PSYC 3310 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Oedipus Complex

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3310
• Professor: Justin Friesen

Document Summary

He viewed it as a suite of defense mechanism that people use to constrain their animal instincts and feel secure in an anxious and overwhelming world. His depiction of religion as a wish-fulfilling fantasy, just like dreams. Hopes and goals that are frustrated in everyday life find their fulfillment in religious fantasy, just as they do in dream images. Freud was trained as an empirical scientist - believed that human behavior should be properly explained by rational, mechanistic laws of causality, not irrational and symbolic explanations. He could never accept jung"s more spiritual view of human nature, and his books relegated religion to an unhealthy defense mechanism. From freud"s perspective, other aspects of religion would also be interpreted as neurotic fixations. Speaking in tongues and frequent prayers would represent an oral-passive fixation. Obsessive religious rituals and observances would be viewed as anal fixations serving to bolster a sense of control and order in life.