ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the diverse relationships A. Freud establishes between religion and neurosis and on a whole series of consequences and problems stemming from these associations. The establishment of an identity in their origin for both neurosis and religion is made when, in Totem and Taboo, the oedipal conflict is identified as the common source for both the neurotic conflict and culture and its great institutions. Religion, like neurosis, offers “solutions” to perpetuate in the phantasy dimension the fight between the son and the father. An important road to neurosis is avoided in this way. Those who take shelter under illusions which are specific to religion find “the most firm protection against neurosis”. The psychotic rupture made evident what neurosis disguises and “normality” hides. Unlike hysteria, obsessional neurosis offered him a type of language very similar to that of cultural phenomena.