The Other Freud: Religion, Culture, and Psychoanalysis. - Review - book review

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 2000 by Lauren Langman

The Other Freud: Religion, Culture, and Psychoanalysis, by JAMES J. DICENSO. London: Routledge, 1999, 174 vii pp., $75. 00 (cloth), $24. 99 (paper).

When I was asked to review this book, I jumped at the chance. As one long interested in the relationship of culture, meaning, and the subjective, and quite sympathetic to psychoanalysis, I was quite happy to know that other scholars were interested in this problematic. There are a number of reasons why Freud is considered one of the most important thinkers of the 20th Century. While his views of infantile sexuality were at first quite controversial, in time the "talking cure" and theories rooted in the discovery of the role of the unconscious in normal development and psycho-pathology, have not only influenced psychology and psychotherapy, but art, literature, philosophy, cultural understandings, and for the present concern, religion. "Freud's major writings on religion include some of his most important inquiries into the intersections of psychology and culture... particularly Totem and taboo, Moses and Michelangelo.... Future of an illusion and Civilization and its discontents have served to establish the dominant psychoanalytic views of the psychology of religion" (p. 1). Most students of the sociology of religion are familiar with the arguments Freud made about how the sons overthrew the primal father but then felt remorse. Yet in face of the hardships of life, especially modern civilization's demand's for renunciation of the instincts, people longed for the illusions of religion that provided a kind, benevolent father who offered gratifications denied by the requirements of social life. The organization of a church was based on "aim inhibited attachments" to a father figure as an ego ideal in which the common identifications of the members with the leader sustained the solidarity of the group.

Freud's ideas have been taken up by a number of intellectual traditions. Conservative moralists find in Freud a justification for a morality of restraint. Frankfurt Scholars used Freud to understand the rise of fascism, as a way to understand the internalization of capitalist ideology and pleasures of consumerism. Psychoanalysis became an essential part of Parsons's theory of action. So too have contemporary theorists critiqued Freud, dismissed him and/or incorporated him, especially post-structuralists. James DiCenso provides such a reading of Freud's texts with a well-reasoned, thoughtful, scholarly analysis. The Other Freud finds in Freud, an "other" Freud, freed of historical and theoretical distortions, whose insights yet inform our understandings of religion and "the ethical capacity ... intrinsically related to cultural representations, symbols, and structuring forces" (p. 145). His primary concern is to highlight the brilliant insights that Freud offered about individual psycho-cultural development - - insights that are often obscured by his pseudo-historical speculations about primal hordes, Moses's origins, or the repressive moment of civilization. If one is sufficiently familiar with the work of Derrida, Lacan, and Kristeva, DiCenso shows how they "provide tools for differentiating between closed, reified symbolic frameworks and those which foster autonomous, reflective, and ethical capacities." He shows how ethical ideals may be either irrational and repressive or enhancing of personal and communal development. The result is a first-class analysis by a serious scholar. This book is not for the novice. It requires a good foundation in post-structuralism and Lacanian thought. One must be familiar with Lacan's movement from Freud's biologism to concerns with language in order to understand "the mirroring stage," the "real," "the imaginary," and "the symbolic" that have very special meanings for this opus. The post-structuralist approach has had a great deal of influence in French intellectual life and ha s in turn had wide impact in cultural studies, literary criticism, and belles lettres.

But it is for this very reason that this approach has had little influence on sociology. I would question the relevance and importance of a Lacanian critique for sociology in general and the sociology of religion in particular. While many sociologists of religion might draw on psychoanalytic insights, few find psychoanalysis a central concern. Moreover, those that do find value in Freud's legacy tend to be more interested in the actual people and lived experiences referred to in these texts. How might Freud's insights help our understandings of group life and shared meanings or conflicts over doctrines, e.g., gay marriage or the ordination of women? What might be the hidden motives or defenses behind fundamentalism, religiosity, or secularism? What gratifications might religious participation provide? How do religious doctrines become mediated to shape actual behavior? These questions are little aided by post-structural analyses.

This is not to ignore many of the good points that DiCenso makes. For example, he clearly shows the contradictions in Freud's texts between the mechanistic theorizing of drives and forces and his more humanistic concerns with agency, meanings, and feelings. But this is hardly a profound discovery or unique to post-structuralists. Contemporary psychoanalysis has largely rejected and given up the biological basis of drive theory. Unless the reader is well steeped in the poststructural tradition, the book will have little meaning or influence. If a sociologist of religion is sympathetic to the psychoanalytic tradition, going back to reading Freud will bring much more gratification -- even if sublimated.