Religious Studies Ch6 How People Experience Religion - Religious Consciousness (From Sigmund Freud to Rene Girard )

What is concept of Archetypes for Carl Gustav Jung ? [part1]

-αρχη + τυπος -"The concept of the archetype, which is an indispensable correlate of the idea of the collective unconscious, indicates the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere." (p. 155) -"[T]here is good reason for supposing that the archetypes are the unconscious images of the instincts themselves, in other words, that they are patterns of instinctual behavior." (p. 156) -These unconscious depths combined with the conscious ego form the self

Abraham Maslow ?

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970): -American humanistic psychologist; considered that human beings' basic needs must first be met before motivation and opportunity for higher values can be realized; progressing through higher needs is part of "self-actualization"; mystical religious experiences represent the ultimate "peak experiences." -Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences (1964)

Gananath Obeyesekere ?

Gananath Obeyesekere, In Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience (1981): offers insight in religious practices of Sri Lanka as well as theoretical breakthroughs for understanding symbolism; employs methods of both anthropology and cultural applications of psychoanalysis; uses his ethnographic case study as evidence to revise the theories of symbolism

For Carl Gustav Jung, how does the archetypes work ?

How archetypes work:? "When a situation occurs which corresponds to a given archetype, that archetype becomes activated and a compulsiveness appears, which, like an instinctual drive, gains its way against all reason and will, or else produces a conflict of pathological dimensions, that is to say a neurosis." (p. 158)

What's the concept of religion for Freud ?

Religion is an expression of underlying psychological neuroses and distress. Freud suggests that religion is an attempt to control the Oedipal complex, a means of giving structure to social groups, wish fulfilment, an infantile delusion, and an attempt to control the outside world.

According to Freud, what is religion for Sigmund Freud ? [part1]

"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." (Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,1933) -"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. [...] If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity."

What is the Collective Unconscious for Carl Gustav Jung ?

"storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from man's ancestral past, a past that includes not only the racial history of man as a separate species but his pre-human or animal ancestry as well." Jung concept of collective unconscious is based on his experiences with schizophrenic persons since he worked in the Burgholzli psychiatric hospital. The collective unconscious - so far as we can say anything about it at all - appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious... We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual. (From The Structure of the Psyche, CW 8, par. 325.). Jung stated that the religious experience must be linked with the experience of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Thus, God himself is lived like a psychic experience of the path that leads one to the realization of his/her psychic wholeness.

How does the archetypes be proven ?

-Dreams (involuntary, spontaneous products of the unconscious and therefore pure) -"active imagination" (sequence of fantasies produced by deliberate concentration) -Phantasies in trance-state combined with convincing mythological parallels (individual symbol needs to have the same functional meaning as in the myth) Dreams, imagination, myths, and religious experience provide access to archetypal images, such as the sun, mother, father, sage, trickster, child, an animal, birth, and other important rites of passage. Archetypal images appear directly in dreams. Religion, too, is an instructive repository of symbols that can be read as expressions of archetypes—including the idea of the completeness of God as a model of the whole self.

According to the Totem and Taboo, what's the important concepts for Freud ? [part2]

-Rationalist ideal -distinguishes reason as separate from and superior to faith -departure from Otto: another's personal religious experience has no particular significance for those people who have not had such an experience -Parallelism between overcoming illusions of childhood and maturing of society: to remain "fixated" on religion or to "regress" back to earlier stages, where religious belief may have been an inevitable, child-like developmental stage, would indicate a neurosis best overcome through therapy.

According to the Totem and Taboo, what's the important concepts for Freud ? [part1]

-instinctual urge to displace the father (Oedipus complex) explains totemic religion with its related concept of powerful taboos. In parallel with killing the father and marrying the mother, in prehistoric times frustrated younger males killed the dominant male of their "primal horde" in order to satisfy their sexual desires with the females under his control. -The Oedipal uprising provides the catalyst for abandoning a relatively primitive and animal-like interaction for a more civilized social arrangement. -eventually leads to reinstate the father as a totem animal to be worshipped, and to create taboos against incest and killing or eating the totem animal. -arises from the recognition that the brief ecstasy the young males may have enjoyed by impulsively indulging their frustrated desires was unsustainable.

