In what sense is Hegel an Idealist?

In what sense is Hegel an Idealist?

In his book, Hegel and Idealism, Karl Americks’ writes that there is no ‘accurate, substantive, and appealing sense in which Hegel should be regarded as an idealist’1.  And he further argues that claims to regard him as such are ‘extravagant’ and ‘trivial’.

Robert Pippin, on the other hand, writes that: ‘Hegel followed Kant in attempting to deduce the categories from the conditions of self-consciousness, to ground them in the “I”’2.  Pippin here provides a reading that interprets Hegel as a kind of Transcendental Idealist; that is, someone who places priority on the appearances of the world.

This paper aims to refute both claims by arguing in defence for an interpretation of Hegel as an Absolute Idealist.  In the first part of the essay an interpretation of Hegel as an Absolute Idealist will be put forward, and in the second part, it will address both Americks and Pippins criticisms.

I

Hegel’s Philosophy is, mainly, a reaction to Kant’s dualistic Philosophy.  For Kant, the world is a construct of cognition: that is, what we see as the world is a perception of the mind and not the underlying reality.  But Hegel disagrees that the world in it self is ultimately unknowable, claiming it to be an ‘empty beyond’, since it raises the problem of how such raw data provides us with our general sensations in the first place.

Hegel wants to resist such a division and instead attempt to reconcile ‘concept with reality3’ or as Solomon states: ‘unify man and nature’4.  Thus, Hegel’s quest is absolute knowledge. 

In his Encyclopaedia, Hegel acknowledged that the absolute is the ‘task of Philosophy’5.  The goal is to come to know the world as it is in it self.  Thus, Hegel is attempting to do metaphysics by pure reason – something Kant would have claimed impossible; but for Hegel Absolute Idealism provides us with such a possibility. 

Hegel defines Absolute Idealism as ‘the doctrine that things are appearances of the universal divine idea’ (EPW §24A)6.  This reading suggests the absolute as a kind of God, a spirit in which everything is incorporated, and from which everything emanates.  Therefore, it can be argued that Hegel adopts a monistic form of idealism in which everything in the world, including the world itself, is seen as belonging to the essence of an absolute mind-like substance –namely, to Godi.  Indeed, Hegel often stated that the: ‘subject matter of philosophy is God and God alone’7. Viewed in these terms, Schelling was wrong to assert that subject and object are one and the same thing.  Instead, they are wholly different yet share the same inherent essence.  As Hegel stated in his Differenzchrift, it is the principal of subject-object identity that expresses the very spirit of ‘authentic idealism’ (D, II 9-10/79-80)8.  Thus, he is essentially saying that both subject and object are manifestations of the same thing – that is to say, they share an identity that binds them to the absolute spirit.

How are we to interpret this form of idealism? Like Kant, Hegel places priority over mind as the fundamental corner stone to knowledge, but Hegel’s Absolute Idealism differs from this.  It differs in the sense that:

‘consciousness must have related itself to the object in accordance with the totality of the latter’s determinations and have thus grasped it from the standpoint of each of them.  This totality of its determinations establishes the object as an implicitly spiritual being ’(PS §788)9.

The idea here is that subject and object are intrinsically related to each other; they are both mind-like in essence, and such a connection between the two is implicitly spiritual.  This way Hegel is attempting to merge subject and object together. 

If we follow Hegel’s dialectic - our consciousness striving to progress and develop toward freedom and perfection - then eventually we will come to the point where mind is at one with both it self and reality.

Hence, absolute knowing can be summed up as a ‘spirit that knows itself in the shape of spirit’(PS §798)10, or, in other words, mind coming to know itself as a form of mind.  The progress of our consciousness comes to an end when we discover that the meaning of life lies within an Absolute Spirit that is the totality of human consciousness – the Absolute Idea.

