whatever they desire, there is little reason to think that girls would want to
be boys, or vice versa. In many ways we can see that Horney ’s thinking was
well ahead of its time. Horney ’s death in 1952 did not allow her to see how
feminists would later use many of her ideas to promote the cause of gender
equality.
APPLICATION: PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY AND RELIGION
The psychoanalytic theorists did more than describe personality and develop
treatments for psychological disorders. These writers also offered an important
new perspective on humankind and answers to some enduring philosophicalquestions about the human condition. Inevitably, their concerns overlapped
with some of those traditionally addressed by theologians: Are people inher-
ently good or bad? Should we sacrifice personal pleasure for the commongood? Is the source of happiness within each of us or found in powers greater
than our own?
In a style that typified his career, Freud directly challenged conventional
thinking about many religious issues. Two books in particular, The Future of
an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents , assaulted widely held reli-
gious beliefs. Although Freud understood that organized religion provided so-
lace for the uneducated, he lamented its widespread acceptance by intelligent
people. “The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, ”Freud
wrote, “that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to
think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this
view of life ”(1930/1961, p. 21).
Why, then, do so many people believe? According to Freud, religious
behavior represents a form of neurosis. It begins with the baby ’s feelings of
helplessness and longing for a powerful protector, presumably the father.
Freud called religion a type of collective wish fulfillment. To protect ourselves
from a threatening and unpredictable world, we project our imagined savior
from this predicament outward in the form of a God. Thus, to Freud, God is
but an unconscious father figure generated in an infantile way to provide us
with feelings of security.
Several neo-Freudian theorists also addressed religious questions in their
writings, most notably, Carl Jung. Jung, whose father was a minister in the
Swiss Reformed Church, struggled with religious issues throughout much of
his life, often wavering between favorable and unfavorable impressions ofmodern religion. He once referred to “the religious myth, ”yet at another
point he described religious experience as “a great treasure ”providing “a
source of life, meaning, and beauty ”(Bechtle, 1984). Toward the end of his
career, Jung seemed to take a more favorable approach to organized religion.
He acknowledged that religion often provides followers with a sense of pur-
pose and feelings of security.
Jung often insisted that the question of God ’s existence was outside the
realm of science and hence nothing he could provide answers about. His in-terest was with humankind’ s eternal need to find religion. Why does religion
surface in all cultures? Why is some entity similar to the Judeo-Christian God
found in each of these cultures? Jung ’s answer was that each of us inherits“The religions of
mankind must be
classed among the
mass delusions. Noone, needless to say,
who shares a delu-
sion ever recognizesit as such. ”
Sigmund FreudApplication: Psychoanalyt ic Theory and Religion 115