Freud is famous for portraying religion as a collective neurosis of mankind. He argued that religious beliefs give expression to wish-fulfilling illusions, serving the immature emotional needs of the child living on within the adult.<\/p>\n
Such illusions \u2013 he sternly maintained \u2013 should be cast aside and replaced by ideas corresponding to reality \u2013 namely, the materialistic world view that emerges gradually but inescapably from the cumulative process of scientific observation.<\/p>\n
This is one side of Freud \u2013 expressing his self-image as an \u2018Enlightenment philosophe<\/em>\u2019 (in Peter Gay\u2019s accurate phrase). But there is another side to Freud \u2013 unfortunately less widely known \u2013 for in the later works he develops a subtle and complex theory of society, in which religion plays a much more positive \u2013 even vital \u2013 role. Seen from this perspective, religion may be regarded as necessary for our psychological well-being \u2013 even for the survival of human kind.<\/p>\n In the one day course we will explore a range of psychoanalytic interpretations of religion, examining different views of its function and significance in the lives of human beings.<\/p>\n We will engage with the full range of Freud\u2019s subtle and insightful thoughts on the nature of religion \u2013 and consider his specific observations on the character of particular religions.<\/p>\n We will examine Jung\u2019s philosophical critique of Freud, and his view of religious experience as a manifestation of latent structures of the collective unconscious \u2013 structures modern people have become estranged from, but with which they need to re-connect to access the living symbols that help human beings find meaning and direction in their lives.<\/p>\n We will explore Julia Kristeva\u2019s brilliant and profound post-Lacanian theorizing in which religion performs the vital cultural function of articulating the \u2018semiotic\u2019 \u2013 a function whose atrophy in the contemporary West underlies the nihilism of modernity. We will consider her notions of the \u2018semiotic\u2019 and the \u2018symbolic\u2019, and her interpretation of religion as enabling the semiotic to take on symbolic form in discourses of love, loss and abjection.<\/p>\nCourse outline:<\/h2>\n
Session 1:<\/h3>\n
Session 2:<\/h3>\n
Session 3:<\/h3>\n