II

Karl Americks, as we have seen, would charge such a view of idealism, or any view of idealism for that matter, as extravagant and trivial.  This is a very strong and, I think, rather inconsiderate criticism.  If Hegel is not an idealist then, equally, he cannot be a realist or a materialist in any sense because Hegel’s Philosophy is, in my opinion, absolutely anti-realist in the sense that he sees the universe as mind-like.  He is a monist along similar lines to Spinoza, as Hegel often refers to spirit or a God as essence in which everything comes to existence.  Things in the world don’t necessarily exist as separate things to us, only the Absolute Idea exists.  Surely such a concept is sound for interpreting Hegel as an idealist.  Because of his monism, it’s arguable that this mind-like substance is the Absolute Idea.

The point, however, is that Hegel’s enquiry is, fundamentally, human thought.  He is attempting to amalgamate human consciousness with an abstract conception of absolute as consciousness or spirit.  Both these are idealistic notions; one of the inner subject and the other as an abstract form of idealism created by his idealism. Contemplating an end of a, potentially, infinite regress appears troublesome, indeed it seems nigh on impossible, but surely we must not criticize Hegel for such thinking as absurd or, as Americks puts it, ‘extravagant’.  Such thinking can only come from an idealist in the first place.  But as Robert Stern mentions, why can’t ideas in philosophy be so extravagant? Surely conceptualising something extravagant requires an extravagant form of thinking, something which Hegel fits the bill, and it is such thinking which makes him an Absolute Idealist.

This interpretation may not be appealing to all, or even correct; but in answering the initial question, this isn’t to say that he is not an idealist in any sense.

Pippin’s criticism is, however, a little more damaging than Americks.  He sees Hegel as, basically, a Transcendental Idealist, one who grounds the experiences through the “I”.

Indeed, such a reading is not prima facie misleading.  Hegel begins his phenomenology by placing consciousness as the starting point of knowledge, so, in a sense, progress must be a condition of what the mind sees.

But the difficulty with such a reading begins with, as we have seen, Hegel’s rejection of the Kantian realm of the thing in it self or the empty beyond.  Indeed to claim Hegel as a Transcendental Idealist implies that Hegel is restricted to the world of his own mind and that such raw data transcend from his notion of the ‘empty beyond’ which he initially wanted to get rid of.  However, in reply, it could be argued that since the world as it is in it self is not knowable within the confines of human experience, then Hegel’s conduct of metaphysics is utilized in a transcendental manner, since we can’t escape our minds eye.  In saying that, it could also be argued that philosophizing about the world as it appears to be, implies an unknowable world providing us with the appearances in the first place.  So why can’t we say that we are experiencing and knowing the world as it really is instead? This is, in essence, Hegel’s argument for the Absolute.  We do know the world as it really is because our mind comes to realize that it is the builder of reality, and that the source of our mind and everything else comes from the Absolute mind in which everything is connected with implicitly.  Therefore, although there are perceptive differences and different levels of conscious awareness amongst human and animal, we share one underlying ‘cosmic conscious’11 – the absolute idea.  For example, a cup may look different to each of us, but most people would agree that there are inherent similarities that we all share about the cup; for example its use.  Likewise, with animals there are similarities we have in common such as hunger, emotional needs and an intimate sense of connection; for example, with particular pets we share a mutual level of understanding.  Although the level of consciousness varies, the connection between consciousness is absolute mind.

Therefore there must be something universal that provides us with such a bond.  For Hegel then, both subjects and objects are grounded within the inherent spirit of the Absolute in which everything is a part of; his Absolute Idealism allows us to become implicitly aware of such a bond.  Hence things are not strictly grounded in Pippin’s loosely defined notion of the “I”.

Hegel, thus, is an Absolute Idealist because he allows his mind to progress in an unlimited way.  A way in which other forms of idealism does not allow.

If such an interpretation of Hegel as an Absolute Idealist is accepted, then surely this leaves a metaphysical enquiry into the nature of the absolute, but Hegel states:

 ‘the terminus [of the absolute] is at that point where knowledge is no longer compelled to go beyond itself’ (PS §80)12. 

