ABSTRACT
The case of a patient, in whom a superstitious piety alternates with a state of compulsion, serves to illustrate Freud’s theory that obsessional neurosis and religious practice are essentially identical (that is, are both taboo symptoms). So long as she is ‘well’ (that is, free of obsessional symptoms), she conscientiously observes every religious ceremony; often, too, in secret, strange to say, those prescribed for religions other than her own, and sanctions every superstition of which she gets to know. On the instant that the dreaded obsessional symptoms appear, she becomes a sceptic and irreligious. Her rationalization for this is as follows: ‘Since God (or Fate) has not protected me from the return of the illness in spite of my strict adherence to every precept, I abandon useless precautionary measures’. In reality, religion and superstition are superfluities for her, for reasons of which she is unconscious, as soon as she begins to cultivate her ‘individual religion’ (the obsessional neurosis). When, however, she gets better, the socially recognized superstitious and religious exercises reappear, she becomes a believer once more. I have grounds for assuming that the obsessional periods correspond with powerful libidinal impulses.
