Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion

Robert Tulip · Fri Sep 09, 2011 8:08 am


	Sigmund Freud wrote: For the sake of a uniform terminology we will describe the fact that an instinct cannot be satisfied as a ‘frustration’, the regulation by which this frustration is established as a ‘prohibition’ and the condition which is produced by the prohibition as a ‘privation’. The first step is to distinguish between privations which affect everyone and privations which do not affect everyone but only groups, classes or even single individuals. The former are the earliest; with the prohibitions that established them, civilization—who knows how many thousands of years ago?—began to detach man from his primordial animal condition. We have found to our surprise that these privations are still operative and still form the kernel of hostility to civilization. The instinctual wishes that suffer under them are born afresh with every child; there is a class of people, the neurotics, who already react to these frustrations with asocial behaviour. Among these instinctual wishes are those of incest, cannibalism and lust for killing. It sounds strange to place alongside one another wishes which everyone seems united in repudiating and others about which there is so much lively dispute in our civilization as to whether they shall be permitted or frustrated; but psychologically it is justifiable to do so. Nor is the attitude of civilization to these oldest instinctual wishes by any means uniform. Cannibalism alone seems to be universally proscribed and—to the non-psycho-analytic view—to have been completely surmounted. The strength of the incestuous wishes can still be detected behind the prohibition against them; and under certain conditions killing is still practised, and indeed commanded, by our civilization. It is possible that cultural developments lie ahead of us in which the satisfaction of yet other wishes, which are entirely permissible to-day, will appear just as unacceptable as cannibalism does now.

Freud suggests that humans are instinctively frustrated by the taboos of civilization that prevent us from acting on our natural desires. Neurosis is asocial reaction to this frustration, which holds the full continuum of reactions from mild irritation to murder.

Freud effectively defines civilization as "prohibitions that ... detach man from his primordial animal condition." It is clear that subsequent research has shown that Freud is wrong on this point, with much human morality exhibiting genetic continuity with other primates. As Franz de Waal has shown, chimps who live in conditions of abundance (bonobos) are friendly and generous, while those who live in conditions of greater scarcity tend to be mean. It is not civilization as such that has instilled morality, but rather the need to institute social controls in conditions of scarcity. Freud seems to adopt a Cartesian view of animals as machines, reflecting the widespread view of human superiority to nature. Yet it is ironic that Freud's theme is how our natural subconscious instincts bubble up in a return of the repressed. The questions for religion will be whether instinct can be sublimated into productive spirituality, and whether sublimation is intrinsically delusory.

Robert Tulip · Fri Sep 09, 2011 6:46 pm


	Sigmund Freud wrote: These earliest instinctual renunciations already involve a psychological factor which remains important for all further instinctual renunciations as well. It is not true that the human mind has undergone no development since the earliest times and that, in contrast to the advances of science and technology, it is the same to-day as it was at the beginning of history. We can point out one of these mental advances at once. It is in keeping with the course of human development that external coercion gradually becomes internalized; for a special mental agency, man's super-ego, takes it over and includes it among its commandments. Every child presents this process of transformation to us; only by that means does it become a moral and social being. Such a strengthening of the super-ego is a most precious cultural asset in the psychological field. Those in whom it has taken place are turned from being opponents of civilization into being its vehicles. The greater their number is in a cultural unit the more secure is its culture and the more it can dispense with external measures of coercion. Now the degree of this internalization differs greatly between the various instinctual prohibitions. As regards the earliest cultural demands, which I have mentioned, the internalization seems to have been very extensively achieved, if we leave out of account the unwelcome exception of the neurotics. But the case is altered when we turn to the other instinctual claims. Here we observe with surprise and concern that a majority of people obey the cultural prohibitions on these points only under the pressure of external coercion—that is, only where that coercion can make itself effective and so long as it is to be feared. This is also true of what are known as the moral demands of civilization, which likewise apply to everyone. Most of one's experiences of man's moral untrustworthiness fall into this category. There are countless civilized people who would shrink from murder or incest but who do not deny themselves the satisfaction of their avarice, their aggressive urges or their sexual lusts, and who do not hesitate to injure other people by lies, fraud and calumny, so long as they can remain unpunished for it; and this, no doubt, has always been so through many ages of civilization.

Freud is gradually building up the logical systematic analysis of civilization to enable his psychoanalysis of the phenomenon of religion. Freud sees the superego as the vehicle for the internalization of social values. Scarcity produces the need for coercion, but the superego enables people to coerce themselves into supporting political stability, something Freud calls "a most precious cultural asset". This is not necessarily a bad thing, considering that the alternative, anarchistic crime and rebellion, tends to harm the interest of the rebelling class, unless it serves to overthrow tyranny to replace it with a new democratic order.