So, such thoughts, whatever they be, are already within the absolute.  The terminus is true knowledge of everything as a complete whole in which, at that point, we can’t venture beyond it because there is no obligation to.  But the difficulty is that we just can’t imagine this!

Perhaps the problem with Hegel’s idea is his insistence that we can ‘know’ the world as it really is, for this implies that we are explicitly certain about it; but clearly this is not the case.  Instead we re compelled to know it implicitly.

But, as Schleiermacher mentioned, knowledge of the Absolute is more a ‘matter of feeling’13 or hunch that there is something unconditionally knowable that we and everything else are an essential part.

A Wittgensteinian may argue that this is a matter of language going on holiday (PI §38)14, but this would be to impose that the problem is with our own thinking, and that there is no meaning to the universe.  Indeed there might not be any meaning in an anthropomorphic sense, but because we can’t justify meaning humanly, is not to say that there is no meaning at all.

To summarize the argument, Hegel is an Absolute Idealist in the sense that he incorporates subject and object as mind-like.  That our consciousness is essentially the creator of reality and that such reality is conditioned upon the Absolute Idea which is unconditioned.

He is not an idealist in a subjective nor transcendental sense as he finds these as heavily one sided. 

Although Pippin argues that he follows on from Kant’s metaphysics, a more accurate interpretation shows that even though Hegel incorporates it as part of his quest for Absolute knowledge, essentially he reacts to it as an incomplete system.

As Americks doesn’t interpret Hegel as an idealist in any sense, it is more unlikely that he is either a realist or materialist in any sense, since he is very much adamant about an underlying essence from which everything becomes into being.

Effectively, therefore, Hegel jumps from a limited form of thinking to an unlimited one, and it is this leap that makes him an Absolute Idealist.

© 2011 Roberto Nacci All Rights Reserved

References

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i This is very similar to Spinoza’s Idea of God.

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1 Karl Americks, Hegel and Idealism, The Monist, 74 (1991) , pp. 386-402 p.397

2 Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: The satisfaction of Self-consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 7.

3 G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, In Robert. C Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p, 176

4 Robert. C. Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 23

5 Frederick Beiser, Hegel (Oxon: Routledge, 2005), p. 54

6 G.W.F. Hegel, The Encyclopedia Logic, Part I of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, In Beiser (2005), p. 57

7Beiser, op. cit., p.54.

8Beiser, op. cit., p. 62

9 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977)

10 ibid.  p

11 Peter Singer, Hegel, In Roger Scruton, Peter Singer, Christopher Janaway, and Michale Tanner, German Philosophers. Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche ( Oxford: Oxford University Press (1997) p. 177

12 G.W.F. Hegel op. cit, §80

13 Solomon, op. cit., p.85

14 G.E.M. Anscombe and R.Rhees (1953), Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell

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Attachment theory and religion: Childhood attachments, religious belief, and Conversion (Kirkpatrick and Shaver, 1990)

Attachment theory and religion:  Childhood attachments, religious belief, and Conversion (Kirkpatrick and Shaver, 1990)

Paper review

Following Ainsworth’s 1969 work on the strange situation – a method for detecting the attachment type of an infant to their mother - as a generally accepted psychological theory of attachment, Kirkpatrick and Shaver (1990) examined the relationship between such attachments to later religious belief and conversion.  In noting the empirical limitations of earlier work in psychodynamics, Kirkpatrick and Shaver believe that attachment theory, as an empirical theory, provides a theoretical framework for approaching questions concerning childhood and later religiosity.  This paper will critically review Kirkpatrick and Shaver’s study, beginning with a brief overview of attachment theory before evaluating their main findings.

Infants are seen as having an inbuilt tendency to seek a secure attachment to their mother in times of need and stress.  The infant therefore expects the mother to respond to such worries and fears[1], if the mother fails to respond, or is inconsistent with their response, an insecure attachment may therefore develop.  Kirkpatrick and Shaver take this view, following the work of Bowlby (1969), Ainsworth (1969) and many other empirical studies (Hazan and Shaver, 1987; Weiss, 1973, 1982) that such early attachments are ‘active’ and ‘influential’ throughout the lifespan.  To test for the attachment type, Ainsworth developed the ‘strange situation’, an environment designed to apply a small amount of stress onto the child thus detecting the relationship between their cried for security and their mother’s response.  Three attachment types are observed: Secure – the mother responds to the child’s needs; Insecure Avoidant – the mother tends to reject the infant’s pleas; and Insecure Ambivalent – the mother is inconsistent with their response.

