(Zwangshandlung) (Freud, 1941 [orig. 1907]; English translation: Freud,
1933). To be more precise, Freud reflected on“neurotic ceremonials,”which
consist of“little prescriptions, performances, restrictions, and arrangements”
in everyday life that have to be carried out always in the same way or following
some systematic pattern (Freud, 1933, p. 26). The patient has extreme anxiety
of not performing the ceremony. Religious rituals are similar to such compul-
sions because of the fear (Gewissensangst) of omitting them, their complete
isolation from other activities, and the conscientiousness (Gewissenhaftigkeit)
with which they are carried out (p. 27). Freud noted that although rituals are
thought to be full of meaning and symbolism (p. 27), the ordinary religious
observer carries them out without thinking of their significance (p. 30).
Faithfully to his psychoanalytic method, Freud explains neurotic ceremonials
by the suppression of (mainly sexual) impulses (pp. 28–32). He suggests, in
turn, that religious rituals are rooted in the suppression of anti-social impulses,
guilt due to constant temptation, and the fear of divine punishment (p. 33).
The focus on seemingly petty ceremonials in religions occurs by means of the
mechanism of“psychical displacement”from the actual thing to a seemingly
insignificant one (p. 34). According to Freud, giving up the satisfaction of anti-
social instincts for the sake of the divinity is the foundation of human
civilization (p. 34).
Freud’s theory has not been taken particularly seriously by scholars of
religious rituals, with two notable exceptions: Alan Fiske’s comparison of
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with a cross-cultural sample of ritual elements
and Pascal Boyer and Pierre Liénard’s theory of the hazard-precaution
system. What Freud called“neurotic ceremonials”has become the syndrome
of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in modern medical terminology.
OCD can be defined as the strong compulsion to engage in stereotyped and
repetitive activities with no rational justification (American Psychiatric
Association, 2013, chapter 6). OCD patients are typically preoccupied with
household items, cleanliness, dirt, contamination, bodily secretions, washing,
touching, fear of causing harm, preventing harm, fear of a terrible event,
checking and rechecking things (Dulaney & Fiske, 1994, p. 250). They can
be also preoccupied with forbidden sexual thoughts, violent images, the fear of
doing something embarrassing, numbers, colors, arranging things (symmet-
rically), thresholds, repeating actions, hoarding, rigidity, and nonsense words
(p. 250). Dulaney and Fiske’s statistical analysis of cross-cultural ethnographic
data demonstrated an extensive overlap between the symptoms of OCD, on
the one hand, and the typical components of religious rituals, on the other
hand. Although many behaviors show some OCD-like aspects, a comparison
of work-related actions with rituals showed more than four times more OCD-
like elements in the latter (Dulaney & Fiske, 1994, p. 264). In another study
(Fiske & Haslam, 1997), more features of OCD were found in rituals than
features of nineteen other psychopathologies, and rituals were found to
Ritual 91