ABSTRACT
It is often maintained, usually by those who have little real understanding of the subject, that psychoanalysis is a religion. By this is meant not simply that psychoanalysis is unscientific, but that its practice relies on blind adherence to a doctrine and set of tribal rituals. In many psychoanalytic models of the mind, sanity and a sense of goodness are closely connected. Desire is the path to evil and shuts one off from reaching truth and eternal beauty. Both religion and psychoanalysis have plenty of material on which to support their interest in man's badness. There is another comparison between psychoanalysis and religion of good and bad behaviour, since both offer a method that is held to produce a change for the better. It has become extremely popular for politicians to support enthusiastically the idea that bad behaviour can be rectified by a combination of punishment and religious education, particularly in schools.