Kirkpatrick and Shaver acknowledges that infants develop ‘through their experienced expectations and beliefs about the availability and reliability of the attachment figure as a haven and secure base’ (p. 317).  They therefore believe that religious belief can be conceptualized in the form of attachment theory (p. 318), particularly in the Christian tradition where they believe that God corresponds closely to the idea of a secure, or ideal attachment figure.  The idea is very reminiscent of Freud’s early conception of God as the exalted father figure, the only exception is that attachment theory places priority on the mother rather than the father.  Therefore, Kirkpatrick and Shaver think there are similarities between the Christian God as a ‘protective parent’ (Kaufman, 1981); that is, a God that is often ‘by ones side’ (p. 319) and attachment theory – Indeed, they later go on to claim that God serves as a substitute attachment figure.  It is noticeable, then, that Kirkpatrick and Shaver is defining religious belief specifically in the Christian tradition, in which God, or even Jesus, is the corner stone to such a belief.  Whether they are right in conceptualizing religion in this sense is a matter of debate, however as it is known ‘religiousness’ and indeed ‘religion’ per se does not require a ‘God’ or ‘creator’ as a prerequisite for such belief.  Richard Dawkins, for example, opens the first chapter of his book, ‘The God Delusion’, titled ‘A deeply religious non believer’, here he takes religiousness not in a Godly sense or traditional sense, but instead in an obsessive sense in which he believes science overcomes such religious belief.  On the other hand, Buddhists do not claim there necessarily being a God in any shape or form (deistically or theistically), the primary goal, instead, is rather to seek detachment, including detachment from the ‘self’, rather than attachment.  So religiousness in this sense could well be conceptualized along the lines of having a mystical, or enlightening experience.  I do not deny the logic behind Kirkpatrick and Shaver’s concept of early attachment relationships to the Christian concept of God as an ideal attachment figure, but the question thus remains as to whether the specificity of Christianity in their report, is a valid study for religious belief in general as the title of the paper implies.  And so, perhaps it is rather dubious as to whether attachment theory can be conceptualized within other definitions of religiosity similarly to the ones stated above.

Despite the issue of defining religiousness, Kirkpatrick and Shaver conducted an empirical investigation – via questionnaire – to firstly examine the relationship between maternal religiousness to each attachment type, and secondly the relation ship between such attachments and the degree of their mothers religiosity (low or high).  The findings firstly indicated that the relationship between maternal religiosity and the respondents’ depends on the nature of the attachment type.  In other words, those who categorized themselves as securely attached to their religious mothers were also more likely to be religious.  The implication it seems is that the nature of the attachment type leads the infant on to identifying with their mothers personal belief.  However, the most interesting finding is perhaps the strong significant correlations between an avoidant attachment type to the belief in the moral or ethical teachings of Christianity (Ethical type) and a Personal God (r = .73 and .52 respectively).  When the data was dichotomized into low and high means of maternal religiosity (table 2, p. 325), it is clear that those who had avoidant mothers tended to be more religious in comparison to those in the other two groups.  But again, the most interesting finding was that those who experienced avoidant attachments to relatively non religious mothers in believed more in Jesus Christ as lord and savior (Born Again), believing in a Personal God, and finally having a relationship with God.  Interestingly, however, the mean value for belief in a Personal God increased by 38.9 whereas only the mean belief of having a relationship with God increased by only 4.6.  It seems peculiar because since belief in a Personal God, i.e. one that is there for you at times of need, or ‘by one’s side’, should be linked to the perception of having a relationship with God.  Therefore I would have predicted that the mean values for both variables be relatively similar, but the data goes contrary to this assumption.  In this case, therefore, there is no link, or very little, between having a relationship with God and believing in a Personal God. 

