The future of an illusion

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The future of an illusion is a 1927 work by Sigmund Freud . It is considered his major work on religion , viewed as a contemporary social phenomenon. For Freud, the basis of religion is human helplessness. An infantile response to this is the desire for a protective father. In religion this wish is fulfilled, but only in the imagination, and in this sense religion is an illusion: a wish-fulfillment fantasy. The progress of science leads to the recognition of human powerlessness and thus to the decline of religion; Freud welcomes this development.

content

By “ culture ” (or “civilization”) Freud understands everything that distinguishes human life from that of animals. The culture consists of two areas:

  • from the knowledge and skills that serve to master nature,
  • and from institutions that regulate the relationships between people.

These institutions consist of commandments, and the core of the cultural commandments is the prohibition of incest and the prohibition of murder .

The cultural bans require people to work and renounce instincts . The drive suppression is distributed unequally; the renunciation of instincts by the majority goes hand in hand with instinct satisfaction for a minority. The great mass therefore strives to destroy culture - a culture that is made possible by its work, but in whose goods it has only a small share. Culture also includes measures to prevent it from being destroyed.

On the one hand, culture is protected by means of coercion and, on the other hand, by institutions that are supposed to reconcile people with culture. These include:

  • the internalization of the prohibitions (their acceptance into the superego ),
  • art (insofar as it enables substitute gratifications),
  • the cultural ideals
  • and religion.

The cultural ideals are based on narcissistic pride in the excellence of culture; The oppressed classes can also participate in this form of reconciliation: through identification with the exploiting class.

The function of religion, in general, is to reconcile man with the hurt of his narcissism. This insult is based on human helplessness, which comes in three main forms. she consists

  • in man's powerlessness in relation to external nature,
  • in his powerlessness against illness and death,
  • and it is ultimately based on the privations that are forced upon him by culture.

The adult interprets his helplessness along the lines of the helplessness he experienced as a child; and like the child, he combines his helplessness with a longing for a protective father. This longing for the father is the basis for the creation of the gods, the gods are idealized father figures. Religion is a kind of human neurosis - a collective obsessional neurosis .

With the development of the knowledge of nature, religion increasingly loses the function of reconciling with the superiority of the forces of nature and with illness and death; what remains is their cultural function. The main task of religion now is to reconcile with the cultural bans, and this is done by tracing them back to a divine origin.

Evidence for the truth of the religious teachings is scant. However, these teachings are extremely effective. Their effectiveness stems from the fact that the religious ideas are wish-fulfillment fantasies. In a quasi hallucinatory way, they satisfy the need for protection in the face of helplessness. Religion is therefore not simply an error, it is an illusion; the religious ideas are not simply wrong, they rather represent the imaginary fulfillment of a wish.

The origin of religion is ultimately of an affective nature. The religion is based on the murder of the forefather and on the feeling of guilt that was evoked by this event. The religious interpretation of the cultural commandments - the tracing back to a divine origin - is therefore not simply wrong, it contains a historical truth: it testifies to the key role of the father relationship in the establishment of culture.

The development of science inevitably leads to the decline of religion. That is neither to be regretted nor is it dangerous. Because religion has not succeeded in making people happy, nor has it been able to induce them to behave morally. The criticism of religion is only dangerous if it is picked up by the uneducated because this supports their resistance to culture. However, popularization of the criticism of religion is inevitable. If you want to protect culture from its destruction, you are faced with an alternative: Either you have to ensure that the uneducated are rigorously suppressed, or you have to redesign the relationship between people and culture. Freud advocates the second possibility.

He suggests treating religion in a similar way to treating neurosis . The religious justification of the cultural bans - which corresponds to the repression - should, as in therapy, be replaced by a rational justification. The prohibition of murder should be justified by stating that it serves self-preservation (a rational justification for the prohibition of incest is not outlined by Freud in this work). If the basis of cultural prohibitions is no longer religion but intellect, this will result in numerous prohibitions being lifted.

“No matter how often we emphasize that the human intellect is powerless compared to the human instinctual life, and we are right about it. But there is something special about this weakness; the voice of the intellect is soft, but it does not rest until it is heard. In the end, after being rejected countless times, she finds it. This is one of the few points on which one can be optimistic about the future of humanity, but it does not mean little in itself. "

- Chapter VIII, study edition vol. 9, p. 186

Freud hopes that the intellectualization of the prohibitions will succeed in reconciling people with culture. This assumes that reason is strengthened to the point where it can conquer passions. Freud outlines two forms of strengthening the intellect: on the one hand, the lifting of religious, sexual and political prohibitions on thinking and, on the other, education for reality, by which he understands that people learn to accept their powerlessness and helplessness.

Freud admits: “Possibly, his hope that repression could be replaced by intellectual work is also an illusion.” However, this would differ from the religious illusion in that it could be corrected.

classification

The text is part of the series of cultural theoretical writings by Freud; Are predecessors

The series will be continued later with

In The Uneasiness in Culture , Freud deals with a criticism by Romain Rolland of The Future of an Illusion . According to Rolland, the basis of religion is not the longing for the father, but the "oceanic feeling". Freud reconstructs the “oceanic feeling” as a primary narcissism without a boundary between the ego and the outside world and declares it to be a secondary source of religion.

In the 1935 postscript to his self-portrayal , Freud observes: “In the future of an illusion , I had mainly viewed religion negatively; I later found the formula that shows her better justice: her power is based on her truth content, but this truth is not a material, but a historical one. ”The difference between the material and the historical truth becomes in The Man Moses and the monotheistic religion developed in more detail.

The thesis of patricide as the basis of culture can be found in Totem and Tabu from 1912/13, the concept of narcissism was first presented in detail by Freud in To the introduction of narcissism from 1914; the thesis of the internalization of prohibitions in the superego is first found in Das Ich und das Es of 1923. The conception of the cultural hostility of the masses presented in The Future of an Illusion is further developed in The Uneasiness in Culture of 1930.

expenditure

Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion

  • Leipzig, Vienna and Zurich: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag 1927 (first printing)
  • In: Ders .: Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 14. Imago, London 1948, pp. 325–380
  • In: Ders .: Study Edition, Volume IX . Ed. V. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, James Strachey. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1974, pp. 135-189

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ quoted after the preliminary editorial remarks on The Future of an Illusion in: Freud, study edition, vol. 9. Frankfurt / M .: Fischer 1974, p. 137 f.