ABSTRACT
This chapter explores an adaptation of a lecture given at the Sigmund Freud Conference in Melbourne on 2 April 1995. Religion and psychoanalysis have one enemy in common. Religion and psychoanalysis have one enemy in common. In psychoanalysis the author call it "omnipotence", and within the Christian tradition it is called "the sin of pride", or "hubris" in classical language, or "mana" in Buddhist psychology. Psychoanalysis seeks the transformation of these factors in the personality, whereas the great religions seek their obliteration. Every interpretation contains a judgement. This is the religious axis within psychoanalysis. It is this axis that gives an interpretation its cogency, its power to penetrate beneath the surface. Psychoanalysis is also scientific, and that axis is also essential if the process is to remain alive and potent. Revealed religion, which is the sophisticated elaboration of primitive religion, is the cultural reification of this primitive state of mind.
