ABSTRACT
The key issue with religion is the crucial distinction between religious belief and experience, on the one hand, and religious institutions and organisations, on the other. It was Sigmund Freud’s failure to recognise this distinction which resulted in psychoanalysis being thought of as atheistic, and possibly at odds with religion in general. This chapter examines the main ways in which the abuse or distortion of religious belief can contribute to sadomasochism and perversion. The great world religions have nearly all involved two things. Firstly, the attempt to identify the key requirements for human beings to live together in peace and harmony with themselves and with the world they lived in. Second, religions always involve an attempt to make sense of the universe in the form of some kind of guiding principle with which human beings can have a relationship. This usually takes the form of the idea of a deity or a collection of deities.
