Obsessive Acts an Religious Practices

I have always been fascinated at how psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud looked at the world. I've been reading one of his books, Character and Culture, which is a compilation of his articles in 1950s and early 1960s. He was a brilliant writer. I liked his writing, in as much as the psychoanalysis content. There's one article however that struck me most and it is entitled Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices. This chapter is available for you to read or download.

Here is an excerpt:


It is easy to see wherein lies the resemblance between neurotic ceremonial and religious rites; it is in the fear of pangs of conscience after their omission, in the complete isolation of them from all other activities (the feeling that one must not be disturbed), and in the conscientiousness with which the details are carried out. But equally obvious are the differences, some of which are so startling that they make the comparison into a sacrilege: the greater individual variability of neurotic ceremonial in contrast with the stereotyped character of rites (prayer, orientation, etc.); it’s private nature as opposed to the public and communal character of religious observances; especially, the distinction that the little details of religious ceremonies are full of meaning and the understood symbolically, while those of neurotics seem silly and meaningless. In this respect an obsessional neurosis furnishes a tragic-comic travesty of a private religion. But this, the sharpest distinction between neurotic and religious ceremonials, disappears as soon as one penetrates by means of psychoanalytic investigation to insight into obsessive actions. By this process the outward appearance of being foolish and meaningless, which is characteristic of obsessive acts, is completely demolished, and the fact of their having this appearance is explained. It is found that obsessive acts are throughout and in all their details full of meaning, that they serve important interests of the personality, and that they give expression both to persisting impressions of previous experiences and to thoughts about them which are strongly charged with affect. This they do in two ways, either by direct or symbolic representation, so that they are to be interpreted either historically or symbolically.


Read and/or download full article here.