Religious Behavior and the Oedipus Complex

The traditional venue for testing psychoanalytic concepts has been psychoanalytic treatment with its dreams, free associations, resistances, and symptoms. This assumption cannot be taken for granted; in actuality, psychoanalytic theorizing has never relied only on data collected in treatment. Freud himself used literary materials, historical data, anthropological reports, and observations of everyday behavior in children and adults. I suggest the study of religion as the royal road to testing psychoanalytic theories. Religious behavior, which is natural and collective rather than clinical and individual, and involves a variety of beliefs and rituals, provides us with considerable information for validating the ideas of classical psychoanalysis.

Religion is a belief system based on the notion of a supernatural invisible world, inhabited by souls, divine beings, and other “spiritual” entities. Our connection to these entities derives from a belief in revelation. (Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Prolegomena to the Psychological Study of Religion, 1989) Every religion is a collection of group fantasies, produced with the help of projection, condensation, displacement, and symbolism, offering respite from existential anxieties and mundane difficulties. As such, they become the focus of social identity, attached to claims of uniqueness and superiority. Interpreting religion is similar to the analysis of literature or art but the behavioral consequences in response to sacred fantasies may be dramatic, momentous, and, at times, even quite lethal. A salient cultural or universal fantasy raises the question of its special power over a substantial number of individual minds, beyond its contribution, if any, to individual self-esteem. Rituals that are public and involve millions are not “clinical data” that are impossible to verify and replicate. Basic religious fantasies persist and survive over time—the essence of religious ritual and belief has not changed over the last 10,000 years. So the behavioral information involved is uniquely relevant to a theory that claims universal and supra-historical validity.

Freud’s writings offer a rich variety of specific hypotheses regarding various religious beliefs and practices, and they have been expanded and elaborated over the years. (Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Psychoanalytic Studies of Religion: Critical Assessment and Annotated Bibliography, 1996) Some of the better known hypotheses derived from psychoanalytic theory are the father-projection and the super-ego projection. It is assumed that the Oedipal master narrative will play a

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central role in all cultures and all cultural products. Assessing the frequency and prevalence of patterns repeatedly found in religious traditions can test this.

It was Otto Rank (The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, 1914) who pointed to the prevalence of Oedipal mythology and connected it to a more general theme of the life of the hero, which fits the well-known myths of Krishna, Moses, Isaac, Oedipus, and Jesus. Rank’s contribution, however, is not in discovering the general pattern but rather in offering a psychoanalytic interpretation in terms of early childhood experiences. It is the family romance of neurotics, common to all cultures, which is the root of this myth pattern. In this fantasy, the child gets rid of his parents and is adopted by others of much higher status. The hostility towards the father is projected onto him in the myth, where the child is always the victim. Fifty years after Rank, Clyde Kluckhohn (“Recurrent Themes in Myths and Mythmaking,” H.A. Murray, ed., Myth and Mythmaking, 1968) presented, at the center of his summary of cross-cultural data, what he calls “Oedipus-type myths” as a universal pattern combining themes found in most mythologies, with especially vivid myths tied to the fantasy figures of Jesus, Krishna, and Moses.

The expression of the Oedipal template in religious traditions is sometimes quite striking even to those who do not easily accept psychoanalytic ideas. Adolf Grunbaum has been a well-known, methodical critic of classical psychoanalysis, who has dissected every one of its traditional claims and found almost all inadequate because of the lack of clear empirical evidence. The one clear exception he makes is the classical treatment of religion. In particular, he uses examples such as the doctrines surrounding the Virgin Birth and is forced to conclude that Freud’s notion of repressed Oedipal conflicts is much more plausible than any conscious explanations offered to justify these beliefs. (Adolf Grunbaum, Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, 1993, p. 297)

The Oedipal template is relevant not only to mythology but also to some rituals. Genital mutilation, part of initiation rites for about 20 percent of humanity, is consciously interpreted in various cultures as completing the process of gaining a full sexual identity. Genital mutilation rituals are central to Judaism and Islam, and prevalent in some versions of African Christianity. The mutilation of males is performed by father figures and of females, by mother figures.

Among the findings on religiosity around the world, women show a stronger commitment to religion than men do. (Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and Michael Argyle, The Psychology of Religious Behaviour, Belief, and Experience, 1997, p. 139) This comes as a surprise to many who rightly consider all religions to be not only patriarchal but also misogynistic. Further, among Christian denominations, the Roman Catholic Church attracts more men while all Protestant denominations enjoy the support of significantly more women. To explain these differences we can use the pantheon hypothesis, a derivative of parental projection. Images of God are similar to images of parents, particularly to opposite-sex parents. (Beit-Hallahmi, Psychology of Religious Behaviour, p. 106) For women, the image of God and attitudes to God are more similar to those towards the father, and for men, to those towards the mother. If a tradition offers an image of God as an adult male, as in Protestantism where the main object of worship is Jesus, this image will appeal more to women. The Virgin Mary and some female saints are very prominent in Catholic worship. This produces a stronger religious response from males.

Since the middle of the 20th century, there have been various failed attempts by feminists to develop Goddess religions, designed to serve the special needs of women. Goddess religions fail to attract women because the pantheon must be headed by a true and natural (Oedipal) love object. Further, from Freud’s account in “A Religious Conversion” (S.E., 21, 1928, pp. 167-174), problems within the relations with one’s father (including absence and loss) will increase the likelihood of involvement in religious conversions and a heightened commitment to a religious career (as monks or clergy). This general prediction is supported by observations from various cultures and settings, including Indian ascetics and Western converts to Iskcon (“Hare Krishna”). (Beit-Hallahmi, Psychology of Religious Behaviour, p. 118)

The observations presented here seem to indicate that some classical Freudian ideas, almost 100 years old, seem still more than relevant and better than adequate. They are still quite young compared to religion. Early experience within the human family is the key to myth and ritual, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically. The Oedipal template is supposed to be out of fashion and obsolete, replaced by a variety of newer concepts. But

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for understanding the behavior of billions of believers in the real world, this template is still highly relevant.

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