Despite ongoing academic discussion and, at times, rigorous date within the psychoanalytic movement as to the subject's effectiveness and relevance in relation to the demands of everyday life in the 21st Century, psychoanalytic associations are now established in over seventy countries. It is because of such movements, and the ongoing interest in Freud himself, that if you type the words "Sigmund Freud" into any internet search-engine, you are likely to receive close on 800,000 entries! (14) Not bad for a man who was once described by the author William Golding as "one of the most crashing bores of the Western world" (15)

Religion

The actual origins of religion have been a subject of debate for close on a millennium. Institutional religion came into being roughly at the same time as writing - usually calculated at between 4-4,500 years ago - though evidence for early civilization's religious ideas can be found in the remains of elaborate burial practices, tomb paintings hinting at a belief in the afterlife and later, the ritualistic and symbolic belief systems of the ancient Egyptians.

Religion can be defined as "a social construct, encompassing beliefs and practices which enable people, individually or collectively, to make some sense of the great questions of life and death" (16)

Religions tend to focus on questions that relate to the divine and the sacred. Religious practice focuses on prayer, worship and the regular assembly with other believers as a· means of preserving adherence to the spiritual fundamentals of the particular religion. Codes of behaviour are offered to ensure consistency with these sets of beliefs, and answers are given in regards to life after death and the nature of deities and what they expect from us when leading our normal daily lives.

Of all the "great" religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, the two main identifying features of each are that they require faith and that they seek to organise and influence the thoughts and actions of their adherents.

Religious movements

What all religious movements have in common is the desire of converts to evangelise, or spread the true word, gospel or message (whatever that message may be) to the unconverted. All religions have founders, or messengers who are touched and blessed by what they perceive to be the guiding light of God.

It may be argued, however, that the most critical point in the development of any religious movement is not it's foundation, or the initial revelation of it's founder, but the founder's death. "In the months or years after the founder dies, many things can happen: at the two extremes, without it's charismatic leader the movement could just fizzle out and fade away completely. Or it could mature from being what is best described as a cult (in the classic sociological sense) into a full-blown religion, or it could fragment into a dozen competing sects, or it could consolidate and strengthen itself. It could even become something quite different from what its founder had ever intended" (17)

Successful religious movements have the ability to make their original teachings relevant to the modern world (the phenomenal growth of Islam, for example, or "moral majority" evangelical groups in the United States spreading old-time religion as far as the White House) and in this way, they are able not only to survive and indeed flourish, but are also capable of wielding considerable financial and political power.

Freud on Religion

'The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life" (18)

For close on forty years, Freud was fascinated by humankind's relationship with religion. Infantile though it was to him, he also credited it with the inspiration to drive his own motivational forces forward: "The bible story, almost as soon as I had learnt the art of reading had, as I recognised much later, an enduring effect upon the direction of my interest" (19) Freud could never truly concile his feelings towards the subject. On the one hand, he saw modern religion as nothing but psychology projected into the outside world. Yet out of the three forces which he believed could dispute the position of science (art, philosophy and religion) religion was the most dangerous. He considered it a tremendous force, exerting its power over the strongest emotions of human beings. Religion, according to Freud, fulfils three functions:

         It alleviates our fears of the dangers of life and comforts us in our misfortunes.

"Science cannot compete with it. It would be quite untrue to deny that science is a powerful aid to human beings, but in many cases it has to leave them to their own suffering, and can only advise them to submit to the inevitable" (20)

         It satisfies human beings desire for knowledge: "It is here doing the same. thing that science attempts to accomplish by it's own methods and here, therefore, enters into rivalry with it" (21)

         It exceeds in the provision of precepts, prohibitions and restrictions.

Throughout his life, Freud produced a number of theories concerning religion - principally that it repeats or works through traumatic events from the distant evolutionary past, that it is a reaction to infantile helplessness, that it echoes infantile states of well being and contentment, and that it holds groups together. Most controversially, he believed that it represented mass delusion and paranoid wish-fulfilment.

