Beyond illusion: Psychoanalysis and the question of religious truth

Abstract

In this paper the author critically examines the nature of the positive, reconciliatory attitude towards religion that has become increasingly prevalent within psychoanalytic thinking and writing over the past 20 years. She shows how this positive attitude rests on a change in the nature of the prototype of religion and its reassignment to the realm of illusion, thus making irrelevant an issue most central both to psychoanalysis and to traditional Judeo‐Christian belief ‐ the passionate search for truth. The author demonstrates how the concern with truth, and specifically with the truth of religious claims, lies at the basis of the opposition between psychoanalysis and religion but, paradoxically, also provides the common ground for dialogue between the two. She argues that, as Freud developed his ideas regarding the origin of conviction in religious claims in his Moses and monotheism (1939), the nature of this common ground was expanded and the dialogue became potentially more meaningful. The author concludes that meaningful dialogue emerges through recognition of fundamental differences rather than through harmonisation within a realm of illusion. In this light, the present study may also be seen as an attempt to recognise fundamental differences that have been evolving within psychoanalysis itself.

Morality, Selflessness, Transcendence: On Treatment Goals of a Spiritually Sensitive Psychoanalysis

“…Blass (2004) wrote that psychoanalysis is "coming to sound, in some of its writings, much more mystical than it did in the past" (p. 620). The spiritual/mystical emphasis on the personal, subjective experience, she claimed, leads to "blurring of the concern for truth and reality" (p. 630).…”

On Overlooking Complex Psychoanalytic Views on the Question of Religious Truth

“…Although generally neglected, it has important implications for both psychoanalysis and the understanding of religious belief (Blass, 2003(Blass, , 2004.…”

“…In her essay "Beyond Illusion: Psychoanalysis and the Question of Religious Truth," Rachel Blass (2004) : : : argued that the question of God's existence should be "bracketed" because it no longer is relevant or meaningful. Religion should be regarded "not as an expression of knowledge or truth pertaining to the nature of reality, the transcendent reality of God, but more as a kind of selfor relational experiencing within a realm of illusion" (Blass, 2004, p. 616).…”

“…In this "postmodern, non-realist sense of religion, there is no longer room for the concern (which troubled Freud) that religious belief is a distortion of reality" (Blass, 2004, p. 616) because they coexist in different spheres of discourse. Continuing, Blass (2004) wrote, Not only is there no possible move from illusion to delusion, in the sense that the fact that religious belief is founded on a wish does not allow one to conclude that the belief is false, but also the fact that a belief is an illusion implies the irrelevance of the question of falsity. (p. 619) Later, Kronemyer (2011, p. 262) speaks of the problems with my view that the question of God's existence could be bracketed.…”

Constructing the truth from ‘Confusion of tongues’ to ‘Constructions in analysis’1

“…Blass (2003Blass ( , 2004 also accords a special place to historical truth. But she tends to envisage religion and psychoanalysis as two modes of access to it, whereas I consider religion and delusion, on the one hand, and psychoanalytic knowledge, on the other, as different, and in certain respects opposite ways of constructing a neoreality.…”