ABSTRACT

Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913) established the relevance of psychoanalysis to the study of religion. Though skeptical of Freudian interpretations of particular religious patterns, anthropologists have turned and returned to psychoanalytic concepts and theory for help in making sense of the religious symbolism with which their field work confronts them. Recently, despite the generally inhospitable climate in anthropology and sociology for psychoanalytic explanations of culture, a number of accomplished students of comparative religion—Beidelman (1964, 1966b), Bellah (1965), Richards (1956), Spiro (1965, 1966, 1967), Turner (1967, 1968, 1969), and Wilson (1971)—have applied, or discussed the application of, psychoanalytic concepts to ethnographic data on religion. I do not review this literature here but instead deal with what appears to be the primary problem they have encountered: understanding the psychological meaning of a religious symbol, the unexpressed and possibly inexpressible meaning that connects the symbol as part of a cultural system with the emotions it arouses in individuals. If the methods outlined in the previous chapter are to be of value in the comparative study of personality, they should be able to contribute to the understanding of religion and also enrich thereby their assessment of individual personality. To put it another way, if a method of personality assessment is effective, it should simultaneously shed light on an individuals religious experience and reveal the psychological factors involved in maintaining and changing a religious system.