psychologyassociates religion with a projection of infantile dependencies onto exter-
nal reality. Grounded in his theory of human development, Freud identi-
fies the Oedipus complex with the origins of religion, which necessitates
the son killing his father in order to gain access to the women of the tribe.
Feeling remorse and guilt, the son finds a substitute of the father in the
totem animal, which it is agreed would not be killed and instead wor-
shipped. This dead father figure is projected into God by the son. With
the publication of Future of an Illusion in 1927, Freud argues that reli-
gion is not revealed by some deity, its claims cannot be scientifically
verified, and it does not represent logical conclusions. Because people
want religion to be true, religious beliefs are illusions, which cannot be
proven or refuted.
Many working in the field of the psychology of religion describe
Freud’s work and that of Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) as speculative.
Jung does not, however, agree with Freud on some important issues such
as the Oedipus complex, the inevitably of sexual conflict between father
and son, and rejects the notion of the mother as an object of incestuous
desire. Instead of Freud’s unconscious, Jung envisions a collective
unconscious, which is defined as impulses to action devoid of conscious
motivation. Within the collective unconscious, Jung locates archetypes
that are the product of recurring experiences of life, such as birth, death,
danger, and attempts to satisfy desire for sex and food. Jung understands
this as a process in which religion, an archetypal requirement for human
nature and a numinous conscious experience, plays an important role.
In contrast to Freud, Jung thinks that the presence of religion is not a
sign of neurosis, but its absence might be a sign of neurosis especially
later in life.
In addition to James, Freud, and Jung, many more theorists make con-
tributions to the psychology of religion by developing the insights of
these early pioneers or attempting to move in a more scientific and a less
speculative direction. These three early examples of scholars of psychol-
ogy continue to manifest the inability of the field to operate with a unified
body of theory and method. These approaches also illustrate the contin-
ued use of empiricism, reduction, and an anti-religious bias in many
cases. Moreover, the psychological approach to religion is criticized for
being insensitive to historical development and the contents of religion
such as symbols, myths and rituals.
On a more positive note, psychologists of religion study religion as a
way of coping with everyday stress, health issues, drug-induced religious
experience, and the effects of meditation.
Further reading: Freud (1919, 1975); James (1902); Jung (1969)