Religion as Fantasy - Freud and Jung

In his Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Carl Jung tells us that, "there are some people whose attitude is essentially spiritual and others whose attitude is essentially materialistic. It must not be assumed that such an attitude is accidentally acquired or springs from some misunderstanding. These attitudes show themselves as ingrained passions which no criticism or persuasion can stamp out...." (59-60). Undoubtedly, this is a fitting explanation for the differences between Jung and his predecessor, Sigmund Freud. Freud was a staunch atheist (he once described himself to a friend as a "godless Jew") and firmly believed that science was the only reliable source of knowledge (Freud xxiii). Jung, on the other hand, while not religious in any dogmatic sense, had a more romantic temperament and a strong interest in comparative religion and mysticism. In relation to psychoanalysis, though, both Freud and Jung essentially viewed religion in phenomenological terms. Rather than focusing on its objective validity, they examined its function within the human psyche. Interestingly, both also used the terms "illusion" or "fantasy" to characterize the religious impulse. However, their personal religious dispositions inevitably influenced their conception of fantasy, where it came from, and its role in psychoanalysis.

Freud proposed that religion had its origins in the unconscious. The unconscious was composed of things that had been tucked away in the dark corners of the mind that we had forgotten or repressed, and yet they continued to affect our conscious waking life. He contended that the contents of the unconscious were neurotic in nature, and thus religion was our "collective neurosis." At its most fundamental level, it was simply a projection of our most basic desires and wishes. In a universal sense, we want to control the more powerful forces of nature. Without the crutch of religion, humanity is in a position of helplessness much like an infant. The infant is completely dependent on outside forces, primarily the parents. The parents are those who provide and protect, but they also instill in us a certain sense of fear, particularly the father. Freud argues that, as adults, we feel this same sense of helplessness and project the image of a fearsome and all-powerful Father that, like our biological father, will continue to protect and provide for us. "Religion," he claimed, "would thus be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity; like the obsessional neurosis of children, it arose out of the Oedipus complex, out of the relation to the father" (55). In the end, by personalizing the distant and abstract forces of nature, we feel less existential anxiety.

Freud asserted that these wish-projections also enable us to gain control on a societal level as well. We want to correct wrongs and injustices in our social relations, so we transform relative moral law into immutable cosmic law. Murder is wrong not because it disrupts the smooth functioning of society, but because God has deemed it so. Thus, social rules and mores are legitimated and validated since they exist in a universal, objective sense and not simply as our own creation. By dispelling our fears and righting wrongs, Freud says that "the sufferings and the hardships of life are destined to be obliterated" (23). In his view, this was the primary function of religion.

Like Freud, Jung also claimed that religion was a fantasy of the unconscious, but his interpretation of it was decidedly different. Far from being a wellspring of repressed fear, Jung claimed that the unconscious was a repository of wisdom and that, if we only looked inward, we would find the answers that we seek. When our repression relaxed, we received glimpses of this wisdom in the form of spontaneous psychic activity as in dreams, art, drug-taking, and religious experience. These glimpses could certainly be "imaginary fulfillments of suppressed wishes," Jung conceded, but they were not only that (11). They could also "give expression to ineluctable truths, to philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides" (11). So while Jung claimed religion was ultimately fantasy, his view of fantasy was undeniably positive. "I have a very high opinion of fantasy," he admitted, "...the creative activity of the imagination frees man from his bondage to the 'nothing but' and liberates him in the spirit of play" (66). It is important to emphasize that Jung did not hold such a "high opinion of fantasy" because he thought it pointed to a definitive and undeniable objective truth outside the mind. Rather, as he indicates, it is important for man because it "liberates him" from a world without meaning. This is Freud's view as well, although Freud sees it as a cowardly escape, rather than a triumphant liberation. This distinction between the two theorists could be attributed not only to their personal religious ideologies, but also to their understanding of psychotherapy and its purpose.

While Freud was inclined towards critical analysis and viewed truth as synonymous with scientific objectivity, Jung understood truth to be anything that helped the patient. For Freud, religion was a destructive force that kept humanity in a permanent state of immaturity. "We shall tell ourselves that it would be very nice if there was a God who created the world and was a benevolent Providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life," he said, "but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it would be." As we become more intelligent and more aware, though, he thought that religion should eventually give way to science. We would have no more need for comforting stories. Essentially, he viewed religion as a collection of lies, and he compared it to the popular story that parents tell children about where babies come from. 'Babies come from the stork', the parents say, and the stork is quite clearly a symbol for something else. This symbolic language, then, is a form of "distorted" truth and if we were psychically mature, we could all just say what we really mean (57). For Jung, though, symbolic language is pregnant with meaning. We do not express truth in symbols only because it's bad or we're immature, but because it's the best language we have for that which is often inexpressible. Perhaps more importantly, it is also how we attach meaning to things. This meaning is not unhealthy; on the contrary, it is absolutely necessary to be a complete individual. Jung believed that this relentless search for meaning was the central spiritual problem of his age.

Jung even hinted that Freud was filled with the same desire to make sense of existence. "However far-fetched it may sound," he noted, "experience shows that many neuroses are caused by the fact that people blind themselves to their own religious promptings because of a childish passion for rational enlightenment" (67). This quest for reason and rationality could therefore also be interpreted as the manifestation of our desire for order and meaning. All humans need to find meaning, argued Jung; this is the religious impulse. It cannot be called positive or negative; it simply exists, and the patient must struggle with this to achieve optimal psychological health. Jung's objective, then, was not prove the external validity of religion, but to recognize it as a internal tool that enables the individual to find meaning. "What we want is a practical psychology which yields approvable results," he stated, "one which helps us to explain things in a way that is justified by the outcome for the patient" (188). Explaining the world through reason and science does not give these therapeutic results, insisted Jung. "How many of the great spiritual or social revolutions sprung from reasoning?" he asked (190). None, and it may actually end up harming us. He writes: "Everyday reasonableness, sound human judgement, and science as a compendium of common sense, certainly help us over a good part of the road; yet they do not go beyond that frontier of human life which surrounds the commonplace and matter-of-fact, the merely average and normal. They afford, after all, no answer to the question of spiritual suffering and its innermost meaning. A psycho-neurosis must be understood as the suffering of a human being who has not discovered what life means for him"(225). Unlike Freud, Jung recognized that religion and its "fictional and imaginative processes" are what make life meaningful, "and it is only the meaningful that sets us free" (225).

It is clear that Freud and Jung were both motivated by disparate forces and these influenced their practices. Freud was an analyst at heart. He critically examined both external reality and the internal reality of his patients, and underlying these examinations is a clear desire for Truth. The truth would make an individual emotionally healthy, while lies would make him worse. Jung was considerably different in this regard. What made an individual emotionally healthy was truth, Jung implied. As a "healer," he saw his professional duty as ultimately religious. Like the priest or the shaman, his role was to make the patient find meaning and attain wholeness. In the end, perhaps these discrepancies can only be attributed to their personal religious dispositions. As Jung indicated, some people are spiritually-inclined, while others are materialists. And as he might have said, this is perfectly natural and necessary. It was not his choice to be more spiritual; he simply is. "[We] are not the personal creators of our own truths, but only their exponents who thus must articulate the psychic needs of the day..." (47). In that sense, Freud and Jung might be said to be merely the mouthpieces for opposing forces; their engaging dialectic gives voice to the continual interplay between science and religion that was so prominent in their time.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. Trans. James Strachey. 1961. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.

Jung, C. G. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Trans. W. S. Dell and Cary F. Baynes. San Diego: Harcourt, 1933.