Freud and Faith

Kirk A. Bingaman

Description

Whether Sigmund Freud's theory precludes serious engagement with psychoanalytic theory for those professing faith in the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition has been controversial for years. Coming to terms with Freud's theory has proved difficult for religious believers because of his stance that religious faith is little more than psychological projection. Building on the work of philosopher and theologian Paul Ricoeur, psychoanalyst Ana-Maria Rizzuto, and feminist theorist Judith Van Herik, author Kirk A. Bingaman demonstrates that it is possible and even advantageous for believers to hold their religious faith in dialectical tension with psychoanalysis. Bingaman shows how Freud's critique of religion can enrich and strengthen, rather than destroy, the faith of the believer. What emerges from the author's argument is a creative method for living within the emotional and spiritual tension that develops whenever our belief system is challenged or disrupted.

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Diane Jonte-Pace

Introduction

Background
Different Fields and Disciplines
Methodology

1. Freud’s Interpretation of Religion

The Defining Moment of Development
Gender Asymmetry
The Need for Religion
Religion’s Primitive Beginnings

2. What Freud Can and Cannot Teach the Religious Believer

The "Text" of Consciousness
The "Text" of Religious Faith
Faith and Personal Transformation
The Limitations of a Freudian Interpretation

3. The Psychical Role of God

The Freud of Object Relations, the Oedipus Complex, and Family Relations
The Freud of Science, Intellect, and Reality
The Importance of Psychical Reality

4. The Relation Between Religious and Gender Psychology

Masculinity and the Reality Principle
Femininity and the Pleasure Principle
Femininity and Religious Faith

5. Beyond Either-Or: Toward a Constructive Reengagement with Freud

Methodological Strategies
Something Resembling Psychical Splitting?

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Psychology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791487198
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

L F I r V e I N u G d IN a T n H E d TE F N a S I it O h N

K I R K A. B I N G A M A N

■and Faith Freud ■

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L I V I N G I N T H E T E N S I O N

K I R K A . B I N G A M A N

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2003 State University of New York

All rights reserved

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For information, address the State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Bingaman, Kirk A. Freud and faith : living in the tension / Kirk A. Bingaman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5653-6 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5654-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Psychoanalysis and religion. 2. Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939—Religion. I. Title.

BF175.4.R44 B56 2003 261.5'15—dc21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2002067032

Acknowledgments

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Foreword by Diane Jonte-Pace

Contents

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Introduction 1 Background 1 Different Fields and Disciplines Methodology 9

1.

2.

3.

6

Freud’s Interpretation of Religion 11 The Defining Moment of Development Gender Asymmetry 20 The Need for Religion 27 Religion’s Primitive Beginnings 34

13

What Freud Can and Cannot Teach the Religious Believer The “Text” of Consciousness 47 The “Text” of Religious Faith 52 Faith and Personal Transformation 60 The Limitations of a Freudian Interpretation 67

The Psychical Role of God 75 The Freud of Object Relations, the Oedipus Complex, and Family Relations 77 The Freud of Science, Intellect, and Reality 87 The Importance of Psychical Reality 96

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45

147

Epilogue

The Relation Between Religious and Gender Psychology Masculinity and the Reality Principle 106 Femininity and the Pleasure Principle 115 Femininity and Religious Faith 123

FREUD AND FAITH

5.

Index

165

Notes

Bibliography

149

Beyond Either-Or: Toward a Constructive Reengagement with Freud 131 Methodological Strategies 132 Something Resembling Psychical Splitting? 141

4.

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159

105

FOREWORD

Acknowledgments

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I thank colleagues and friends who have taken the time to read and provide me with constructive feedback on this project. Lewis Rambo has provided guidance and direction, from the project’s beginning to its end. Rosemary Chinnici, James Jarrett, and Ted Stein have read and commented on earlier drafts of the manuscript. The Lloyd Center Pastoral Counseling Service in San Anselmo has been a source of support and enouragement. I am indebted to Sandra Brown who has read several drafts of the manuscript, and has given me feedback on methodology and editing. Ruth Ann Clark has directed my clinical training, providing me with the opportunity to apply theory and theology to practice. I am grateful to colleagues and friends and students at the San Fran- cisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo and at the Graduate Theologi- cal Union (GTU) in Berkeley. As an instructor in the course on Religious Conversion, where the project had its inception, I was working as a recipient of the Henry Mayo Newhall Fellowship Award. The religion and psychology department of the GTU was where this project got off the ground and began taking its distinct shape. I thank Judith Block, senior production editor, and Nancy Ellegate, senior acquisitions editor at State Univeristy of New York Press, for their guidance, from the beginning to the end of the formal publication process. I thank Oxford University Press for permission to include revised portions of the forthcoming article by Kirk A. Bingaman, “Teaching Freud in the Semi- nary,” inTeaching Freud in Religious Studies, ed. Diane Jonte-Pace in the introduction and in chapter 5 of this volume. And, I thank Kluwer Aca- demic/Human Sciences Press, for permission to reprint the revised, “Teach Your Students Well: The Seminary and a Hermeneutics of Suspicion,”Pas- toral Psychology48, no. 2(1999): 99–105.

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FREUD AND FAITH

I thank Diane Jonte-Pace for previous collaborative projects, and more immediately, for her help with this particular project. I am grateful for her generous and thoughtful foreword to the book. Finally, I am most grateful for the support and encouragement I have received from my mother, father, and brother, Brad. And, to my wife, Sam, and daughter, Anne, thank you for patiently and generously tolerating my absences and busyness.

FOREWORD

Foreword

In 1939 the poet W. H. Auden wrote in memory of Sigmund Freud

He wasn’t clever at all: he merely told the unhappy Present to recite the Past like a poetry lesson . . . if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, to us he is no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion under whom we conduct our different lives.

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W. H. Auden,Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957

Deeply aware of the “climate of opinion,” the moments of absurdity, and the “poetry lessons” that Freud embodies today, Kirk Bingaman asks us, inFreud and Faith,to take Freud seriously as a guide on a journey toward deeper faith. His goal is nothing short of metanoia in the lives of believers: he urges a rejection of the fear of Freud and a transcendence of simple faith. Bingaman reiterates the central question asked by Paul Ricoeur inFreud and Philosophy: Can psychoanalysis purify the faith of religious believers? Ricoeur argued more than three decades ago that religious believers are obligated to “converse” with Freud, to expose religious faith to a Freudian hermeneutics of suspicion. Bingaman knows how difficult this conversation can be, yet he also knows how necessary it has become. He extends Ricoeur’s question to the psychical lives of believers and to the specific projects of theological and religious educators, parish ministers, pastoral counselors, psychotherapists, and spiritual directors. Acknowledging that for the believer Freud evokes hostile resistance, Kierkegaardian fear and trembling, or, at best, defensive indifference, Bingaman

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