PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

v    9/11/10

F    What is psychology?

In the beginning psychology used to be defined as the study of the mind or the science of the human mind. Presently however, it is no longer defined as such.  This is because the mind is not measureable. There is no particular place in the human person where we can locate the mind. Consequently, we now define psychology as the scientific study of human and animal behaviour and mental processes with a view to explain, understand, predict and modify human behaviour. In this definition, the word ‘behaviour’ replaces the mind because human behaviour can be measured. In other words, our behaviour can be subjected to scientific study and analysis. Human behaviour constitutes those things we do: our movements, actions, how we respond to stimulus, while mental processes constitute: learning, emotion, feelings, motivation, memory, cognition to mention a few.

The understanding and explanation of behaviour are the goal of psychology. Psychology also aims at prediction and modification of behaviour. There would be no point predicting human behaviour if we cannot do anything to modify them. For instance, if a prediction is made that certain behaviours are detrimental for an individual, then we should be able to do something to avoid such behaviours.

F    What is Religion?

Religion can be defined as a belief in or the worship of a god or gods. Religion is a particular system of belief or worship. The effect of religion in shaping the personality of a person is both inter-generational and cumulative. It is inter-generational in the sense that religion is passed from one generation to another and as this is done, it shapes the personality of the individual.

Religion has also a cumulative effect on the person in the sense that most of the things we do in life is affected by our religious beliefs. Before we eat, for instance we pray. On passing by a church, we make the sign of the cross. In fact we bring religious attitude into almost all we do consciously or unconsciously. Man by nature is a religious being. Man has that tendency to look for solace, peace and hope from a supreme being. Any attempt therefore to deprive him of this attitude of dependence or to reduce religious practices would lead to disintegration and chaos in the society.

Religion enforces particular rules and regulations that keep us in check. Someone has rightly said that of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion remains an indispensable support.

F    Psychological nature and functions of religion.

1.                  Religion is as old as creation.

Looking at it from the context that religion is not about a particular church or mosque, we realise that religion is as old as creation itself. In the creation narrative in the Bible, we see that the first man Adam lived in reverence to God. Religion therefore plays a central role in man’s existence that has made it almost indispensable. Religion is part and parcel of our life such that every day we perform series of religious acts.

2.                  Religion stabilises the individual and the society.

When we face some challenges in life, we go to the church to pray and by the time we come out from our prayer, we feel confident that God has heard our prayer. Psychologically this gives us some sort of stability. Or again, when some people come to a priest to confide on him because of the difficult moments they are passing through in life, even though the priest might not have an answer or solution to their problem, they nevertheless feel relieved after speaking to the priest. The priest would normally counsel them to look unto God for solution in their problems. That God is in control. This reassurance of God’s care and concern stabilises the individual to face the challenges of life with hope. So many people today are coping with life’s difficulties because of their religious beliefs otherwise many would have committed suicide.

3.                  Religion influences our attitude and behaviour.

There are so many things in life that we avoid doing not because we don’t like to do them but because our religious belief dictates otherwise. For instance, a committed Christian wouldn’t normally involve himself in sponsoring terrorist attacks, ritual killings and so forth.

For instance, during Lent, we do not engage in some of the things we would have loved to do. We fast from food, meat and so many other things not because they are bad in themselves but because of our religious beliefs.

v    15/11/10

4.                  Religion dictates modes of social interaction

Religion dictates modes of social interaction. For example, religion dictates how a male should relate with a female and how a female should relate with a male. Religion dictates how a younger person should relate with an elder. In the Mosaic Law, it is written “honour thy father and mother.” In his letter to the Ephesians chapter 5: 22- 33; 6:1-4, St. Paul gives a detailed instruction on how a husband should relate with his wife, how the wife should relate with her husband; how the children are to relate with their parents and how the parents are to relate with their children.

5.                  Religion helps to make meaning of the world.

Many things happen and are happening in the world. These happenings could be positive or negative. Through the help of religion, people are able to make meaning out of these occurrences. When we lose a loved one for example, we often try to see it from a religious point of view – “God gave, and God has taken” we often say. Religion in this sense helps us to bear the pains of life.

