Psychoanalysis Applications: Modern Problems of Religion

By Jean Chiriac, President of AROPA

The most striking crisis of modern religious feelings today may be its inability to define the image of God from a theological, moral and cult related perspective.

For some people, God is anthropomorphic and governs mortals' lives from his heavenly abode; for others, he is a metaphysical spirit or entity, a principle, cosmic energy, universal conscience, the very carbon as the elementary structural unit of matter. In one word, God may be anyone and anything.

The more serious thing is that by applying a kind of unifying rule to all these states, people go further to apply the peculiarities of a mystic God to all its expressions. That is how total confusion is brought about with regard to the object of faith.

Secondly, faith itself as finality , a horizon of expectance and hope is ambiguous.

Christian faith, as well as all archaic faith in general, leads to redemption: Resurrection, Eternal Life, the Happy Isles, etc. Primitive populations' faith is related to the relationship with the tribe's ancestors or totemic symbol and brings about protection, well being and health. The same is true for rudimentary faiths.

For modern man though, faith brings redemption no more - it is a profession of faith and no one wonders about its finality. Faith becomes a social emblem , just like citizenship or ethnic background, for instance.

This very confusing context regarding faith, its finality and object makes one wonder about the contribution psychoanalysis can make to the study of these issues.

My opinion is that psychoanalysis may partially touch on all these aspects. It can tell us a lot about unconscious resources of faith, of its finality and object. Up to one point, it can even interfere with the much "stickier" field of religious experiences. Let us remember Freud, so convincingly writing about the oceanic feeling, underlying all religious experience, which he reduces to the newly born's diffuse and confused perception in its first moments of life ("Civilization and its Discontents" - 1930).

Psychoanalysis Applications: Child Counseling and Psychoanalysis

What we should take into consideration when we confront
the difficulties in children's behavior.

By Jean Chiriac, President of AROPA

One of the applications of psychoanalysis is in the field of children's education. This field could be divided in several categories: psychoanalysis of the child up to five years, psychoanalysis of the puberty and the one of the teen-age. Each of these stages, as we could expect, presents their own peculiarities and difficulties. We wouldn't insist upon each of them, but we'll try to sketch the trends in approaching child's problems.

The development of psychoanalysis during the first decades of the last centuries, the increase of the number of the adherents to its techniques led to a sort of excessive appreciation of its virtues. Soon, psychoanalysis was thought to understand everything, and especially to interfere in every sphere of human life with an absolute authority. The alarm signals of the specialists who were not psychoanalysts and were severely criticizing the superficiality of the psychoanalysts, who were approaching fields that exceeded the proper therapy in a one-sided and even nonscientific manner, didn't come to any echo for a long time. Psychoanalysis claimed for a prominent position, if not even the main position in the study of mythology, religion, sociology, anthropology, work of art, etc.

Also in the field of education and pedagogic the involvement of psychoanalysis generated specific works. For example: Stekel's book, one of the first disciples of the Freudian psychoanalysis: "Psychoanalytical Recommendations for Mothers". The work abounds in suggestions and guidelines addressed to mothers, things that seem to be consecrated by experience and which are above any doubts.

When we read such books, we could think that psychoanalysts finally worked out the toilsome matter of child's education.

The same happens with the works of A. Adler, who later on deviated from the Freudian movement, but didn't gave up that attitude of omniscient sufficiency concerning the education problem. Everyone who reads Adler's books and has some acquaintance with psychoanalysis is stricken by the many and grievous errors made by the author when he approaches children problems. Adler's mistakes also result from his ardent wish to see that his working assumptions are confirmed rather than to have a natural scientific relationship with the studied phenomena, as a cautious observer.

