Reflections on the psychoanalytic critique of religion and on the psychoanalytic technique

Authors

  • Hartmut Raguse

Abstract

In the first part of the article I show Freud’s critical opinion about religion. Freud sees the function of religion in the social context relatively positively, but he also believes, by reasons imbued with the strivings of Enlightenment, in atheism, but that it has no immediate therapeutic aim. In the second part I describe religion as a cultural achievement, originating in the area of transitional phenomena as Winnicott has determined it as the third area besides reality and phantasm. For reasons of analytic neutrality one has to demand that religious conceptions have to be analysed but without the tendency to dissolve them. Finally, I treat problems of countertransference that can appear in the context ofthe analytical problems associated with religion.

Keywords Psychoanalytic critique of religion; Area of transitional phenomena; problems of countertransference

Author Biography

Hartmut Raguse

Prof. Dr. Hartmut Raguse, Titularprofessor an der Theologischen Fakultät in Basel und Lehrbeauftragter für Praktische Theologie an der Theologischen Fakultät in Zürich. Ordentliches Mitglied der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Psychoanalyse. Ordentliches Mitglied der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Pas-toralpsychologie. Arbeit in eigener Praxis.

Korrespondenz: Birsigstrasse 139,
4054 Basel, Schweiz

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Published

2008-04-01

How to Cite

Raguse, H. (2008). Reflections on the psychoanalytic critique of religion and on the psychoanalytic technique. Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft, (2), 57–65. Retrieved from https://psychotherapie-wissenschaft.info/article/view/89

Issue

No. 2 (2008): Psychotherapie Forum 16/2 (veröffentlicht bei Springer Wien New York)

Section

Special Issue

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