Despite these interesting findings it is important to note that in the majority of religious measurements, weak correlations between attachment type and religiosity were observed.  In taking this into account one should not dismiss the possibility that other factors throughout the lifespan can play a role in engaging in religious behaviour or belief; for example, books we read, people we meet, stories we hear e.t.c.  In fact a range of studies focusing on maternal behaviour and later attachment types in general have only found a moderate relationship at best (De Wolff & Van Ijzendoorn, 1997), this suggests that we should be more cautious in our interpretation between attachment types and religion variables.  Indeed, the larger correlations indicate that there is something going on within the nature of avoidant attachments and later religiosity in general, but in comparison to those securely attached the results are not clear-cut.

There is a further danger with the notion of attributing God as an ideal attachment figure as a substitute for those who experienced a rejecting mother.  Firstly, and most importantly Psychologists in this field are treating the idea of God as a psychological phenomenon attributed to the detrimental effects of insecure attachment.  Whether this view can be incorporated into the actual ontology of Christianity remains to be clear – Freud would perhaps disagree on this point by seeing Christianity as a development from the early notion of God the exalted father figure – however it is extremely unlikely that the participants in this study see God in the same light that Kirkpatrick and Shaver conceptualize Him.  For them, and in assuming their beliefs are relatively strong, God is real independent of whether they had a secure or insecure attachment to their mother.  Therefore the notion of an ideal attachment figure is not something they would see as the main reason for their belief, nor would they see it as something that replaces their mother.  Secondly, there lies the assumption that insecure attachments provide a possible ontology for such later religious belief.  Not only can this lead to unnecessary and provocative stigma; seeing religious belief as a form of mental illness or a detrimental side effect of attachment disorder - Dawkins takes the view that religion is a delusion for example – but it defeats the purpose of what religion actually means to those who believe and experience such things.  Indeed, if we go by contemporary thinking and say that early attachments provide an ontology, or theoretical framework for beliefs and behaviours in all walks of life, then it shouldn’t be so surprising that we find a connection to later religious beliefs as well.  But in taking this view we are loosing touch with perhaps the most important aspect of development – the ability to wage our free will and choice[2] - while running the risk of blaming our mothers for our later outcomes.

In the last section of the paper (pp. 326-328), Kirkpatrick and Shaver examined the relationship between maternal attachment and sudden religious conversion.  The results suggest that those who classified themselves as insecure avoidant were four times more likely to experience a sudden religious conversion in either adolescents or adulthood (44.5%) in comparison to only 9.4% (secure), and 8.2% (anxious/ambivalent).  Kirkpatrick and Shaver list three types of events as reasons for their conversion:  Problems with relationships; problems with parents, and sever emotional distress.  At first these results are quite interesting because it suggests a link between relationship problems in general (with people), to later relationships with God.  The implication here is that those who experienced avoidant attachments had more of an urge to convert in contrast to those that didn’t.

But what exactly is a sudden religious conversion, and why is it so detrimental to espousing the belief that avoidant attachment types play a key role?  The implication of the word sudden is such as something that is abrupt and unexpected, something that comes about with no prior warning, nor even comes across as a thought or inclination that this ‘something’ will take place.  Is it correct to say that 44.4% in this study converted without any such inclination?  That they blindly, as it were, converted out of the blue?  Kirkpatrick and Shaver forced a yes or no answer to this particular question, but how can we be certain of the validity of suddenness i.e. that the measurement ‘suddenness’ is measuring what Kirkpatrick and Shaver actually wanted it to measure?  It is difficult to actually know whether the participant did in fact experience a sudden religious conversion as defined above, because if conversion took place at a young age then bias, poor memory recall, or misinterpretation could account for their answering yes, where as if it occurred later in life, during adulthood, then certain life events (conscious or otherwise) between infancy and adulthood could have contributed to their decision.  On the other hand, this result doesn’t rule out the possibility that those who didn’t experience a sudden conversion didn’t experience a conversion at all.  It is possible that those who answered no on the questionnaire experienced a slow, or gradual religious conversion that occurred over time.  However, without measuring any form of gradual conversion the relationship between avoidant attachment and later conversion might have well been different.

