PSYCHOLOGICAL CHALLENGE TO RELIGION: S:FREUD AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
 

*Prof.Dr. Hayati HÖKELEKLİ

Introduction

The science of psychology, which studies human spiritual lives and behavior, has a long history. Since the earliest times of human history, there has never been a lack of attempts to explain and make sense of what is going on in the inner world of human beings. However, in the last two centuries, great discoveries in both the natural and human sciences, and parallel scientific theories and new understandings, have led to very different/several developments in all areas of cultural and social life, especially in religion. In this historical process, the modern period resulted in anti-religious understandings such as materialism, rationalism, positivism and evolutionism becoming dominant in all fields. This new understanding is the most important source of a serious shaking of the beliefs and understandings expressed in traditional religious worldviews about God, the universe, creation, and the place and role of human beings in the universe.

Freud, who describes himself as a “Godless Jew,” developed a new understanding of psychology that he called “psychoanalysis” as a result of his work on “people with psychological disorders.” Freud, who was also closely interested in religion, expressed the most explanatory theories in this regard compared to other schools of psychology. First, in his article "Religious Practices and Obsessive Behavior" (1907), he argued that both the religious and the neurotic believe in irrational things and behave irrationally, so there is a connection between them. Freud further developed his thoughts in this direction by analyzing the lives of primitive man in Totem and Taboo (1913), a book he wrote a few years after this article, which some experts describe as an "anthropological fantasy". In his later book The Future of an Illusion (1927), he dealt with the relationship between civilization, religion and science, arguing that religion would/ will no longer have a place in a future where the reason and science had matured. Here religion is the "universal obsessive neurosis of humanity"; like the obsessive neuroses of children, it arises from the Oedipal complex, from the relationship with the father. In his book Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), he argued that religion is a mass madness that prevents from making choices and confines to conformist limits, and is not recognized as such by its believers. For him, the technique of religion involves devaluing life through repression and distorting the image of the real world in an insane attitude (fearing reason). The price is that /As the price of it, religion succeeds in saving many people from an individual neurosis, but not much more. In his most recent book, Moses and Monotheism, he applied the theses developed in his previous books to Jewish religious history and society, using Moses as a basis.

This understanding of psychology claimed that religion arises from projections of human needs and desires. Accordingly, religions are collective neuroses and dreams that allow us to externalize and re-enact repressed emotionally charged unconscious contents. Our strong relationship with God represents the real relationship with the images of parents. In other words, our feelings towards God, such as love, fear, sense of sinfulness, atonement, punishment and reward, reflect the self's (ego's) conflicted relationship with the authorities in its immediate social environment. Religious life is thus a cipher for/of emotional fulfillment disguised as the restraint of ordinary social roles. God meets the sense of acceptance, the confession of guilt and its atoning solution, the loss of the father's power and protective authority, the sense that one's sacrifices are seen as good and rewarded.

Thus man was no longer a caliph of God on earth. The teaching expressed in sacred traditions that "God created man in his own image" was transformed with Freud into "man created God in his own image". Thus, instead of a God who is the creator and organizer of all existence, one speaks of a God created by the human mind. On the other hand, he devalued the human mind, arguing that all human behavior was based on subconscious processes of sexual satisfaction-seeking but often repressed. Thus, he was expressing that there is an incompatibility, tension and conflict between the field of consciousness and the subconscious, and that defense mechanisms are used to resolve these conflicts. It was his firm belief in the existence of this psychological mechanism that underpinned his claim that God and other religious beliefs were nothing more than an "illusion", a delusion that did not correspond to reality. According to Freud, the mechanism of "repression" was the cause of all mental disorders, so sexual impulses should not be repressed. Religion, which contains a number of prohibitions, harams and rules in this regard, was considered harmful and pathogenic because it prevented the human being from maturing and gaining independence by requiring the suppression of these impulses. Freud's accusation against religion goes beyond an attempt to prove that religion is an illusion. He also argues that religion is a danger in that it sanctifies bad human institutions, leads to the impoverishment of reason by prohibiting critical thinking, and places morality on a very weak foundation by tying moral norms to religious teachings. Freud was convinced that human happiness, freedom and truth were threatened by religion.

1.THE DIVINE SOURCE OF RELIGION VERSUS THE HUMAN SOURCE: OEDIPUS COMPLEX THEORY

According to Freud, if there is no inherent need for belief and attachment in human nature, if there is no ability to turn towards a Creator being, if God is an invention of the human mind, then it was necessary to explain how this emerged through a psychological mechanism and process. At this point he proposed the Oedipus complex theory.

According to this, the 3-5 year old child has a period of development called the Oedipal or phallic phase. During this period, young children have an unconscious desire to have a / the parent of the opposite sex, to destroy the parent of the opposite sex. Freud centers on the male child, arguing that because of his sexual desire for his mother, he sees his father as a rival and wants to kill him. But when he realizes that his father is powerful and that he will not be able to realize his wish, he thinks that his father, who he thinks/supposes is aware of the incident, will retaliate against him and he experiences "fear of castration". This fear becomes so strong that instead of killing the father, the child ends up trying to be like him and identify with him as much as possible. When he realizes this identification, the conflict is resolved to some extent. This only happens in late childhood, when the child perceives that the parent of the opposite sex is an adult sexual object. According to Freud, this complex is universal, a process that has existed throughout history and in every culture and continues today. At the core of all psychoneuroses, at the roots of many neurotic fixations, sexual deviations, feelings of guilt, the Oedipal conflict that cannot be resolved in a healthy way must be sought. Accordingly, religious beliefs and religious worship and ceremonies, which are the practical applications of these beliefs, are the psychological efforts to compensate for the guilt one feels after the desire to destroy one's father. From this point of view, Freud argues that the belief that God rewards the good and punishes the bad is rooted in the Oedipus complex in which the father's strong and protective aspect and the punitive aspect of the father are at the root. Freud insists that the beginnings of religion, morality, culture and art are united in the Oedipus complex.

According to Freud, the neurotic man, the primitive man and the child all use the same thought patterns. He recognizes that humanity has gone through a common totemistic process. The young child is not able to satisfy his or her own desires with his or her own strengths and abilities. He therefore overcomes his difficulties with imagination by substituting thought for action. This means that the tension in a situation of severe deprivation gives rise to a number of magical and ceremonial behaviors. He argues that a boy's relationship with his father, i.e. the feeling of love, fear and hatred, is important in the development of the child's personality, and that this feeling is reflected in other areas of life and forms the basis of many important cultural institutions. On the surface, love and respect are preserved and dependency is brought to light through a sense of trust; the idealized father is designed and a patriarchal image of God is created through sublimation. Here, the neurotic conflicts developed against the father are directed against the figure of God, indicating that God is a reflection of the image of the father. After all, God is a glorified father, the desire for the father is at the heart of religious belief.

Freud's bottom line is that religion is an illusion, it is rooted in human desires. It is the universal obsessive neurosis of humanity, like the obsessive neuroses of children, it arises from the Oedipus complex, from the relationship with the father. On the one hand, religion causes obsessive constraints, like a neurosis of personal obsession, and on the other hand it encompasses a rosy system of illusions that goes hand in hand with the denial of reality. However, the fact that the deeply religious are largely protected from the danger of certain neurotic diseases is due to the fact that they have accepted universal neurosis, which relieves them of the obligation to develop personal neurosis.

2.DETENTION and DESPERATION

According to Freud, people instinctively seek pleasure through sexual love, but culture prevents the satisfaction of these natural feelings and suppresses them in a way that harms the individual. This leads to a tense, depressed and troubled life with a sense of helplessness. According to him, there are essentially three sources that lead to this troubled life in human beings: Nature, our own body and social life.

According to Freud, since the earliest times, man's desperation and desperation in the face of natural phenomena gave rise to a desire for God as a continuation of the strong-helpful father image of childhood. This point of view led him to the conclusion that religion is an illusion without a rational basis, a satisfying doctrine that responds to the oldest and strongest human desires and needs. Religion is just a projection that responds to the child's sense of desperation and the need for a protective father. This ever-present sense of desperation and a lifetime of pain makes it necessary to cling to a father and a power to replace him. Of course, this power will be an omnipotent and protective father.

Freud says that over time, the human qualities reflected in the observation of the laws of nature lose their power, but since human helplessness persists, the desires for fathers and gods do not end. According to him, the gods provide three categories of satisfaction for man, who is helpless in the face of nature, and this situation still continues today:
 

1. Removing the horror of nature
2. Reconciling the cold face of fate, especially death
3. To compensate for the pain, suffering and deprivation that a civilized life imposes, to pay for them.

