Their respective theories of religion...
Sigmund Freud's theory of religion was based on a model of psychiatric pathology: religion as neurosis. He attacked religion on several fronts. He noted that religious rituals mirrored the ritual behavior of disturbed patients. Like a neurosis, religion thus represented a sort of safety valve that was perhaps useful for relieving pressure but not as good as getting to and resolving the real problems of life Religion, by displacing real human needs and fears
onto unreal, symbolic entities, was a form of alienation that prevented people from coming to grips with their real problems and frustrations. People were better off without it, just as his patients were better off without their neuroses.
Carl Gustav Jung began his career in psychiatry as one of Freud’s most promising disciples. As Jung began to reflect more independently on human psychology and its pathologies, however, he found himself increasingly convinced that religion, far from being the chronic impediment that Freud believed it to be, was also potentially a source of health, balance, and connection for people; in fact, it was a necessary component of mental health. Religion, he said, was the sense that we were connected to a reality larger than our individual selves. We might call this larger reality by many names, but it represented a kind of synchronicity, a larger web of significations, a collective unconscious that was inbuilt into the human psyche. Its contents included archetypes, universal symbolic representations that helped people to organize and give meaning to their existence. In tandem with rational, discursive thought, symbols and archetypes enabled people to approach the world in a balanced, meaningful way.
Source credit
rofessor Charles B. Jones
Sigmund Freud's theory of religion was based on a model of psychiatric pathology: religion as neurosis. He attacked religion on several fronts. He noted that religious rituals mirrored the ritual behavior of disturbed patients. Like a neurosis, religion thus represented a sort of safety valve that was perhaps useful for relieving pressure but not as good as getting to and resolving the real problems of life Religion, by displacing real human needs and fears
onto unreal, symbolic entities, was a form of alienation that prevented people from coming to grips with their real problems and frustrations. People were better off without it, just as his patients were better off without their neuroses.
Carl Gustav Jung began his career in psychiatry as one of Freud’s most promising disciples. As Jung began to reflect more independently on human psychology and its pathologies, however, he found himself increasingly convinced that religion, far from being the chronic impediment that Freud believed it to be, was also potentially a source of health, balance, and connection for people; in fact, it was a necessary component of mental health. Religion, he said, was the sense that we were connected to a reality larger than our individual selves. We might call this larger reality by many names, but it represented a kind of synchronicity, a larger web of significations, a collective unconscious that was inbuilt into the human psyche. Its contents included archetypes, universal symbolic representations that helped people to organize and give meaning to their existence. In tandem with rational, discursive thought, symbols and archetypes enabled people to approach the world in a balanced, meaningful way.
Source credit
rofessor Charles B. Jones