	Quote: If we turn to those restrictions that apply only to certain classes of society, we meet with a state of things which is flagrant and which has always been recognized. It is to be expected that these underprivileged classes will envy the favoured ones their privileges and will do all they can to free themselves from then-own surplus of privation. Where this is not possible, a permanent measure of discontent will persist within the culture concerned and this can lead to dangerous revolts. If, however, a culture has not got beyond a point at which the satisfaction of one portion of its participants depends upon the suppression of another, and perhaps larger, portion—and this is the case in all present-day cultures—it is understandable that the suppressed people should develop an intense hostility towards a culture whose existence they make possible by their work, but in whose wealth they have too small a share. In such conditions an internalization of the cultural prohibitions among the suppressed people is not to be expected. On the contrary, they are not prepared to acknowledge the prohibitions, they are intent on destroying the culture itself, and possibly even on doing away with the postulates on which it is based. The hostility of these classes to civilization is so obvious that it has caused the more latent hostility of the social strata that are better provided for to be overlooked. It goes without saying that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

Here we find an intimation of Nietzsche's theory that Christianity is a religion of resentment in Freud's observation that "underprivileged classes will envy the favoured ones". We are moving towards analysis of how religion serves politics. I discussed this in my analysis of DH Lawrence's Apocalypse, with his observation that the popular English Christianity of Lawrence’s day, at the Salvation Army and Primitive Methodist Chapel level, sees the social inversion promised by the Apocalypse as a primary myth – with prayers for the downfall of the rich another form of the socialist promise, and the messianic hymns invoking the sea of glass and the lake of fire touching a popular nerve.

If envy can be transformed into a productive symbolic representation via the superego, religion becomes a force for social stability, channelling destructive emotions into a vision of reality that displaces the object of hostility away from the ruling class. When Freud speaks of "doing away with the postulates" he is describing the messianic fervor of socialist revolution, with its assertion that market economics can be replaced by central planning. The socialist millennium is an intrinsically religious vision, pointing to the need for fair distribution but lacking any practical means to achieve it, because it destroys the sources of wealth creation. Experience of the last century shows that this communist vision of social transformation is a fantasy that produces only grief and harm.

Robert Tulip · Thu Oct 27, 2011 6:38 am


	Quote: The extent to which a civilization's precepts have been internalized—to express it popularly and unpsychologically: the moral level of its participants—is not the only form of mental wealth that comes into consideration in estimating a civilization's value. There are in addition its assets in the shape of ideals and artistic creations—that is, the satisfactions that can be derived from those sources.

Returning to Freud’s Future of an Illusion, one of the great classics of atheist philosophy, I will continue to provide commentary just going through paragraph by paragraph. I apologize to readers who find this dull. Freud is now getting on to the assets of civilization, which are primarily of the spirit, in the form of doctrines or precepts that are generally accepted as a moral code, together with its heritage of cultural creativity.


	Quote: People will be only too readily inclined to include among the psychical assets of a culture its ideals—its estimates of what achievements are the highest and the most to be striven after. It will seem at first as though these ideals would determine the achievements of the cultural unit; but the actual course of events would appear to be that the ideals are based on the first achievements which have been made possible by a combination of the culture's internal gifts and external circumstances, and that these first achievements are then held on to by the ideal as something to be carried further. The satisfaction which the ideal offers to the participants in the culture is thus of a narcissistic nature; it rests on their pride in what has already been successfully achieved. To make this satisfaction complete calls for a comparison with other cultures which have aimed at different achievements and have developed different ideals. On the strength of these differences every culture claims the right to look down on the rest. In this way cultural ideals become a source of discord and enmity between different cultural units, as can be seen most clearly in the case of nations.

Now things are warming up. Freud’s key point here, with the comment I have underlined, is that ideals contain a large dose of subjective narcissism. The trouble with religion is that adherents of an ideal, such as that Jesus Christ was the best man ever, consider that their belief is objective and rational, not subjective and irrational. This sense of objectivity is essential to faith, but it conceals an unconscious narcissism, a pride in culture that represses its lack of evidence, projects upon the mythical story as a founding vision, and is unable to step outside its narrative to consider it scientifically.

So Freud criticized the sense of moral superiority that is inherent to imperial civilization. Religion is intrinsically prone to prejudice and enmity, because on principle it refuses to deconstruct and analyze its most cherished ideals.