The enthusiasm manifested by the psychoanalysts when they hasten to annex the field of child's education, which was justified when psychoanalysis was spreading due to the originality of the new discoveries, is not justified in reality. I mean that leaving out the indications and suggestions that come from the common sense experience (such as: it's not right to beat the child because he revolts and, moreover, this is a cruel and blameworthy method, etc.), those which could be derived from the psychoanalytical theories could hardly be taken into consideration seriously. I don't mean to say that Freud's sexual theory that also embraces infantile sexuality is improper. The infant child really has a curiosity concerning the anatomy and activity of his/her sexual organs, curiosity that could become unhealthy when repressed. However, this curiosity is not, in most cases, anything else but curiosity or, as it was also called epistemophily. Psychoanalysts did not profoundly approach the exploring curiosity. Or it was here and there connected or derived from the interests of sexual nature...

In other words, I want to say that the psychoanalytical works dedicated to the education of the child are not by far so complete as they seem to be. The classical works were written under the momentary impulse of the first psychoanalytical discoveries and are characterized rather by a prepossessed spirit than by a scientifical one. They are more useful to the promotion of psychoanalysis to the great public than to the psychoanalytical knowledge itself. Consequently, they couldn't be taken into consideration.

The later works also bear the consequences of the same error: the dogmatical application of the psychoanalytical theory. The well-known work of Françoise Dolto is also included to this category!

The conclusion called for is that we could not expect these works to give us some collections of counsels in readiness, which are generally valid and applicable to the sphere of child's education. Those parents who wish to rise to the emergency of their difficult task wouldn't find inside these books a complete lesson that could be learned by heart. Child's education is a living and direct process, which requires our total, physical and spiritual participation and calls for an opening toward its problems, which is free from any preconceived ideas, even psychoanalytical. This opening that reminds, in fact, of the attitude of the psychoanalyst – reserve/caution, suspended/poised attention – imposed by Freud himself, is useful for exploring the significance of the infantile behavior. Of course that our experience with our own unconscious protects us against the counter-transference, namely the temptation to project upon our child our own childhood experiences, our expectations, which were those of our parents, etc., but this experience results from our own analysis rather than from the analysis of someone else (even children). Consequently, it's obvious that a parent who wants to help his/her child should, first of all, know and be able to analyze himself/herself.

Nota bene:
- Self-analysis also brings up our memories from our childhood. Meditating on them, with the mind of the nowadays adult, we could better understand the significance of the psychological mechanisms that operate in the first years of life and are expressed by drams, delusions, and various symptoms. The self-analysis is by this way the starting point in the extremely difficult process of child's education.

- In the second place, we should give up by any means to the dogmatical ideas concerning education. All the automatic goads such as: "you should do this or that", must be filtered by the faculty of reasoning: why do we have to do this thing or that thing? The collective experience also collected a lot of worthless stuff, which has to be eliminated if we want to have a sound relationship with our child.

- In the third place, last but not least, we need genuine love for the child. Love gets to know in other ways. It has something magical and saving when it's exercised freely, without any dogmatical constraints. Love is the most reliable path to know the needs of your fellows. If there is no love or compassion, our mind will try to fill this void of relationship with well-known things, which are often, as we tried to show here, totally erroneous.

Experience proves that child's education shouldn't be established on a priori ground. The knowledge in this delicate field is extremely flexible. Therefore, when we deal with works concerning this field, even reference works, we should act extremely cautiously.

Paper published on this site.
Translation by Ochea Corina

Psychoanalysis Applications: Symbol and Symbolism with Freud and Jung

By Jean Chiriac, President of AROPA

What is a symbol? For Freud it has always been a one-term comparison. For example, if we compare a hat to a cloud, the cloud is the symbol replacing the hat as its perfect substitute. As a result, symbols can be interpreted – both those in dreams and those brought about by free associations or coming from cultural and spiritual representations.