To conclude there certainly appears to be something going on between avoidant attachment types and later religiosity, however and as I have hoped to have shown, the relationship is somewhat weak in most cases and not specifically clear in comparison to secure attachments.  Indeed, there are also difficulties with the notion of measuring religion as pointed out earlier, as it is far from clear as to whether we can regard the layman interpretation of Christianity as a sufficient test for religious belief, since there are many other ways of conceptualizing religion i.e. in ways that do not espouse the need for a God.  The results which comprise religious conversion are interesting and perhaps could be improved by measuring gradual conversion as well as sudden conversion.  Indeed, the bottom line with this study is that attachment is far from causing religious belief, while God serving as a substitute attachment figure remains, although interesting, dubious if we take a personal approach to such religious experience.     

© 2011 Roberto Nacci All Rights Reserved

References

Ainsworth, Mary D. Salter (1969). In Kirkpatrick, L, A., Shaver, P, R. (1990).  Attachment Theory and Religion: Attachment theory and religion:  Childhood attachments, religious belief, and Conversion.  Journal for the scientific Study of Religion, 29(3): 315:334

Bowlby, John (1969). In Kirkpatrick, L, A., Shaver, P, R. (1990).  Attachment Theory and Religion: Attachment theory and religion:  Childhood attachments, religious belief, and Conversion.  Journal for the scientific Study of Religion, 29(3): 315:334

Hazan, Cindy and Shaver, Phillip (1987).  In Kirkpatrick, L, A., Shaver, P, R. (1990).  Attachment Theory and Religion: Attachment theory and religion:  Childhood attachments, religious belief, and Conversion.  Journal for the scientific Study of Religion, 29(3): 315:334

Dawkins, Richard (2006).  The God Delusion.  London: Bantam Press, p.9

De Wolff, M.S. and Van Ijzendoorn, M.H. (1997) In Alberry, I.P., Chandler, C., Field, A., Jones, Dai., Messer, D., Moore, Simon., Sterling, Chris.  Complete Psychology (2^nd Edition), Oxon: Hodder Education, p. 289

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[1] By crying for example.

[2] Assuming we have a free will.

Freud and Jung on the religious practice of confession in the catholic tradition

Freud and Jung on the religious practice of confession in the catholic tradition

This essay will discuss the religious practice of confession within the psychological framework of two key thinkers: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.  The paper is split into three parts.  The first part of the essay will describe what confession is and provide a psychological account of the practice.  The second part will attempt to explain the practice in light of a Freud’s theory of repressed sexual desire, while the third will contrast this with Jung’s account of archetypes.

I

Confession is a frequently exercised form of religious practice that occurs in a variety of forms across different cultures and religions worldwide.  In the Catholic tradition for example, confession is usually undertaken through the medium of a priest who is believed to have the authorization to forgive and revoke sins of the penitent, and thus bridge them to a reconciliation to God.  But in other traditions, such as Judaism for example, confessing ones sins is usually undertaken within the community, whereas in Islam it is generally regarded as a private affair between the penitent and God.  Confession also occurs in eastern religions such as Buddhism, where the practice is not explicitly intended for requesting forgiveness from a higher power (God), but rather involves reciting a number of sutras with the aim of purifying any wrongness or negativity inside the self.