Freud is very pessimistic about the fate of man; he thinks that man will always remain weak in the face of the forces of nature, that there is no remedy for his helplessness, and therefore the need for gods continues to exist. He argues that mankind, realizing that even the gods could not remedy human desperation in the face of nature, eventually attributed the dominance of the moral sphere to the divine source. At this point, belief in the afterlife has an important function. Realizing that there is no justice in the world, man has had to create a new world in which good and evil are distinguished, which promises the perfection he has missed in this world and provides a psychological consolation. God is now a single being, like the father, who collects all the divine attributes that were collected in separate gods in ancient times. The child will obey the father's moral commands and hope to be rewarded.

In short, according to Freud, God is a projection, a glorified father to whom man, in desperation, attributes that he feels he lacks. Thus, he states that religious beliefs have very powerful psychological sources, satisfying the oldest, strongest and most persistent desires of humanity. At the beginning of human history, the first father was the original image of God, the model from which later generations modeled the figure of God. The effect of the feeling of helplessness in the child continues throughout life and the need to cling to the father leads to the need for a new, stronger father (God) in later life. The child fears his father to the extent of longing and admiration for him. He develops a defensive reaction to this helplessness and glorifies and sanctifies his father. Because holding on to a holy, supreme power allays one's fears in the face of life's dangers. Since such a power does not exist in reality, man satisfies himself with an illusion. There is a need for belief in the afterlife to ensure that the injustices, sacrifices and sufferings of this world are also compensated for and that a moral order is established.

3.DOGMATIC STRUCTURE OF RELIGION

According to Freud, religious doctrines are ideas and claims about phenomena and conditions that say something about aspects of external (or internal) reality that have not yet been discovered by the person himself and that require his belief. Religious ideas presented to us as doctrines are not the results of experiments or products of thought, they are illusions. These illusions are the fulfillment of the oldest most powerful most urgent desires of humanity. The secret of the power of these thoughts lies in the power of these desires. They are especially prized because they tell us about the things in life that are most important and interesting to us.

For Freud, it was a question that needed to be answered as to why religion, which has no inherent and objective reality for Freud and which has taken place in the life of humanity as a psychological illusion, continues to exist despite all these scientific and technological developments, and where the necessity to believe comes from. He thought he had found the answer to this question under these three headings:
 

1. Our ancestors believed so.
2. There is evidence that has come down to us from time immemorial
3. It is forbidden to raise the question in any form whether these teachings are true or not.

According to him, this is the third point that should attract most of our suspicion. After all, there can be only one reason for such a ban: Society is well aware of the baselessness behind the defense of religious doctrines. It is highly insecure for us to believe the same way because that is what our ancestors believed. Because our ancestors were far more ignorant than we are; the evidence they left us is written works that bear every sign of unreliability. These works are full of contradictions, corrections and falsifications. The doctrines of religion are firmly entrenched in the child's mind even before it has developed. The effects of religious indoctrination can therefore be likened to the effects of sleeping pills. Some of the religious doctrines are so improbable, so incompatible with everything we have discovered by trying about the reality of the world - provided we pay attention to psychological distinctions - that we can compare them to delusions. We cannot judge the truth value of most of them; they cannot be proved or disproved.  Our knowledge is still insufficient to approach them critically. We will keep saying to ourselves how beautiful it would be if there were a God who created the world and who is merciful and gracious, if there were a moral order to the universe, and if the afterlife were real, but it is a striking fact that these are all things that we are compelled to desire to be true.

It is, therefore impossible to prove the truth of religious doctrines; this impossibility was felt by our ancestors in all ages. However, in past times religious teachings have had the strongest possible impact on humanity, despite the fact that their truth is absolutely impossible to prove. Today, the more the treasures of knowledge are available to a wider number of people, the more widespread the break with religious beliefs and the abandonment first of outdated and questionable extensions of religion, and then of its basic premises. At this point Freud states that his God is Logos (Reason, logic). For him, this is not a very powerful god, but it reinforces his belief that through scientific study it is possible to gain some knowledge about the reality of the world, through which we can increase our power and organize our lives

4.RELIGIOUS RUTALS AND OBSESSIONAL NEUROSIS

Freud's first article on religion was titled "Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices". In this article, he argued that obsessive behaviors in neurosis patients and religious worship and rituals are similar, and that worship and religious rituals are a neurosis of obsession. From his point of view, both the religious and the neurotic believe in irrational things and perform irrational rituals.

