Religious Thought In Freud's Study

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is a famous psychologist who established psychoanalysis school last century. His research covered various cultural phenomena including religion; from the deepest motivation of human thoughts and behaviors, he spared no effort to observe religious phenomena. Although there were many limitations, no doubt, his research aspects and views were enlightening and influential for later generations both in religion and psychology. Nowadays apart from his research on the origin of religion, his views in other aspects are generally neglected by academic fields. Based on former researches by others and according to the original works of Freud, the author tries her best to demonstrate his thoughts put in a theoretical frame in the criterion of reality, wholeness and profoundness, makes some objective and neutral comments in the direction to historical materialism, and expects to make some contributions to religious studies and psychology of religion.This paper includes six parts. The part of "Introduction" systematically introduces former researches and points out their limitations, and makes them as the starting points of this research. The first chapter is a brief introduction about Freud's life and works, divides his life into three stages, and briefly introduces his life, the formation and development of psychoanalysis theory, and his important works. The second chapter expounds the formation and development of Freud's religious views from three aspects of the origins, theoretical preconditions and developing clues. The first two aims to introduce the backgrounds of formation of his theory, and the last one aims to show the general picture of his religious views in different stages. The third chapter mainly introduces Freud's views on the origin and development of religions. Although former scholars give much concern about this issue, the author tries to trace it back based on comparative religious studies and psychoanalysis theory, in order to comprehensively explain his views on this issue. The author also introduces Freud's views on the issue of religious development, and reviews his views on the formation of Jewish monotheism. Based on the theory of "Four Elements of Religion" of Chinese famous religious scholar Professor Lv Daji, the fourth chapter "the Essence of Religion" respectively makes a specific explanation and objective evaluation for Freud's view on religious notion, religious experience, religious behavior and church organization, and etc. The fifth chapter emphatically introduces Freud's view of religious culture, and analyzes and evaluates his views on the relations of religion and ethics, religion and science.The innovative points of this paper are mainly demonstrated in five aspects as follows:Firstly, it explains the origins of Freud's religious thoughts in a comparatively whole way. Former researchers always attend to one thing and lose another, didn't wholly introduce the formation backgrounds. The author claims that the formation of Freud's religious views were influenced by the edification from his family, the profound influence from the enlightening thinker Feuerbach, more importantly the research fruits from comparative religious studies, and definitely the principal axis was his psychoanalysis theory.Secondly, it expounds the theoretical preconditions of Freud's views on religion. The author thinks that Freud's religious views has two theoretical preconditions, that is, the consistency of psychological status among the primitive, children and neurosis patients, and "memory trace" theory. Although past researchers mentioned the first one, they seldom noticed the latter one.Thirdly, it divides Freud's views into three stages to make its development clearer, which is not involved by former researchers.Fourthly, it puts Freud's religious views in a comparative whole frame, makes a whole, systematical and deep research respectively from the origin and development of religion, the essence of religion(religious notion, religious experience, religious behavior and church organization), and the relation between religion and culture. It breaks through the limitations of other scholars from home and abroad, whose views only focus on the origin of religion, and consequently makes his views fully demonstrated.Fifthly, it effectively combines the research methods and research fruits from both religious studies and psychology. Seen from actual research fruits, researchers of psychology were inclined to explain Freud's view on religion using psychoanalysis theory, and they employed the most advanced research methods and statistical instruments to validate the reliability of his views. On the other hand, researchers of religion inclined to trace back and evaluate his view on religion from anthropology, nationality, history and philosophy. These two lack of effective combination. In fact, research materials of nationality and anthropology are essential parts of Freud's view of religion, while psychoanalysis theory is its framework. Only through the effective combination of the two, we can grasp the meaning of Freud's religious research. Objective evaluation for Freud's religious views is another innovative point of this paper.