But the act of confession in the catholic tradition is a psychologically interesting area for a number of reasons.  Firstly, the implication of confessing a sin, or sins, suggests that one has done a bad thing, either intentionally or otherwise, through the eyes of God.  Doing wrong thus creates tension within the penitent in the sense that he believes that God is both aware and unsatisfied with his earthly behaviours.  Such tension can therefore create anxiety which results in the perceived belief that if confession is not undertaken, then there is a permanent risk of rejection from God and entrance into his kingdom.  This also suggests that the act of confessing one’s sins will bring them back to a reconciliation to God, which provides them with a sense of inner peace since the threat of any permanent detachment from him is eradicated.  Therefore secondly, a whole range of psychological processes can be observed by this need to confess.  Such as feelings of guilt and shame for doing what is believed to be wrong or bad.  These emotions could arise either out of remorse for the sin committed and the subsequent emotional effects they had on the penitent or others, or because they feel they have let God down and have jeopardized their relationship with Him.  Anxiety and apprehensiveness can therefore arise, as well as a sense of fear in God since his threat of eternal damnation is perceived as a consequence of straying away from his path. 

II

How would Freud interpret this kind of religious behaviour?  Since for Freud God is a reflection of 'our' harking back to a primeval exalted father, a domineering, violent and jealous male[i] who our ancestors, his own sons, killed in order to win the possession of their mother(s)[1] (a process largely due to the Oedipus complex), Freud would claim that the subsequent ‘guilt’ and general ill feeling that arose from this crime influenced their need to seek his replacement through totemic symbols and rituals such as a the totem feast - a ritual in which the totem was killed and soon after mourned over – in commemoration of the murdered father.  This lead on to the development of two fundamental prohibitions that reflect inner desires, i.e. the prohibition of killing the totem, and the prohibition of having sexual relations with members of the same totem clan.  Thus, the Oedipus complex and the prohibitions outlined and set up by our early ancestors reveal hidden unconscious wishes and desires for doing what is generally accepted as something that should not have be done.  These ambivalent, yet repressed, feelings are not only displayed in these early totemic rituals, but they are eventually inherited in the form of obsessive neurotic behaviour which are revealed also in religious behaviour. 

Confession then, Freud would argue, is therefore a type of neurotic obsessive practice, which stems from our hidden desire to eliminate the father and posses the mother.  Guilt experienced in confession and the subsequent development of religious do’s and don’ts are in fact residual feelings that stem back to the killing of the father and possession of the mother, or repressed sexual desires within the totemic group that therefore provided the groundwork for the practice of confession since guilt is a fundamental psychological response when one desires to confess their sins.  But it is also a practice that reflects the ambivalent relationship our primordial ancestors had with their own father.  On the one hand the penitent holds God the father in high-esteem and loves him, but on the other hand He is feared and loathed with his threats of eternal damnation, especially if one commits a prohibited act.  However Freud would argue that since God reflects the exalted father, who exists out of our own guilt for killing Him in the first place, there becomes a deeper ambivalence between Him and the penitent in doing what is wished for and doing what is deemed prohibited which results in an obsessive need to constantly confess one’s perceived sins to Him.  In confessing ones sins then, Freud would further contend that God, the father, is a man-made creation that is a reflection of the killing of our ancestor’s father.  Thus through our guilt God is placed back on top of the hierarchy; a dominant figure who looks down at us and is aware of our deeds, whether good or bad.  Consequently God serves like a father figure: we ask for forgiveness when we have done something bad, and is upset when we do so, deeds which will inevitably be committed due to our inner repressed desire to commit them.  In which case Freud would say that confession is obsessive because we are always doing what we shouldn’t do and always asking for forgiveness for them.  As a result the relationship between the penitent and God, the father, is essentially an infantile obsessive one.

Just as in the later totem rituals then, confession, Freud would maintain, is a form of wishful thinking that denies the essence of reality.  God, the father, is still believed to exist and has the capability to influence our lives according to our behaviours and prayers to Him.  Freud, would therefore, see that the belief in praying to God for forgiveness as a delusion, a belief that reflects what one his patients coined as ‘the omnipotence of thought’, where the mind constitutes a fantasy world of an indulgence in certain actions, such as counting compulsively between flashes of lightening[ii] has some affect on reality. In the case of confession then the act of constantly asking for forgiveness leads to the false believe that God will somehow accept you back into his family as one of his own.