According to Freud's findings, a person with obsessive neurosis feels obliged to do a certain job in a certain way. This way of doing things makes no sense from the outside, and the person himself is aware of this. But if he does not do what he feels he has to do, he experiences intense inner distress, so he cannot abandon this behavior. Freud therefore labeled the neurosis of obsession "sacred work" and described it as a "special individual religious system". According to him, obsessive behavior appears in the form of a ridiculous private religion that is half comic, half tragic. There are similarities between religious rituals and obsessive behavior in the following eight points:
 

1. If they are neglected, a guilty conscience and distress arise in the person
2. They have a special place in one's mind and one becomes isolated from other work while doing them.
3. Attention is paid to the fulfillment of all details
4. Feelings of guilt
5. Feelings of regret
6. Suppression of instinctive impulses
7. State of reconciliation
8. Displacement mechanism

Thus, he argues that because of these similarities between them, their natures are the same. He also does not neglect to point out that there are some differences between them. These are; 1.While neurotic ceremonies appear in different states depending on the individual, religious rituals are fixed. 2. While neurotic behaviors are specific to the individual, religious ceremonies and practices are general. 3. While neurotic behavior seems meaningless and absurd, the minutiae of religious ceremonies and rituals have symbolic meaning and significance.

According to Freud, not all believers are aware of the motives that drive them to worship, and these motives are represented at the level of consciousness by their substitutes. Freud states that the most important similarity between obsessive neuroses and religious worship and ceremonies is the mechanism of rejection of these motives (feelings of guilt, remorse, etc.). Nevertheless, he points out the following difference between them: The motives of neuroses are sexual, while those of religion are selfish and extrasocial. In other words, while obsessive neuroses are satisfactions that replace sexual motives, religious behavior arises from the rejection of selfish and anti-social motives. Freud's conclusion here is this: Rejection of motives leads to neurosis of obsession and this is unhealthy. Religion is a phenomenon of the same nature, so religion is a neurosis. Religious prohibitions are obsessive behaviors, they prevent the pleasure that the drives want, but they themselves become pleasure and the original drives are symbolically satisfied by them.

EVALUATION

What do these basic claims and ideas expressed by Freud really mean? Does it have scientific validity? To what extent is the conception of the human being described in Freud's psychoanalysis correct? Which religious tradition is the center and basis of Freud's evaluations of religion? Under these three main headings, we can evaluate these views.

1. Psychoanalysis and Scientific Method

Freud insisted that his thoughts and theses were scientifically based. But evaluations of his work make it very clear that this is not the case. His most important theories remain unsupported by scientific data. He interpreted many of the data or information he obtained in his own research in the way he wanted in order to draw conclusions in accordance with the model he had previously constructed in his mind. In other words, it reached the result before the data, the result followed the result, not the data. For this reason, many thinkers and researchers have characterized what he put forward as "speculations claiming to be scientific" or very well "constructed scenarios".

On the other hand, explaining human psychological experiences and behaviors, historical and cultural formations such as the entire human civilization based on a single cause such as sexuality displays a "reductionist" approach. This reductionist approach led him to be overly symbolist in his interpretation of events and to adopt a coercive attitude in his interpretation of symbols.

Freud was based on the understanding that all events, including human behavior and attitudes, are driven by the principle of universal causality (determinism), that every event has a cause. From this perspective, he recognized that all our conscious behavior is governed by subconscious factors of which we are not conscious. Freud, in the context of the materialist-mechanist and evolutionist worldview that was in vogue in his time, tried to explain psychological experiences by reducing them to biologically based sexuality under the influence of the understanding that everything should be based on a physiological basis. Freud, who tried to construct psychoanalysis on the model of a natural science, ultimately adapted it to the field of human science. He confused these two different models by basing a theory of mental/spiritual life on the principle of natural science, which should be constructed with the logic of interpretation and meaning.

One of the important points on which Freud has been criticized is that he generalized the data he obtained from a limited group of people with pathological problems and claimed that they were universal. In the early 19th century, he studied patients from an upper socio-economic class in Austria, in an environment known to be very strict and ascetic in religion and morality. He claimed that some of the cultural traits that he observed in this group of people, which he called the Oedipus complex, were common human behavior in every part of the world and in every period. Cross-cultural comparative studies show that the Oedipus complex type of developmental trait does not have a widespread and common presence in different parts of Europe, let alone in different cultures

