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(In »Everything is religion«)

Sigmund Freud, the great father of psychoanalysis, regarded religion as an “illusion”, a thought that he developed in the book An Illusion and Its Future from 1927. His ambition was to let psychoanalysis offer its contribution to the understanding of religion, which is part of the culture whose main task it is, through various instructions and coercive measures, to defend humans against frightening, and in many ways cruel and dangerous, Nature. These instructions are held aloft, above criticism and questioning, by dint of their being accorded a divine origin. “In this way”, writes Freud, “a treasure trove of concepts born of the need to make human helplessness bearable is gathered, based on a fabric of memories of childhood helplessness, one’s own helplessness and that of the human race.” Thus religion is born: an increasingly systematic wishful thinking about superior and threatening forces that are endowed with the features of the father figure precisely because of the experienced helplessness that is associated with the solitary child’s vulnerability. That this illusory construction then grows to be so strong is related to the strength of this wishful thinking. The relief that it offers is as substantial as it is welcome: the difficult questions about the genesis of the world and the soul’s relationship to the body are conveniently answered and the fear of many of life’s dangers is allayed through divine providence. The acute terror which is caused by helplessness is eased through a carefully crafted illusion that responds to our collective and personal yearning for the father.