III

While Freud’s account of confession is essentially reduced to infantile Oedipal conflicts with the father, Jung, on the other hand, does away with this interpretation and would take a more positive, yet enigmatic approach.  For Jung, confession would be seen as a way of expressing our innate and indeed universal tendencies for spirituality, a tendency that is both normal as well as healthy.  The practice subsequently reflects  that this tendency toward 'religion' is connected to the primeval ideas of our ancestors, and that throughout the centuries we have inherited these unconscious ideas as from them formed the practise of confession.  These basic religious ideas, or forms, for example, about reality or God, lack content, but are thus innate and universal across all stretches of time.  These simple, yet unconscious principles, are passed down and inherited via people to people through what Jung calls the collective unconscious.  Therefore, it is the collective unconscious which holds a priori religious ideas that are passed down and thus inherited from each generation.  This is in contradistinction to what Jung calls our personal unconscious.  A personal unconscious that is individual and unique to ourself.  The collective unconscious, for Jung,  provides us with the foundation for all religious content, known as archetypes, and enables such ideas to arise into our consciousness thus enabling us with the ability to create content.  In short, confession then, Jung would argue, is an archetype of the collective unconscious, which has its origin in a priori religious ideas and thoughts of our primordial ancestors.   Indeed, Jung would argue that this is not to say that our ancestors too practice confession in exactly the same way as some religious people do today, but instead he would see contemporary confession by way of expressing our innate desire for religion, spirituality and meaning in ones life.  The upshot is that Freud would argue that the need for confessing to God is taken in the form of phantasy which has its origin in repressed sexual desires, Jung would maintain that such phantasy is normal and healthy since it corresponds to an antique mind-set that is not effected by our repressed desires or wishes.

Indeed, the central crux of confession is confession to God.  For Jung, God is an archetype as well, but an archetype that can be dichotomized into what he called archetypal form and archetypal content.  In terms of archetypal form, God is an in-built universal mechanism which has existed since the human race begun, and thus explains that belief in God - whatever that might entail - is a predisposition.  God as archetypal content on the other hand the reflects this belief in symbols, such as the sun and/ or religious items.  In terms of the symbol for God in confession, Jung, being in partial agreement with Freud, would see the father as the symbolic God-content[iii].  But the father does not displace God as a result of the Oedipus complex, but is instead a reactivation of the archetypal form God takes in the collective unconscious of our primordial ancestors and, perhaps, beyond. 

It is important to note that Jung took an agnostic approach to the existence of God or the reality of supernatural experiences in themselves, even though there is a general feeling that he does actually believe in His existence.  But in terms of his theory, the idea of God, as well as religious experiences and practices, are psychically real, healthy and completely normal.  This would entail that although confession could be based on some level of neurosis of the personal unconscious, Jung on the other hand would claim that since it is more of a natural by product of archaic thinking, it thus serves as a positive practice and reveals the inner desire for spirituality.  

In conclusion, Freud would take a more reductive and original approach to confession as stemming from repressed sexual desires in our personal unconscious minds, whereas Jung takes a less reductive approach and would simply indicate that confession, and the many symbols infatuated within it, are mere archetypes of earlier ideas in our ancestral past.  Indeed, how these ideas came to serve in the collective unconscious in the first place is a great mystery – but perhaps this reflects Jung’s desire to keep religious beliefs and practices, contrary to Freud, as a normal and positive form of behaviour that is not sexualized.

© 2011 Roberto Nacci All Rights Reserved

References

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[1] I mention the plural form of mother to reflect a primordial society in which the many women gave birth to sons who desired to take her.

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[i] Freud, Sigmund., An autobiographical study, The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 20, (1925-1926): An autobiographical study; inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety; The question of lay analysis, and other works.  London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis (1959). p. 67

[ii] This example is taken from one of Freud’s patients “The rat man”.  Palmer, Michael., Freud and Jung on Religion, London: Routledge (1997). p. 20

[iii] Jung made this connection between the father acting as a symbol for God with one of his patients in C.G Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (1990), Routledge: London. 

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