Diagnosis Heaven

Abstract

The psychoanalytical perspective may view the different perceptions of the various religions and ethnicities about the afterlife (heaven) as different solutions to conflicts in line with the construct of man’s developmental conflicts that have been identified by psychoanalysis. However, these fantasized solutions should not be regarded as a compromise imposed by the superego, as is the case with the earthly life. Instead, they were designed as a wish fulfilment in the sense of the relentlessness of the instinctual drive and are no longer called into question. The sublimated statements about the afterlife by Paul, however, are not to be interpreted as developmental conflicts. They are more comparable to the importance of «being seen» by the «other» as recognised by intersubjective psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology.