Sigmund Freud
Religion is an illusion born of the wish to be protected, as a child by its father.
Life
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a Viennese physician, founded psychoanalysis: the idea that much of mental life is unconscious and that dreams, symptoms and repressed desires can be interpreted. In his writings on culture he analyses religion as an illusion born of the need for protection and asks what civilization costs human happiness.
Main works
Argues that the dream is the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish.
Analyses religious beliefs as illusions born of humanity's oldest wishes.
Civilization demands renunciation of instinct, and human aggression threatens its stability.
In his own words
« These doctrines are not the precipitate of experience or the end result of thinking; they are illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind; the secret of their strength is the strength of those wishes. »
sind nicht Niederschläge der Erfahrung oder Endresultate des Denkens, es sind Illusionen, Erfüllungen der ältesten, stärksten, dringendsten Wünsche der Menschheit; das Geheimnis ihrer Stärke ist die Stärke dieser Wünsche.
« Homo homini lupus; who, after all the experience of life and history, has the courage to dispute this saying? »
Homo homini lupus; wer hat nach allen Erfahrungen des Lebens und der Geschichte den Mut, diesen Satz zu bestreiten?
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceReligion is an illusion, a wish-fulfilment rooted in childhood helplessness; no God lies behind it.
Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927)
The mind is a psychic apparatus tied to the body and the brain, which he hoped science would one day explain.
Freud, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940)
Nothing in the mind is arbitrary: acts and slips are determined by unconscious causes.
Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
Science, not faith, is our only means of knowing reality: 'our science is no illusion'.
Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Nothing in creation's plan makes us happy: meaning is not given, and we must settle for what satisfactions we can find.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
Humans have a strong innate aggressiveness, which civilization can only restrain at a cost.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)