6.                  Religion enhances self-satisfaction.

People who are very religious are often satisfied with themselves and the way things are with them.  Their religious belief enables them go through life satisfied no matter their condition.

7.                  Religion gives purpose in living

The belief that tomorrow would be better than today is a belief that stems from religious background. Religion motivates us to go on living because we believe that God is in control no matter what happens – as the popular hymn puts it: “Because He lives (God) I can face tomorrow.”

8.                  Religion shape personality

Our personalities are functions of genetic inheritance and circumstantial influence. We grow up in an atmosphere of religion. Before a man gets married to a woman, he prays. When they are to be married, they go to the church to be wedded. When the woman becomes pregnant, they pray for safe delivery. When the child is born, they take him/her to the church for baptism. So we discover that throughout our life there is always one form of religious activity going on around us and these functions helps in shaping our personalities.

9.                  Religion helps us to adjust to situations, circumstances and to people.

Religion helps us to accept and adjust to situations we find ourselves in life. It equally helps us to adjust to people of different characters.

10.              Religion enhances and encourages good working habit.

Those that are deeply committed to their religious practices see unfaithfulness to duty as something that go against religious tenets. Because of their religious beliefs therefore, Christians are dedicated to their duties. Even the Bible enjoins on Christian the responsibility of being hard-working and not to be lazy.

11.              Religion encourages higher aspirations.

12.              Religion increases parental involvement in the training and upbringing of their children.

F    Psychological Approach to Religion

1.                   Psychoanalytic Approach[1].

Psychoanalytic approach is an off-shoot of psychoanalysis developed by Sigmund Freud who is considered as father of modern psychology and psychoanalysis. In his writings, Freud sort to explain the existence of religious beliefs from the perspective of psychology and psychoanalysis. Freud is so important that nearly every theory developed in the years after his works holds a debt to his position – either building on it or opposing it.

The main gist of psychoanalysis is on the unconscious mind. Freud believes that the human person is like an iceberg with a tiny tip of his personality on the conscious level. According to Freud, materials on the unconscious level are biological based drive of sex and aggression and avoidable conflicts in childhood. They intrude into the conscious level once in a while to inform our consciousness.

Materials in the unconscious level are the ones shaping and ruling our personality. The emphasis of psychoanalysis is on the unconscious conflicts which affects behaviours and emotions. Freud believes that powerful biological urges, most often sexual in nature, influences human behaviour. These drives are unconscious but they create a conflict within individuals and between the individual and the standard of the society. Freud compared human consciousness to an iceberg with only the tip on the surface – the conscious aspect, while the larger mass is below the surface but always struggling to come to the surface. Initially Freud divided personality into three levels:

1.                  The conscious level

2.                  The pre-conscious level

3.                  The unconscious level.

F    The conscious level.

The conscious level according to Sigmund Freud corresponds to ordinary everyday meaning. It includes all the sensations and experiences that we are aware at any given moment; for instance, your name, your surname, where you are now, what you are doing, etc.

F    The unconscious

The unconscious is the larger mass below the conscious and this is the focus of psychoanalysis. The unconscious is vast with dark depth and is the home of instincts, wishes and desires that direct our behaviour.

F    The pre-conscious

Between the conscious and the unconscious level is the pre-conscious. This is the store-house of memories, perceptions and thoughts of which we are not consciously aware at the moment but that we can easily summon into consciousness.

Freud later revised this theory into three basic structures of personality, namely:

1.                  The id

2.                  The ego

3.                  The super-ego

These three determines the personality of the individual.

v    16/11/10

F    The Id

The id corresponds to Freud’s earlier notion of the unconscious. It is the reservoir of instincts and libido. The id is primitive and operates on the pleasure principles. For example, if one feels the urge to have sex, the id would want it here and now or immediately without minding the circumstance and the person that happened to be the object of attraction at that particular instant.

F    The ego

The ego is the rational aspect of the personality that is responsible for directing and controlling the instincts according to reality principle. The ego is realistic. For instance, it is the ego that tells us that even though we feel or have the urge for sex, following the example cited above, we cannot do so in a public place. And again, the ego informs our reason that we cannot have sex with our sisters and close relatives no matter how serious the urge in us.