In his work "Introductory Lectures of Psycho-Analysis" (1916-1917), Freud provides us with a list of symbols that may occur in dreams, compared to sexual elements (symbols are not all sexual, of course). Generally speaking, they may be classified as objects and actions evoking or representing sexual life, sexual arousing, the anatomy of sexual organs, their behaviour (such as the erection of the male genitals). Here are a few examples:

Books quoted in this paper



- Sigmund Freud:
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis



- C.G. Jung:
Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido

The male genitals, then, are represented in dreams in a number of ways that must be called symbolic, where the common element in the comparison is mostly very obvious. To begin with, for the male genitals as a whole the sacred number 3 is of symbolic significance. The more striking and for both sexes the more interesting component of the genitals, the male organ, finds symbolic substitutes in the first instance in things that resemble it in shape - things, accordingly, that are long and up-standing, such as sticks, umbrellas, posts, trees and so on; further, in objects which share with the thing they represent the characteristic of penetrating into the body and injuring - thus, sharp weapons of every kind, knives, daggers, spears, sabres, but also fire-arms, rifles, pistols and revolvers (particularly suitable owing to their shape). In the anxiety dreams of girls, being followed by a man with a knife or a fire-arm plays a large part. This is perhaps the commonest instance of dream symbolism and you will now be able to translate it easily. Nor is there any difficulty in understanding how it is that the male organ can be replaced by objects from which water flows - water-taps, watering-cans, or fountains - or again by other objects which are capable of being lengthened, such as hanging-lamps, extensible pencils, etc. A no less obvious aspect of the organ explains the fact that pencils, pen-holders, nail-files, hammers, and other instruments are undoubted male sexual symbols.

The female genitals are symbolically represented by all such objects as share their characteristic of enclosing a hollow space which can take something into itself: by pits, cavities and hollows, for instance, by vessels and bottles, by receptacles, boxes, trunks, cases, chests, pockets, and so on. Ships, too, fall into this category. Some symbols have more connection with the uterus than with the female genitals: thus, cupboard, stoves and, more especially, rooms. Here room-symbolism touches on house-symbolism. Doors and gates, again, are symbols of the genital orifice. Materials, too, are symbols for women: wood, papery and objects made of them, like tables and books. Among animals, snails and mussels at least are undeniably female symbols; among parts of the body, the mouth (as a substitute for the genital orifice); among buildings, churches and chapels. Not every symbol, as you will observe, is equally intelligible. (Freud - Complete Works. Ivan Smith 2000. All Rights Reserved.)

Nevertheless, there are symbolic circumstances reiterated in all people's dreams and, in Freud's perspective, they all bear the same significance. Dreams of flying, for example, fall into this category and are explained by sexual type contents too:

…Dreams can symbolise erection in yet another, far more expressive manner. They can represent the sexual organ as the essence of the dreamer's whole person and make him himself fly. Do not take it to heart if dreams of flying, so familiar and often so delightful, have to be interpreted as dreams of general sexual excitement, as erection-dreams. Among students of psycho-analysis, Paul Federn has placed this interpretation beyond any doubt; but the same conclusion was reached from his investigations by Mourly Vold, who has been so much praised for his sobriety, who carried out the dream-experiments I have referred to with artificially arranged positions of the arms and legs and who was far removed from psycho-analysis and may have known nothing about it. And do not make an objection out of the fact that women can have the same flying dreams as men. Remember, rather, that our dreams aim at being the fulfilments of wishes and that the wish to be a man is found so frequently, consciously or unconsciously, in women. Nor will anyone with knowledge of anatomy be bewildered by the fact that it is possible for women to realize this wish through the same sensations as men. Women possess as part of their genitals a small organ similar to the male one; and this small organ, the clitoris, actually plays the same part in childhood and during the years before sexual intercourse as the large organ in men. (Freud - Complete Works. Ivan Smith 2000. All Rights Reserved.)