Robert Tulip · Thu Oct 27, 2011 7:28 am


	Quote: The narcissistic satisfaction provided by the cultural ideal is also among the forces which are successful in combating the hostility to culture within the cultural unit. This satisfaction can be shared in not only by the favoured classes, which enjoy the benefits of the culture, but also by the suppressed ones, since the right to despise the people outside it compensates them for the wrongs they suffer within their own unit. No doubt one is a wretched plebeian, harassed by debts and military service; but, to make up for it, one is a Roman citizen, one has one's share in the task of ruling other nations and dictating their laws. This identification of the suppressed classes with the class who rules and exploits them is, however, only part of a larger whole. For, on the other hand, the suppressed classes can be emotionally attached to their masters; in spite of their hostility to them they may see in them their ideals; unless such relations of a fundamentally satisfying kind subsisted, it would be impossible to understand how a number of civilizations have survived so long in spite of the justifiable hostility of large human masses.

Narcissism, or self love, can be very satisfying, although dangerous. In the myth, Narcissus gazed at his reflection in a woodland pool, and became so infatuated with his own image that he died of languor. Freud sees a narcissistic element in the self-image that provides culture with its confidence against its critics, in the pride of rulers, and in the identification of suppressed classes with the rulers, as a key to the enduring stability of civilization.

Freud’s emphasis here is on the narcissistic pleasure of religion, how worship serves to lift self esteem. But it is also worth exploring how secular society has its own religious myths, which it panders through the promotion of narcissism. We see this especially in the mass cult of consumer advertising, where people are aggressively indoctrinated into a selfish materialist culture of individualism, regardless of its impact on their souls, on their sense of empathy and connection, and on the world. Promoting the illusion of expanding happiness through ownership of possessions seems to me to be a major cause of the contemporary epidemic of depression, in that people are sold the lie that they should find value in things rather than in relationships.

Consumerism seems more narcissistic than Christianity, which at least has a doctrine of selfless service. So why does Freud say that religion is self-absorbed? It seems true that acceptance of false myth generally has the purpose of validating one’s own identity and worth. This self-affirmation – for example in the idea “I am a Christian so I am chosen by God to go to heaven while those heathen will go to hell” – functions in practice terms as an affirmation of one’s own society, and a means of securing social loyalty.

With the breakdown of religion, we see new myths, such as Superman or Luke Skywalker, emerge to occupy the narcissistic functional role previously served by Jesus Christ. These new myths have a strictly interim fantasy character, even while they serve the sense of identity, belonging and self-worth previously supported by religion. Sporting heroes can have a similar role – “a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

DWill · Thu Oct 27, 2011 8:50 am

If Freud calls religion a "false illusion," that does tell us something about what an illusion was to him. According to the Wiki article on this book, Freud calls illusion a product of wish fulfillment, and as such it might not necessarily be false. To his mind, as to that of many others, religion is indeed false, however. I can't see a very strong an element of narcissism in religion, though. Freud himself sees it more as a instinct restrainer, the instincts being for him what always threaten to blow society apart. Supplying the masses with a means to reassure them that their good behavior will be rewarded in the end, that they will have eternal life, and that their "father" will be with them forever, will make them rein in their destructive, selfish instincts. None of these incentives seem to me accurately related to to the excessive self-regard we call narcissism. They seem to be more about managing fears.

The Wiki article had an interesting rejoinder from a friend of Freud's. The friend doubted that specific rewards in return for instinct repression was the reason people join religions. It was for a purely "spiritual" reason, he said.


	Quote: One of these exceptional few calls himself my friend in his letters to me. I had sent him my small book that treats religion as an illusion, and he answered that he entirely agreed with my judgement upon religion , but that he was sorry I had not properly appreciated the true source of religious sentiments. This, he says, consists in a peculiar feeling, which he himself is never without, which he finds confirmed by many others, and which he may suppose is present in millions of people. It is a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of 'eternity', a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded--as it were, 'oceanic'. This feeling, he adds is a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith; it brings with it no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of the religious energy which is seized upon by the various Churches and religious systems, directed by them into particular channels, and doubtless also exhausted by them. One may, he thinks, rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one rejects every belief and every illusion. The views expressed by the friend whom I so much honour, and who himself once praised the magic of illusion in a poem caused me no small difficulty. ... From my own experience I could not convince myself of the primary nature of such a feeling. But this gives me no right to deny that it does in fact occur in other people. The only question is whether it is being correctly interpreted and whether it ought to be regarded as the fons et origo of the whole need for religion.

Freud's reaction to his friend's ideas (it was Romain Rolland) is exactly the right one, I think. The difference in perspective captures something about our dialogue on religion on this site, with some members feeling that doctrine and articles of faith aren't the primary things holding people to religion. Rolland describes well the fundamental sense that many describe as religious. I believe that you, Robert, have said that atheists and scientists both are campaigning not just against the specific false beliefs of religions, but against the "spiritual" sensations as well. In that, I have disagreed with you.

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