Evolution of a Psychoanalytic Perspective

Evolution of a Psychoanalytic Perspective
Psychoanalysts with a positive attitude toward spirituality have had to work their way around the view of their progenitor, Sigmund Freud.

Around the same time that William James championed the meaningfulness of religious experience, Freud, himself experienced in physiologic research was inclined to invalidated spirituality and religion as having no part in a healthy and mature adaptation.

He ascribed religion to a neurotic perspective rooted in unresolved childlike fixations.

Early on, however views were expressed within the psychoanalytic mainstream that ran counter to Freud’s bias. Oskar Pfister, a Lutheran pastor and psychoanalyst, was a long time friend of Freud’s.

He emphasized the meaningful nature of religion as a unifying vision of the world, one that transcended the uncertainties of life and encouraged ethical responsibility.

But the most elaborately Freudian view emerged on the writings of Carl Gustav Jung. He later parted ways with Freud, having come to differ with his mentor’s stark empiricism and emphasis on sexuality rather than people’s higher spiritual values.

He accepted the concept of an irrational personal unconscious but came to believe in a collective unconscious, positing the existence of innate mental constructs, archetypes – primordial images that existed in all individuals.

These are serve as the basis for elaborating the diverse religious imagery and myths that across different cultures.
Evolution of a Psychoanalytic Perspective