The Psychology of Religion: Views from Sigmund Freud Essay

Freud primarily subscribed to the idea that there are two energies that drive human behavior. These two energies are sex – the pleasure principle and aggression. The human mind is comprised of the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Within the realms of the mind, the human personality is controlled by the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is driven by the pleasure principle. The superego is the instinctual moral good, which aims to please the ego ideal, or the magnified moral values. The ego interacts with both the id and the superego and aims to please both components (Connors).

Freud is known for his theories of the human mind. One of the most well known ideas is that of the psyche. The psyche is the unconscious mind, which consists of the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the part of the mind that operates on the pleasure principle. The id strives to

Freud described humans as having three essential components that built personality. The three components were the id, the ego, and the superego. He described the id, as being what governed an infant’s drive to overcome their primitive biological desires. According to his theory infants had no other goal than to release the tension that built up when their

Moreover this Super Ego is a development from both the ID and the Ego itself and represents our attempt to integrate values learnt from the society and from parents. Freud further explains that psychological health is maintained only when these three components are in balance. Any imbalance in between them leads to psychological disorders (Davey, 2011).Furthermore, Freud’s theory of psychosexual stages, the unconscious and the conscious mind completes the formation of the major components of psychoanalytic theory. (Cherry, N.D)

Freud was a 20th century neurologist and seen as the father of psychoanalysis. His views regarding religion reflect his profound emphasis on research of the human mind - as a tool of illusory means.

Freud developed the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, which argued that personality is formed through internal conflicts among three fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego (Wikipedia, 2017).

On the other hand, Freud is more concerned with instilling the idea that infancy and childhood is a key role in development, he states, “by the time the child's intellect awakens, the doctrines of religion have already become unassailable,” suggesting that religion is a force that shapes civilization in which people function, as well as form our judgment of human civilization. Hence, the importance of developing successfully as opposed to failing to function in society, whether they are religious or not. Instead, he dubs man as “a creature of weak intelligence who is ruled by his instinctual wishes.”

For this week I decided to go with the fourth question because I felt a connection to Freud’s arguments and ideas on religion and God. People have strong beliefs and needs for spiritual comfort. A belief of higher being other than the man himself that will serve protection. What people desire in beliefs are only wishes of them wanting or needing something. When people wish God to be true, they will believe it will be true. According to Freud, this is wishful thinking of wanting to believe in something that we may not find evidence of. “These, which profess to be dogmas, are not the residue of experience or the final result of reflection; they are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most insistent wishes of mankind; the

Part of Freud’s theory was that the Id, Ego and Super Ego were in constant conflict with each other. It involves the Id wanting immediate satisfaction and the super ego who wants the id/person to behave leaving the ego constantly trying to resolve the issue.

To begin, Freud states that humans look up to God in order to give them a sense of security. Freud states “the common man cannot imagine this providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father.” (39) Here, Freud is trying to argue that humans need to have a sense of comfort because in life we all experience hard times and disappointments. Freud is arguing that in order to get through these tough times religion was created to be a safety blanket. For example, in Judaism, Christianity and Islam believers are supposed to pray to God when one is

Freud saw religion as an illusion. By illusion he meant a belief that people want very much to be true. He attempted to explain why religion persists in spite of the lack of evidence for its tenets. Freud asserted that religion is a largely unconscious neurotic response to repression. By repression he meant that civilized society demands that we cannot fulfill all our desires immediately, but that they have to be repressed. Rational arguments to a person holding who holds a religious conviction will not change the neurotic response of a person. He asserts that monotheist religions grew out of a homicide in a clan of a father by his sons. This incident was subconsciously remembered in human

Sigmund Freud believes that religion is a regression to narcissism (Beliefnet). Meaning, religion controls how the person feels and how he thinks. If a person does the will of the Father, he will be blessed. If he disobeys, he feels remorseful for doing something bad. Beliefnet provides for an example in order to fully explain this claim. For Kathleen Figueroa, getting dressed each morning is a battle between the goodness of God and the evil insider her (Beliefnet). When there are days that Mrs. Figueroa thinks that she should wear certain clothes as it would please God, doing otherwise would make her feel guilty all day long (Beliefnet). In this regard, Sigmund Freud asserts that religion is just an illusion and one must overcome

In Freud’s perspective, he believed that the unconscious human mind desired a fulfillment for knowledge. For instance, people were curious about where they went after they have passed. The people wanted to know where their soul would reside after death. The source to fulfill this desire was in religion. Religion provided people with answers for their questions. They were told that after death there would be some sort afterlife. The souls of these people would find rest in heaven. Freud believed that this idea of religion and its knowledge distracted people from facing reality. People could not come to face death without knowing of what would happen to their soul after death. Additionally, these

Freud proposed the psychological structure of personality to include three systems called the id, the ego, and the superego. At birth, the id is the original system of personality and is ruled by the pleasure principle. It is driven towards satisfying instinctual needs. The ego can be described as a mediator between ones instincts and their surrounding environment. The ego is ruled by the reality principle, using realistic and logical thinking to formulate action plans for satisfying needs. The superego includes a person’s moral code and strives for perfection, not pleasure. Psychic energy is distributed between these three systems creating dynamics of personality. This psychic energy is what determines behavior (Day, 2008).

Sigmund Freud created strong theories in science and medicine that are still studied today. Freud was a neurologist who proposed many distinctive theories in psychiatry, all based upon the method of psychoanalysis. Some of his key concepts include the ego/superego/id, free association, trauma/fantasy, dream interpretation, and jokes and the unconscious. “Freud remained a determinist throughout his life, believing that all vital phenomena, including psychological phenomena like thoughts, feelings and phantasies, are rigidly determined by the principle of cause and effect” (Storr, 1989, p. 2). Through the discussion of those central concepts, Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis becomes clear as to how he construed human character.