Yet despite his views, or perhaps even because of them, Freud had an almost sneaking admiration for those who actually practised the faith:

"How enviable, to those of us who are poor in faith, do the enquirers seem who are convinced of the existence of a Supreme Being. How comprehensive, how exhaustive and how definitive are the doctrines of the believer compared with the laborious, paltry and fragmentary attempts at explanation which are the most we are able to achieve!" (22)

Comparisons between psychoanalysis and religion (theory and movements)

It is mainly the critics of psychoanalysis who view the subject as a kind of religion. They point to its holy texts, it's hierarchies and it's disciples spreading the good news, promising salvation and claiming to be the true messengers of God. Some refer to the significance that Freud placed in dreams, considering them to be important messages from the unconscious, much in the same way that strong religious experiences or visions can be attributed to those who have been in dream-like states. Others believe that whilst psychoanalysis is not a religion, it could do worse than actually becoming one. They see religion as caring, spiritual, loving and deeply moralistic whilst psychoanalysis is a hard science and medical procedure that ignores a higher state of being. The counter-argument is that religion is based on the literal reading of religious texts whereas psychoanalysis is defined by the questioning of the iteral meaning of things. It's own "sacred truths" are continually being modified and re­assessed (23)

On the subject of religious and psychoanalytic movements, there are even less similarities. Religious movements may question aspects of their faith and how it should be practised, but will never waver in their absolute devotion. Pioneers of the psychoanalytic movement, however, have always sought to break down the barriers of established views and practices of psychoanalysis and to originate new ideas and changes in thought. We are safe in saying that Freud is not God, and that psychoanalysis is not a religion.

The effectiveness and validity of psychoanalysis

Those who practice religion can perhaps be thankful that their faith will never be questioned in the same critical and insistent way as that of psychoanalysis. It is difficult to assess its validity and effectiveness based on historical research alone. Those few of Freud's case histories that are possible to assess are invalidated, as evidence, by a confirmatory bias. "Again and again", argues Professor RC Tallis in the respected medical journal The Lancet, "Freud muddled his own conjectures of what was going on in his patient's unconscious with their accounts of what they later remembered and, over time, he came to represent the former as the latter. It was hardly surprising, then, that, like a first-year medical student or a hypochondriac making diagnoses, Freud found that everything he recalled from his consultations could fit his theories" (24)

Both Melanie Klein and Anna Freud, on the other hand, can claim some success in initiating breakthroughs in the practice of child psychology. There is little doubt that Klein, in particular, still influences a distinctive strain of psychoanalytic theory

Psychoanalysis has undoubtedly become more focused over the last fifty years, and certainly so since the time when its practitioners unwisely applied it when attempting to treat ailments such as schizophrenia, severe bipolar illness and autism. It can now realistically claim, at least to some extent, success for people with non-psychotic character disorders, those people who are unable to work effectively, or maintain steady relations and who simply want a better way of managing their lives: "As a result of this narrower focus on patients who are not psychotic, psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy may, in the best of hands, be more effective today than ever before" (25)

It is ironic; therefore, that the number of patients seeking treatment has steadily declined by 10% a year over the last 20 years (26) This may in part be due to the ongoing controversy that still surrounds the subject. Any positive announcement or encouraging development in psychoanalytic research is immediately subject to a barrage of criticism. Tim Radford, in an article entitled "A Freudian Theory Proved" and published in the 9th January 2004 edition of the Guardian, provoked such a response:

"Psychologists have proved Sigmund Freud's repressed memory theory. What has always sounded like a contradiction in terms - that the brain can remember to forget - has a neurological basis

Michael Anderson of the University of Oregon and John Gabrieli of Sanford University in California report in Science Today that they made volunteers team 36 pairs of words, such as ordeal-roach, steam-train and jaw-gum. They tested them with the first word in the pair and set them the challenge either of thinking of the second word or suppressing their awareness of it. To do the latter, they used the part of the brain which comes into play when humans stop themselves performing an involuntary action.