]

* Jung's opinion

It is interesting to see the way in which the theory on symbols and symbolism is different in Freud and Jung. Jung is known to have been Freud's disciple for a long time, even the follower appointed to carry on his work. Nevertheless, Jung took another way, accusing the excessive involvement of sexuality in etiology. Later on, he focussed on the study of the archetypal unconscious. The symbol was the object of extended study. In Jung's opinion, the symbol shows some unknown reality. There is no comparison here to replace an object with its substitute. For Jung, the symbol refers to a psychic content that has never been the object of personal experience. The symbol of the cross, for example - which, may we add, can get a sexual significance with Freud - with Jung it undoubtedly refers to the idea of conjunctio, a unification of contraries, where antagonistic elements, specifically conscious and unconscious merge in a unity that goes beyond the boundaries of human consciousness. The symbol therefore describes an experience (or the bias to one) of extreme complexity including but not limited to instinctual life.

Sexuality in itself is the symbol of a different reality not limited to instinctual life. Jung makes open reference to that, which has in fact led to his separation from Freud and the Freudian movement. Here we quote an excerpt from his work "Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido."

There certainly exist dreams and typical dream patterns whose meaning is easily unravelled if considered in the perspective of sexual symbols. We could use this way of seeing things without necessarily concluding that the content thus expressed is itself of sexual origin. We know that language is full of erotic metaphors that may be applied to contents that have no relationship with sexuality whatsoever. At the same time, we are aware sexual symbolism by no means implies that the concern that used it were sexual in nature itself. Sexuality is one of the most significant instincts and it makes the basis and cause for the countless emotions, which are known to persistently influence language. Emotions and sexuality cannot be entirely identified as they may come from a certain conflicting situation: for example, the preservation instinct may also give rise to numerous emotions.

The following dream belongs to a woman and it is less complicated: she can see Constantine's triumph arch. There is a cannon at the front, a bird on the right and a man on the left. The cannon is thundering, the missile hits her and goes into her pocket, into her wallet. The dreamer holds the wallet as if there were something precious inside. The image then fades and all she can see is the cannon with Constantine's adage written above: "In hoc signo vinces". The sexual symbolism of this dream is extremely clear to substantiate the naive person's bothered wonder. If one proves the dreamer herself is unaware of the dream's sexual allusions and that these compensate for a gap in her conscious guidance, then the dream is actually interpreted. If, on the contrary, that is a current interpretation and familiar to the dreamer, it then is no more than meaningless repetition. In such case we have reason to suspect that sexual symbolism is used as dream language just as any other manner of speaking". ("Psychology of the Unconscious…").

To conclude, we may say that, whereas in Freud's opinion symbols refer to some sexual content, Jung thinks the symbol, without completely excluding sexuality, requires a much more complex reality. It is of course hard to admit that the cross, the central symbol of Christianity, could be reduced down to some sexual interpretation. The cross is a cuaternity and, referring to that notion we may add speculations related to the philosophy of elements that was familiar to Ancient Greece but also to Middle Ages alchemy. The same cross (the swastika) evokes a turn (an alternative movement) familiar to Taoist philosophy - the movement of the Heaven or the Tao of Heaven – where Yin and Ying principles succeed to each other. The cross is finally a reference to Christ's crucifixion, a central symbol of normative and esoteric Christian belief.

Translation by Mihaela Cristea.

Psychoanalysis Applications: Therapy by Faith

By Ovidiu Dima

Jesus healing
Jesus healing a blind man
Therapy by faith is no late discovery. It pervades the "New Testament", related as it is to Jesus Christ's life and divine mission on Earth. The Holy Books are abundant in stories of miraculous healing performed by Jesus and his disciples. Their authors mainly quote those cases when Jesus approaches his "patients" by asking: "Do you trust me I can heal you?"

Right after the healing (quite often performed in the absence of patients themselves, by means of a human agent confident in Jesus' charisma), Jesus would say: "It's been your faith that has saved you". What do his words mean?

Belief in Jesus and his healing capacities involve some strong emotional excitement, some devotional fervor. That which psychically characterizes the faith phenomenon is the strong stimulation of the Eros - a sublimated Eros, of course, freed from its sexual function. That Eros in fact represents the agent and vehicle of healing.