F    The super-ego

The super ego is the moral aspect of personality, the internalisation of parental and societal values and standards. The super ego tries to modify the reality of the ego. For instance, if the Id wants to have sex, the ego would ask whether it is appropriate to have sex here and now. The superego on the other hand would consider if it is right to have sex at all. The superego brings morality into every aspect of our intentions and decisions; hence it is called the moral conscience of personality.

The super ego is divided into two: the ego-ideal and the conscience.  The ego-ideal talks about upholding the values and standards of the society while the conscience is what condemns us when we have done something wrong. According to Freud, these three principles are always at war with each other. What we finally become or do at the end depends on which of the principle is the stronger.

F    Religion in the eyes of psychoanalysis.

It is important to note that the conclusions of Freud were based on assessments of patients with psychological disorder especially neurosis whom he treated; Freud sort to explain the existence of religious belief from the perspectives of psychology and psychoanalysis. He regards God as no more than wishful thinking and was trying to replicate the feeling of a baby and its mother. The baby relies on the mother to take care and to look after him/her. This is similar to us in that we look-up to God as the source of love and kindness.

The only difference is that a baby knows that it will be looked after by its mother and it knows that the mother exists. We on the other hand, have no evidence that any God or higher being exists and that all we rely on is the hope that something does exist. In other words, according to Freud, God only exists in our imagination. For him, we cannot empirically prove the existence of God. On the religious level, the only evidence we have of God’s existence is our faith.

Freud explain that religious belief is based on illusion that something is out there and is based on what people would like to be the truth rather that what is real. He believed that the idea of religion is rooted somewhere in the subconscious. This may not mean that God does not exist; it simply means that religion is based on subconscious desires than facts. Freud claims that religion is the result of suppressed sexual memories.

F    An observation

We observe here the fact that there are flaws in Freud’s theories. First of all it is not subjected to scientific or empirical analysis or verification. They are more of postulations than a theory. Secondary, his observations were based on patients that came to him. His conclusions were not based on the general population but on neurotic patients. His sampling does not cut across the general public.

F    Christianity as a result of suppressed sexual memories.

In his submissions, Freud is the opinion that religion is the result of suppressed sexual memories. From a critical point of view, this submission is faulty. If for anything, religion encourages marriage. In marriage, people are free to express their sexual drives. The question then is ‘how could religion be the result of suppressed sexual desires if religion encourages sex within marriage, what then are we suppressing?’ In his first letter to the Corinthians chapter 7:1- 9, St. Paul encourages that a man should get married instead of being consumed by passion.

In marriage therefore our sexual drives are channelled appropriately and if this is adhered to, then, it is feasible to claim that we wouldn’t actually have any suppressed sexual urge and therefore we would have no neurotic illnesses. It therefore means that religion cannot be the cause of any illness as Freud claims.

Secondary the fact that human beings do have suppressed memories of any kind indicates that we need a way of tackling these problems and religion offers us a way to deal with it. Religion tells us that if we are having sexual urges, then we should get married so as to fulfil of express these desires. Religion offers us therefore a way out of neurotic illness. Again, Christianity gives moral structure to life and if these morals are followed completely then there wouldn’t be any issues in our subconscious to deal with.

v    22/11/10

Additionally, Freud believed that every daughter has a sexual desire for the father and every son has a sexual desire for the mother. This sexual desire in boys is called Oedipus complex, while that of the girls is called Electra complex.

In religion, any sexual activity that involves member of the same family such as sexual relationship between a brother and the sister, between a father and his daughter and between a mother and her son is considered as insect. Religion does not accept such relationship with close relatives. From the stand point of religion therefore, such a rejection of relationship is something good for the society because if this allowed to happen, it would be disgusting as well as being unfaithful. Finally, Freud assumes that the urges we have are natural and therefore cannot be escaped from. It is true that our sexual instincts are natural to us but to maintain that we cannot escape from them is rather not true. A person can always control his sexual feelings.

Freud’s works on religious belief using psychology is not very useful because he made his conclusions using patients who came to him suffering from mental problems such as hysteria. He said that the repressed feelings that they had, led to behavioural problem which he referred to as obsessional neurosis. This led him to the idea that religion was the biggest obsessional neurosis led by unconscious guilt.

