Book
The Future of an Illusion
Die Zukunft einer Illusion
The Future of an Illusion (1927) is Freud's sustained psychoanalytic critique of religion as a cultural institution. It starts from the problem of civilisation. Culture protects people against nature and regulates their relations with one another, but it rests on compulsory labour and the renunciation of drives, so the people who bear its demands are hostile to it. Besides coercion, culture defends itself with psychical possessions that reconcile people to their sacrifices: the internalisation of prohibitions in the super-ego, ideals, art, and above all religious ideas. Freud traces these ideas to human helplessness before nature, fate and death, which revives the infant's helplessness and its longing for a protecting father. The forces of nature are humanised and given a father's features as gods. Religious doctrines are illusions: beliefs whose dominant motive is wish-fulfilment. An illusion differs from an error, and also from a delusion, because it need not contradict reality. The credentials of religious doctrines are weaker than those of any other teaching, and appeals to revelation, to credo quia absurdum or to Vaihinger's philosophy of 'as if' cannot bind reason. In a running dialogue with an imagined opponent, Freud argues that resting cultural prohibitions on God endangers them as belief declines, and he proposes grounding them in reason instead. Religion also preserves, in distorted form, a historical truth about the murdered primal father. It resembles a universal obsessional neurosis of humanity, which humanity may outgrow as children outgrow theirs. Freud pleads for an 'education to reality' and concedes that his own hope may be an illusion. He closes by defending science as no illusion.
Main ideas
- Every culture must be built on coercion and the renunciation of drives. Each individual is potentially an enemy of culture, so culture is defended both by force and by psychical means that compensate people for their sacrifices.
- Freud distinguishes frustration (Versagung), prohibition (Verbot) and privation (Entbehrung). The super-ego's taking over of external coercion is culture's one real psychological advance, and it is only secure for the oldest prohibitions: those against incest, cannibalism and murder.
- Religion arises from helplessness before nature, fate and death. The adult's helplessness continues the child's, and the longing for the father is identical with the need for protection, so the forces of nature are given a father's character as gods.
- Religious doctrines are illusions: beliefs in which wish-fulfilment is the dominant motive. An illusion is not necessarily an error. Unlike a delusion, it need not contradict reality, and the illusion itself disregards its relation to reality.
- Religious teachings rest on the weakest grounds of any teachings: the belief of the ancestors, unreliable ancient proofs, and a ban on questioning. There is no authority above reason, and neither credo quia absurdum nor the philosophy of 'as if' can oblige anyone to believe.
- Grounding cultural prohibitions on God's command makes obedience depend on belief. As the scientific spirit spreads, masses who lose their faith may also lose their restraint. Prohibitions should therefore be given a rational basis and recognised as made by human beings, which would make them easier to improve.
- Religious doctrine conveys a historical truth in distorted form. The prohibition on killing goes back to the murder of the primal father, who was the model for the figure of God.
- Religion is likened to the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity, arising like the child's neurosis from the Oedipus complex and the relation to the father. Humanity may turn away from it as children outgrow their neuroses, and devout believers are spared an individual neurosis by sharing the universal one.
- Religious education imposes prohibitions on thought before the child can judge, weakening the intelligence, which is the only means of mastering the drives. Freud proposes an experiment in irreligious upbringing, an 'education to reality' that accepts human helplessness and insignificance.
- Freud concedes that his hope may be an illusion, but it is one that experience can correct. The voice of the intellect is soft but does not rest until it is heard. Logos pursues the aims believers expect from God, love of humanity and less suffering, within the limits Ananke allows.
- Science is not an illusion. Its theories advance by refinement rather than overthrow, and the mental apparatus is itself part of the world it explores. It would be an illusion to believe that what science cannot give could be had from anywhere else.