The transfer of love stimulated by Jesus' charismatic person (but also by that of nowadays' therapists, people with a reputation and a public image) is also known to therapy by hypnosis. Psychoanalysis itself is well acquainted with emotional transfer and its beneficial effect on the patient. In one of his letters to his younger fellow scientist Jung, Freud stated that the main agent for the healing of neurotic people is the fixation of the unconscious libido - providing the strength necessary to the "perception and translation of the unconscious".

In other words, where there is love on the patients' part, one can notice their beneficial participation in the healing process. After all, Freud would conclude, what we are dealing with here is healing by love. And this specific healing shows that "neuroses depend on erotic life".

The above also simply demonstrate the range of diseases accessible to therapy by faith. Jesus' "patients" mostly suffered from diseases palsy, blindness, psychomotor disabilities, etc.

Whereas today almost all specialists have agreed on the psychic nature of these diseases in biblical casuistry, they say, we are dealing with neurotic disorders and mainly hysteria.

The fact that these specific diseases (hysteria) have to do with disorders of the Eros is no more novelty to anyone. Therefore, the deliverance of the Eros from traumatic or moral inhibitions is the main credit of therapy by belief.

Collective healing by hypnosis
A collective healing by hypnosis performed by a hypnotherapist
There are diseases in the Holy Books, nevertheless, that cannot be reduced to some traumatic etiology - the so-called initiation disorders. But we shall deal with these on a later opportunity.

We shall limit ourselves now to saying that love (with or without some material object) generally has therapeutic value. Where there is love, there is little room for neuroses. And love can be stimulated by faith. Faith in Jesus, in his beneficial charisma or in the healing "abilities" of a therapist in flesh and blood.

Paper first published in OMEN - Psychoanalytic Journal , no. 1, 1998.
Translation by Mihaela CristeaPs

Psychoanalysis Applications: Psychoanalysis and Religion

By J.C. Popa

After Freud's example, psychoanalysis is well known to have adopted a critical, atheist position towards religion. The following fact is less known: the atheism of psychoanalysis does not originate in some nihilistic, irrational opposition to religion. It springs from two important considerations that the present article is going to explain.

* From obsessional neurosis to religion

First of all, experience acquired in psychoanalytic therapy - and we mean obsessional-fobic neuroses mainly - has revealed striking similarities between ritual-religious behavior and the conduct of obsessive neurotic persons. Hence, the widely spread assertion that religion is nothing but obsessional neurosis stretched to collective scale. The overestimation of mental activity, of wish, more specifically the belief in the power of thoughts to materialize concrete realities can in fact be found in both the obsessive neurotic person and in animist magic practices, expanded in the ritual of prayer. Neurotic persons are obsessed with the materialization of their hostile wishes and defend themselves against such threats by assuming defensive psychic positions, in fact truly extremely intricate rituals associating the weirdest of superstitions. We can meet similar in religious practices, with one amend though: with religious ideology, evil is projected outside the individual, personified in satanic, demonic images. The exteriorisation of the intra-psychic conflict (1) gives way to the illusion of a life and death struggle between the worshipper and autonomised Evil. Biblical tales about demonized people and exorcising rituals also present in Christian Church are the practical consequences of this ideology.

It was then shown that belief in an anthropomorphic, almighty God originates in impressions and feelings in the individuals' childhood that were initially related to their parents' images. Children feel vulnerable confronted with surrounding nature and therefore they look for refuge next to their parents, endowed with supernatural powers. The fact that we can find belief in God with adults too should not come as a surprise. Adult life is no less exposed to real and imaginary dangers! Adults' extended knowledge on nature and society does not shield them from anxiety; on the contrary: the more they know, the more they can realize the void of their knowledge. Hence the need for divine protection and the restoration of infantile relationships - endowed with religious significance - with parental imago.