What are the criticisms toward Freud ?

-relies on a monotheistic father-figure god -presumes that observations of individuals in psychoanalysis provide an unproblematic analogy to entire groups of people across vast spans of space and time -inadequate logical or scientific basis for the leap from individual case studies to society as a whole -shows over-confidence in "explaining away" religion Subsequent psychoanalytic approaches to religion have pursued similar questions about the nature of religion and the motives and mental health of religious belief, but they have generally been more nuanced while emending or ignoring many of Freud's most controversial claims.

According to The future of an illusion For Sigmund Freud, what is the definition of religion ?

-religion as illusory wish fulfillment that transforms forces of nature into anthropomorphic gods who are powerful and potentially destructive, but can also be approached and appeased. -monotheism, with god as a father figure, is especially conducive for developing a sense of a special relationship between god as parent and chosen people as children. -provides convenient solace and incentives that soften life's hardships, and protection and recompense for present and past suffering as well as future rewards for good behaviour. -religion assists society's civilizing project by promoting moral precepts that guard against some of the baser instinctual desires of the individual and by attempting to domesticate some of the wilder forces of nature => sense of higher purpose & authoritative source of moral precepts beyond human society itself

What is the concept of Archetypes for Carl Gustav Jung ? [part2]

But what is the archetype? An innate tendency which molds and transform the individual consciousness. A fact defined more through a drive than through specific inherited contents, images etc.; a matrix which influences the human behavior as well as his ideas and concepts on the ethical, moral religious and cultural levels. Jung talks about the archetype (also called "primordial image") as of biologists' patterns of behavior (inborn behavior patterns). In short, archetypes are inborn tendencies which shape the human behavior. "The archetype concept - Jung writes - derives from the often repeated observation that myths and universal literature stories contain well defined themes which appear every time and everywhere. We often meet these themes in the fantasies, dreams, delirious ideas and illusions of persons living nowadays". These themes are representations of archetypes; they are based on archetypes. They impress, influence and fascinate us (our ego). This is why we call their tremendous effect numinous - that is, able to arise deep and intense emotions. Archetypes do not have a well defined shape "but from the moment they become conscious, namely nurtured with the stuff of conscious experience." Basically an archetype is empty, purely formal, nothing else but a pre-shaping possibility or an innate tendency of shaping things.

René Girard ？

Rene Girard: French scholar; Violence and the Sacred (1977), -significantly revised earlier psychoanalytic ideas; psychoanalytic understanding of mimetic desire—the motive force that concerns desiring that which others desire -asserted that violence and the sacred are inseparable: their origins can be located in mimetic desire and the power and function of sacrificing a scapegoat to unite the group and stave off uncontrolled violence, which could otherwise tear society apart

Carl Gustav Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious ?

The collective unconscious and religions: -"All esoteric teachings seek to apprehend the unseen happenings in the psyche, and all claim supreme authority for themselves. What is true of primitive lore is true in even higher degree of the ruling world religions. They contain a revealed knowledge that was originally hidden, and they set forth the secrets of the soul in glorious images."

What is psychology of religion ?

What is psychology of religion? Psychological approaches to the study of religion are : - family diverse - unified in attempting better to explain or understand religion by focusing on the mind, perception, experience, and consciousness of the religious individual. - either reducing religion to its psychological dimension, such as "explaining away" religion as illusory wish fulfillment projected onto reality and mistakenly believed to be real. - or illustrate how existing beliefes influence the way in which religion is experienced, demonstrate how psychology shapes religion without necessarily claiming that all of religion can be reduced to a psychological origin or explanation.