On The Religious Feeling And Poetics Of The Language Of Sigmund Freud In His Work "Dissatisfaction With Culture"

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The work of Sigmunad Freud "Dissatisfaction with culture" ("Das Unbehagen in der Kultur") was written in 1930 and, to some extent, is a logical continuation of his work "The Future of One Illusion" (1927). Most of the work "Dissatisfaction with culture" is devoted to the issues of religion, its origin from the point of view of psychonalysis.

It is quite difficult to analyze the works of the great founder of psychoanalysis for a number of reasons: first, they are still quite difficult to read. I remember when a certain number of years ago, having spent a sufficient amount of time and effort studying Freud's works, I picked up Eric Berne's "Introduction to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis" and was shocked by the very fact that such complex and difficult to understand truths, which Freud expounded can be described in simple and understandable language. Even then, an analogy came to my mind with a gold digger who, while washing the sand, looks for gold nuggets or at least grains of gold.

Freud himself revealed many now well-known truths to us for the first time, these truths are still buried in a layer of sand, which he rakes, I am sure that many insights to Freud came in the course of writing his texts. And we, reading his texts, see all this work of his thoughts. Of course, then it is much easier, having already understood the idea, to "comb" it and make it easier for the reader to understand. Since this work belongs to his later works, written only 9 years before his death, in it the author repeats a number of provisions already described in earlier works, and makes it accessible in language.

In addition, Freud's works have been studied and reviewed, criticized hundreds and thousands of times by the most diverse researchers of the human soul - from his contemporaries to our contemporaries. I personally came across the main ideas of this work in one form or another a huge number of times. Nevertheless, I will try to abstract from all of the above and treat this text as a “naive reader”.

The work begins with the fact that the author writes about a letter received from his friend (his name is not mentioned in the text, but now we know that Freud meant Romain Rolland), in which he criticizes the work of the founder of psychoanalysis "The Future of One Illusion". In particular, Rolland writes that Freud, in his explanation of the origin of religion, does not at all take into account the special religious "oceanic" feeling, the "sense of eternity", which in fact is the true source of "religious energy".

Freud honestly says that he himself does not experience such a feeling, but such a feeling lends itself to scientific explanation. The author sees the source of this feeling as infantile narcissism - when the child, soon after birth, still does not separate himself from the surrounding world, the feeling of "I" is formed later. Regression to this infantile sensation leads, according to Freud, to such "oceanic" feelings.

Already the very first lines of the work, in which Freud, in my opinion, levels out, brings down the "oceanic" feeling about which Rolland writes to him to regression into an infantile state arouse objections. Although, perhaps, he is right in the sense that a baby can experience this feeling constantly soon after his birth and only later, in the process of more and more differentiation of objects of the external world and switching his attention to them, "disconnects" from him. What the infant constantly experiences is given to the adult only as rare moments of enlightenment and religious ecstasy. Of course, this is just an assumption - both from our side and from Freud's side. The infant cannot verbalize and describe this feeling. But the "oceanic" feeling can be described by an adult, and they (adults) have done it thousands of times in the widest range from ancient Indian mystics to Seraphim of Sarov and modern religious preachers. There is no doubt that they sincerely described their experiences of "divine grace," "sat-chit-ananda," or nirvana.

As for the second side of the question - namely, Freud's idea that the formation of religion occurs as a result of infantile helplessness and a person's desire to have a defender - the Father, this idea finds a huge amount of evidence, it is difficult to object to something. However, in general, I am more on the side of Rolland than Freud in this matter, in the emergence of religion, both of these factors work: infantile helplessness and "oceanic" feeling.

In terms of critical assessment, I would like to touch upon the myth of the murder of a father by adult sons. It seems to me somewhat strange that Freud builds his evidence base on the basis of this obviously mythological event.

The brilliantly developed theory of introjection, the formation of a sense of guilt, given in this work, is delightful. Everything is given very clearly and convincingly.

A bit embarrassing some categorical assertion that the purpose of life, any person considers his own happiness. Yes, this applies to a huge number of people, but I believe that there are also a large number of other motivations, other "life goals" for a variety of people, in a variety of cultures - from altruism (that is, happiness is not for oneself, but for other people) before completing some life mission, not necessarily joyful and happy.

As for the form in which the work was done, then, of course, it is fully sustained in the scientific style of that time. There are some lyrical digressions, appeals to the reader, complaints about the complexity of the task, etc., which, in principle, can be attributed, rather, to an artistic literary genre rather than a scientific one, but, in my opinion, they are quite organic, they personally color the text and facilitate its perception (in general, as I already wrote, the text is quite difficult to read).

“It is impossible to get rid of the idea that people usually measure everything by a false measure: they strive for power, success and wealth, admire those who have it all, but underestimate the true blessings of life,” this is how this scientific work begins. This proposal could well be the beginning of a piece of art. For some reason, it reminded me of the beginning of the novel "Anna Karenina": "All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." And although it would seem that Freud uses an introduction that does not belong to the scientific genre, for my taste, all work only benefits from such a beginning. At the same time, a certain discussion is set, and, at the same time, a certain ethical maxim is given, which sets the tone for all work, concerning ethics as well. Freud largely follows the tradition of philosophers of the 18-19 centuries, from Rousseau to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who presented philosophical ideas in often very poetic language.