The fact that, at the beginning, the child does not make clear distinction between maternal and paternal protection explain both the equal distribution of religions of the Mother and the ambivalent character of God - Father (He is merciful, forgiving but also rough, uncompromising, a tyrant and a devastator). Is it no surprise for us that in many religions God is even called "Father"? We could add: an idealized father mainly preserving His numinous qualities (2).

As already shown in short, experience psychoanalysis acquired in the therapeutic field can pretend some reevaluation of religious conduct. It is as true, at the same time, that it does not consume all deeds of religious life. In this sense, Jungian psychoanalysis, seemingly going beyond the "limited" perspective of Freudian psychoanalysis, has identified the archetype of religious life in human soul. This archetype, (= pattern of behavior) is the empirical basis C. G. Jung laid his entire conception of individuation on (3). We conclude that, from the perspective of psychoanalysis, the revision of religious experience has imposed an atheist attitude with regard to religion centered on the deification of parental image. This has to do with the same complex of ideas, representations and mystic rituals related to the exacerbation of obsessional neurosis.

* Scientific Exigency

Secondly, we have to demonstrate that psychoanalysis participates in the so-called scientific mentality. It lays stress on the investigation of phenomena, on the rational reflection on their nature. Rejecting the famous saying "Trust and don't search", scientific exigency focuses on what we call "research". In addition, it includes the possibility to reproduce similar phenomena, according to natural laws derived from studied phenomena. When the famous French doctor Charcot was able to hypnotically induce certain hysteria symptoms to his patients, he then scientifically proved that hysteria is no organic disturbance (even if it assumed a certain constitutional bias towards such manifestations). The influence of this demonstration, quite amazing at the time, was also felt in the elaboration of psychoanalytic methods and theories. Speculating things a little, we could say that psychoanalysis wouldn't have been born unless Freud the scientist had witnessed these demonstrations himself (4). The psychiatry of the time had been engulfed in materialist conceptions maintaining that neurotic disturbances - that were to be studied of psychoanalysis later on - were due either to patients' simulations or to symptomatic effects of their "burdened" heredity or to somatic lesions as yet undiscovered.

To conclude, let us formulate things as follows: psychoanalytic practice and experience, scientific exigency are responsible for assuming an atheist position with regard to psychoanalysis. But we then saw that the atheism of psychoanalysis is no parti pris once and forever. Psychoanalysis takes no glory in the unconditioned repression of belief in God. The entire Jungian work, in the field of religious life archetype, of the individuation process show the extremely up-to-date and concrete way in which psychoanalysis understands to creatively approach the problem of religion.

Notes:
1. The outward projection of Evil is a vivid phenomenon also present in neurotic disturbances, mainly in psychotic ones. In paranoid delirium, for instance, the patient has the sharp feeling of some prejudice, some evil made to him from the outside. The patient ascribes his own feelings to characters in their own social sphere.
In religious conduct, the outward projection of Evil spares the human subject an explanation with his/her own moral censorship. Even more, this procedure offers an extremis solution towards humans' moral rehabilitation: if Evil is projected, then it can also be symbolically suppressed by means of the scapegoat practice, for instance, or by exorcising and purification rites, so widely spread in religious communities.
The Good too is sometimes projected, in instances when we are told that the divine being is the expression of the highest perfection (it does not participate, in any way, or only transitorily, to our earthly condition). In that case, the exigency of becoming morally perfect (as in the urge: "Be perfect as your Father in the Heavens!"), imposes on the individual the illusion of some future rehabilitation depending on his/her efforts in belief and prayer.
2. The term "numinous" refers to those aspects inspiring paroxysmal feelings in the series terror - ecstasy.
3. The process of individuation refers to the accomplishment of the Self in Jungian understanding. A process of conjunction of the contraries, of union between conscious and unconscious, in short of unification of the being. This process is not restricted to moral integration - it also involves emotional integration.
4. Between 1885-1886, Freud had a stage with Charcot in Paris. He presents the vivid memories from his scientific evolution in his later writings and autobiographical specifications

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*Translation by Mihaela Cristea.