2.Psychoanalysis and Human Conception

Freud's conception of the human being is based on a structure that has no other life orientation than seeking satisfaction for its impulses and whose entire life develops and progresses on this dynamic. In line with Darwin's understanding of evolution, he recognizes that man is a slightly more advanced animal species. He firmly believes that his wild and anti-social nature will not change easily, that man is an enemy of civilization because he limits his own instincts. He is convinced that when he submits to the demands and pressures of civilization, he will be inwardly dissatisfied with this situation and will never be truly happy. Despite his glorification and even sacralization of reason and science, the human being Freud portrays is weakly intelligent and captive to his impulses. Its mind and will are not in a position to act on its own nature and respond to healing interventions. Therefore, it is passive, affected, always repeating itself, without the capacity for creativity, transformation and empowerment. In this sense, Freud represents a pessimistic, negative, fatalistic, passive view of human nature. Freud's psychology is built on an inadequate, unsatisfactory foundation because it reduces object relations to a secondary degree... It contains an assumption that implies that man is by nature an unsocial animal. And according to this, social behavior is an acquired quality. The human infant is an innocent and harmless creature, not an asocial and sinful victim of its instincts, as Freud claimed.

Relatively newer psychological movements such as Ego Psychology, Object Relations Theory, Humanistic Psychology, Positive Psychology, Transpersonal Psychology have challenged this conception of the human being and reached a common view that the human being is a unique and unique species on earth, has an active and creative nature, and has the capacity for development, maturation and integration. Above the biological dimension of the human being, there is the spiritual and moral (spiritual) dimension that constitutes his/her true nature. The concepts that define human beings are not instinct, drive, unconscious, conflict, helplessness but ego/self, power of development, stages of consciousness, will, conscience, search for meaning, existential needs, faith, peak experiences, spirit, spirituality, virtue, creativity, psychological well-being, emotional intelligence... Today's psychology is more oriented towards understanding this higher nature of the human being. In this expanded and spiritualized conception of the human being, religion and spirituality are inseparable aspects of personality; they are recognized as having both protective and healing functions for mental health. In this sense, Freud's conception of the human being is limited to an incomplete, diseased, immoral and non-social, malevolent nature. Although he has discovered some of the darker aspects of the human being, he has reduced the human being to this limited and primitive structure and has not succeeded in seeing and addressing all the possibilities of development in him as a whole

3.Psikanaliz ve Din Tasavvuru

Freud's model system for his criticism and evaluations of religion is the religious traditions of Western societies such as Christianity and Judaism. He has no knowledge or appreciation of Islam, but has generalized his conclusions to all religions without exception. Some experts have argued that Freud's psychoanalytic method of treating mental disorders is a secular application of the Christian ritual of "confession". Therefore, in a sense, the conception of human beings carries negative elements similar to those in Christianity. His claims about primitive beliefs such as totemism and animism, which he accepts as the source and model of the Western religious tradition, do not coincide at many points with the views of experts who have conducted direct research and studies on these issues. He himself admits this, but prefers to act as it suits him to justify his claims.

There is no one today who approaches religion from an evolutionist point of view and defends its theses. It is strongly argued that it is useless to look for a beginning to religion, that an approach based on cause and effect is incompatible with scientific thinking, and that scientific thinking must constantly seek to find and understand relationships. It is necessary to add that the search for origins is not a good scientific method, that it would be more understandable if religion is considered not only in terms of empirical activities, but also in terms of other beliefs, such as a system of concepts, a way of thinking, etc., and that in order to understand the role played by religion, it is also necessary to understand the structure of the culture and society in which it is produced.( Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion, pp.124,128,131-132).

The Freudian point of view, which considers faith as an illusion of desire that distorts the perception of reality, has been criticized on the basis of research by the "Object Relations" theorists, who also come from the psychoanalytic tradition. According to one of them, D.W.Winnicot, illusion is part of the creative experience of human beings; it is a developmental form of transition to reality. Therefore, illusion is not an obstacle to experiencing reality, but rather a means to reach it. Our innate capacity to believe carries us beyond and beyond reality, never losing sight of it.(Short, Reckoning, Illusion and Devotion, p.114)  On the other hand, Rizzuto, who grew up from the same tradition, says that the belief in God does not emerge from the idea of the father in the child, as Freud claims, but from many different sources including his opinions on himself, others and the world. W. Meissner argues that through this process, religion gains a psychological reality, and one understands the meaning, purpose and destiny of one's own existence: "The believer does not see his faith as an illusion of desire or a subjective phenomenon. His faith speaks to him about the nature of the world in which he lives, the purpose and meaning of existence, the relationship of this existence to a God who loves, guides and judges. No faith can prove that the spiritual world is a reality, as Freud wanted. Religious experience is neither entirely subjective nor entirely objective. Religion is a field where objectivity and subjectivity interact." (Köse, Freud and Religion, 134-135)

