leads him to make it as a back bone to construct his ideology.
 In high school Freud was a gifted student who took courses in Greek, Latin, and
Hebrew and finished at the top of his class.
 During his earlier years of medical work, Freud encountered Josef Breuer, a man
who had done careful case studies of mental illness and soon became a close
friend.
 In the year 1895 he published his first book entitled “Studies on Hysteria”
 In the year 1885 he encountered Jean-Martin Charcot, a famous French
physician (During his visit into Paris)
 In the later part of his life, Freud would develop a way of investigating—and
treating—the human mind, which he put at the center of all his work. He chose to
call it “psychoanalysis.”


Books that Freud made:

 “Studies on Hysteria” – 1895
 “The Interpretation of Dreams” (1900).
 “Three Essayson the Theory of Sexuality” (1905).
 “Totem andTaboo” (1913)
 “Introductory Lectureson Psychoanalysis” (1916–1917)
 “Beyond the PleasurePrinciple” (1920)
 “The Ego and the Id” (1923)
 “The Future of an Illusion” (1927)
 “Moses and Monotheism” (1938)

ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE

1. Psychology and Religion
 The field of religion is no exception
o Freud pointed out the idea of human personality.
o Freud himself takes a decidedly negative view of religious behavior, other
leaders in psychoanalysis
 o Swiss psychologist Carl Jung - religion draws on a deep fund of images
and ideas that belong collectively to the human race and find expression
in mythology, folklore, philosophy, and literature
o “collective unconscious”
 2. Freud’s Explanation of Religion
o The theory of Freud is actually connected in all his writings.
o Ludwig Feuerbach, the idea of this philosopher is actually parallel to what
Freud is claiming.
o Freud used the term “psychoanalysis” to define clearly what Religion is for
him.
o Religion caused and rise in the Childhood days (it is called neurosis by
Freud)
o Religion seems to have certain psychological functions.
o However, as part of this analysis Freud is not always consistent on his
judgements.

CRITIQUE
1. The Problem of Theistic and Nontheistic Religions
 The first thing to observe is that Freud’s is not so much a theory of religion in
general as it is a theory of Judeo-Christian, or at least monotheistic, religion in
particular.
 The ideas of the Oedipus is somehow complex in this kind of argument.
 In this kind of argument Freud somehow tackle opposite view of religion.
2. The Problems of Analogy and History
 Freudian theory presents other difficulties
o Psychological growth of an individual and the historical development of a
large social group.
 Freud emphasize the idea of collective memories (this idea relies on the
collective memories)
 Darwin’s idea serves as the challenge on the idea of evolutionism.
3. The Problem of Circularity
 Freud argues that religion is very similar to a neurosis (we can see it in the book
entitled “The future of an Illusion”)
 One of the biggest problem in this Circularity is the term “projection”
o Neurosis
o Consciousness & Unconsciousness
o Behaviour
4. Psychoanalysis as Science
 The issue of psychoanalysis itself as a form of science
o In the book entitled “The future of an Illusion” Freud proudly compared the slow,
steady progress of sciences like psychoanalysis with the backward dogmatism of
religion
 The common verdict about Freud is – could consist of – at first Freud is not a scientists
and whatever he made mention/claims about psychoanalysis is not a science.
 Adolf Grünbaum – he argues that psychoanalysts regularly assume the very things they
hope to prove in their work.
 To the he point of Freud here, Freud’s theories of the personality and neurosis—are
constructed out of vague comparisons and misleading inferences, most of which cannot
be either proved or disproved because, again, there is simply no scientific way even to
test them