According to Freud, religion provides wishful fulfilment for human beings to protect themselves from the perceived injustices of the world. This is like what Karl Marx said that religion is something that tries to fulfil our worldly desires and it is an illusion that distracts us from our real task. Freud had many different ideas and all them came as a result from studying his patients. To him, the idea of sound grand but to some other people, the ideas sound confusing because to get a proper conclusion on something, you have to test it out. Most of Freud’s ideas were never tested. Due to the fact that his observations were not based on facts but just on opinions, this means that we cannot take his works seriously. His theories cannot be proven or disproved in any way.

F    Carl Jung’s Analytic Psychology

Carl Jung believes that personality is made up of several systems but he emphasised on three of them, namely:

1.                  The ego

2.                  The personal unconscious

3.                  The collective unconscious.

F    The Ego

According to Jung, the ego is the conscious aspect of personality. It is the centre of personality which is concerned with perceiving, thinking, feeling and remembering. It is our awareness of ourselves and it is responsible for carrying out the normal activities of waking life. The ego is determined by two opposing mental attitude known as extroversion and introversion. According to Jung, the kind of person you are is the function of the ego.

F    Extroversion

Extroversion is an attitude of the psyche of the person characterised by an orientation towards the external world and other people. An extrovert is out-going and easily makes friends. His thinking orientation is always towards the external world and other people.

F    Introversion

Introversion on the other hand is an attitude of the psyche characterised by an orientation towards one’s own thoughts and feelings. An introvert is always on his own and associated very little with other people.

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F    The Personal Unconscious

The personal unconscious is a reservoir of materials that we were once conscious of but that have been repressed or forgotten because they are trivial or disturbing. According to this theory (Karl Jung), personal unconscious is like a filing cabinet because materials could be stored there and could also be easily brought up for examination.

F    The Collective Unconscious

According to this theory, the collective unconscious is the deepest and the less accessible level of the psyche; unlike the personal unconscious. According to this school of thought, the collective unconscious contains experiences of human and pre-human species. This heritage according to Jung is passed from one generation to the other. Our primitive past becomes the bases of the human psyche directing and influencing present behaviour. It is the powerful and controlling repository of ancestral experiences. For example the fear of snake is not learnt by anyone but is part of our collective unconscious. It is part of the primitive experiences we acquire from our primitive past. The same is also true about our fear of the dark, of ghosts.

Consequently, Jung links each person’s personality to the past. This does not only mean your childish experiences but includes the person’s history or origin. According to Jung, we are predisposed to behave and feel the same way people have behaved and felt. Whether the predisposition becomes reality depends on specific experiences each person encounters in life.

F    Psychology of Religion

Explanation of why people behave the way they do have concerned philosophers, theologians and cultists. This explanation forms the bases of modern psychology. Yet psychology deals with the very same area of concern already dealt with in scriptures. According to Carl Jung, religion are systems of healing for psychic illness, that is why patients force the psychotherapist into the role of a priest and expect and demand of him that he should free them from their distress.

Note that Jung uses the word “religion”, and not Christianity. Jung had repudiated Christianity and explored other forms of religious experiences including the occult without throwing out the religious nature of man. Jung dispensed with the God of the Bible and assumed the role of a priest. He viewed all religions including Christianity as collective mythologies. He did not believe they were real in essence but that they could affect the human personality and might serve as solutions to human problems.

In contrast to Jung, Sigmund Freud reduced all religious beliefs to the status of illusion and called religion the obsessional neurosis of humanity. He viewed religion as delusionary and therefore evil and the source of mental problems. Both Jung and Sigmund’s positions are true in respect to world’s religions but they are also anti-Christians. Freud denies Christianity but Jung mythologizes it. In the final analysis, Freud sees religion as evil while Jung sees it as one of those materials in our collective unconscious. Hence man is religious by nature. Although for Jung, religion is not real, it nevertheless serves a purpose in that it solves people’s problems.

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[1] This approach emphasises the unconscious aspects of the mind, conflicts between biological instincts and society’s demands and early family experiences. Sigmund Freud asserts that early relationships with parents were the chief contribution to one’s personality.