From the beginning, Freud was an atheist and far from religious belief. He has a materialist worldview that does not accept a supernatural reality. For this reason, he interprets the existence of elements such as religious beliefs, worship, rituals, traditions, religious personalities, etc. in the world of phenomena not with the teachings and perspectives of religion itself, but with the atheist perspective he has constructed. In other words, he positions himself as a decision-maker above religion. He argues that man, because of his weakness and helplessness, first desires an absolute power superior to himself, God, and then invents reasons to believe in him. To attribute religious belief solely to human weakness and helplessness is to reduce the wide variety of structures and forms in which religiosity manifests itself to a single model. The kind of faith that does not involve any helplessness, deprivation or deficiency, that is experienced as wholehearted devotion, love and dedication, does not exist for Freud. On the other hand, research in the psychology of religion has demonstrated the bidirectional effects of experiences of helplessness, in that they both draw people closer to religion and push them away. In other words, to attribute the psychological source of religiosity to desperation is to place it on an extremely uncertain and shifting basis. There are countless examples of how coping with religion can be both positive and negative, with some people's faith growing stronger and stronger, while others' faith dissolves and disintegrates.

According to Freud, faith has no reality, no object beyond the human being himself; "in the course of human development the sense organs are gradually replaced by psychic values, but we cannot know why this is so. Then the higher emotion of faith enters the scene, and the one who has fully attained it considers himself to have done the greatest deed. The explanation of these psychological states is that by accomplishing difficult things, one's self-esteem and love for oneself increases.( Moses and Monotheism, p.133). As can be seen, Freud seems to accept that the psychological content of faith cannot be fully known and that it is of a very different nature from ordinary human emotions, but he maintains his reductionist attitude by interpreting it as a strong expression of love and respect for oneself, which has no transhuman object, which does not exceed the limits of individual psychology. Again, according to him, while the phenomena of the miraculous healing effect of faith and spirituality are undeniably real, there is no superhuman factor involved. "It is not that factors beyond our comprehension are playing a role in such improvements. Everything follows a natural course; even the power of religious belief is reinforced in such cases by multiple driving forces of a purely human nature." In the case of healings due to a religious ritual and practice performed a masse in a sacred place, the source of the effect is the "power of the mass", or the "desire to be among the chosen ones" to achieve divine grace.( What is Psychoanalysis and Five Conferences, 19-21). Thus, for Freud, religious and spiritual phenomena have no independent existence of their own, they are by-products derived from individual or group psychology. This form of reductionist understanding is ideological and philosophical rather than scientific. A mentality that denies the realm of religion and spirituality in advance, reduces every phenomenon of the superhuman and beyond to human limits, and denies the truth of religion cannot do anything but wander around in the same vicious circle of theories and claims. Since he could not analyze the genetic, motivational, dynamic and structural dimensions of the phenomenon of believing in accordance with the holistic reality of human beings in sufficient detail and holistically, he could not put forward a comprehensive and consistent theory. Perhaps he has prepared some material for those who, like him, follow the atheist tradition of thought

CONCLUSION

Although he contributed some important concepts, theories and methods to the science of psychology, Freud is a good example of the evolutionist, materialist, positivist, rationalist and secular mentality of the century in which he lived. Both his understanding of science and his view of psychology and religion were criticized by many, especially his own close students, and were overcome with alternative or corrective new concepts and theories. Although he created a certain sphere of influence in the circles united in opposition to religion by placing the atheist thoughts expressed by many names before him within the molds of the psychoanalytic theory he created, his influence would/will not last long. Lacan, one of the foremost representatives of the psychoanalytic tradition in France, summarizes this situation very well: "If religion - I am talking about the only true religion - triumphs, which is very likely, it will mean the failure of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis cannot triumph over religion because religion is immortal. Religion will defeat not only psychoanalysis but many other things. Religion, for many reasons, still retains its power to soothe hearts, while science, with its discoveries, is introducing many new things into the lives of every single human being that are absolutely shocking. Especially true religion has unimaginable resources. For a moment it may seem that religion can be moved, but this is a mythical thing. Scientific innovations that disrupt human life cannot give real meaning to human life. From the very beginning, everything that is religion consists in giving meaning to what used to be natural..." (Sauret, s.14)

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*Prof.Dr. Hayati HÖKELEKLİ