The control of unwanted memories was linked with extra activity in the right and left frontal cortex which in turn led to reduced activity of the hippocampus, the part of the brain used to remember experience. The more volunteers activated their frontal cortexes, the better they were at suppressing unwanted memories"

Mark Pendergrast, author of Victims of Memory led the backlash: ""A Freudian Theory Proved' is wrong on all counts. The results of these so called experiments tell us virtually nothing other than that the frontal cortex is active while people think." Jeffrey Gray, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, King's College London agreed: 'The Freudian theory of repression remains as weak after this demonstration as before"

Is it fair that we ask time and again for proof of the validity and effectiveness of psychoanalysis whilst not asking the same of religion? Is blind faith any better than psychotherapeutic reasoning? One thing we can be sure of - the debate is certain to continue.

Conclusion - salvation through psychoanalysis

We have seen why psychoanalysis cannot be considered a religion. Only time will tell if it will ever become "great" in the sense that it achieves widespread recognition and mass popularity.

So if it is not a religion, how can it offer salvation?

Let us look at the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English for a definition of salvation:

"Salvation (1) - the art of saving, the state of having been saved from sin and its consequences"

"Salvation (2) - that which saves from loss or disaster. le: " government loans have been the salvation of small business" (non-religious)"

So we can see that that salvation is not exclusively the domain of the religious. And we know that psychoanalysis has been practised for over a century because it has successfully treated thousands of people each year. People who would otherwise have found their lives totally devoid of meaning, who would have probably reached the point of total desperation had they not taken the brave decision to seek therapy.

If they have been saved, in the sense that their inner turmoils and conflicts have been recognized and addressed, then, whether the word is used in its religious context or not, it is psychoanalysis that has truly offered them salvation.

Notes & references

1) Schwartz J (1999) A History of Psychoanalysis Viking Penguin/London

2) Malcolm J (1997) In The Freud Archives Flamingo/London pg 25

3) Phillips was arguing against the motion tabled by Professor Avi Shlaim of Saint Anthony's College, Oxford, stating: "Zionism today is the real enemy of the jews". As reported by Daphna Baram in the New Statesman 14th February 2005.

4) It could also be argued that Marx would have been horrified had he witnessed the acts that future generations carried out in his name. For an interesting and extremely funny look at the life and thoughts of Marx, see Kart Marx (2000/4th Estate) by the British humorist and author Francis Wheen.

5) Time 29!h November 1993. The magazine featured a series of articles on what it perceived as the turmoil in modern psychology.

6) Nelson-Jones R (2001) Theory and Practice of Counselling and Therapy- Third Edition Sage Publications/London pg 45

7) Gleitman H, Fridlund A, Reisberg 0 (1999) Psychology - Fifth Edition WM Norton Son/New York. pg 302/4

8) Ibid

9) As described in the introduction to the American Psychoanalytic Association's website www.apsa.com

10) Ibid

11) Wilson S, Zarate 0 (2002) Introducing the Freud Wars Ikon Books/Cambridge. pgs 30,31

12) Ansbacher H, Ansbacher REds. (1964) The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler Harper & Row/New York pg 3

13) "Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society: Melanie Klein" www.webster.edu/woolflm/Klein.html

14) Google reveals 767,000 listings.

15) See "Quotes by Authors" wwwweeks-q-dirconco.uklquotes by author q htm

16) Barrett 0 (2001) The New Believers Cassell & Co/London pg 22

17) Ibid pg 58

18) Freud S (1930) Civilization and its Discontents University of Chicago Press/Chicago

19) Freud S (1925) An Autobiographical Study: The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud Alien & Unwin/London pg 172

20) Freud S (1932) A Philosophy of Life: New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud Alien & Unwin/London pg 18

21) Ibid pg 23

22) Freud S (1937) Moses and Monotheism The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud Alien & Unwin/London

23) Ward I, Zarate 0 (2000) Introducing Psychoanalysis Ikon Books/Cambridge pg 23

24) Tallis was quoting from: Esterson A (1996) Seduction Mirage: An Explanation of the work of Sigmund Freud Open Court/Chicago

25) From "The Evaluation of Psychoanalytic Outcome" - Acta Psychiatr Scand magazine/July 1984

26) Jeffrey DW (1998) The PsychoanalystThe July Press/San Francisco pg 33