Freud and Religion

Repression is the forced storage into the unconscious of experiences that are so severe you don’t have emotions towards them. Everything you experience or want to experience stays with you in your unconscious mind. Bad experiences are pushed down into the unconscious instead of naturally falling down, becoming repressed. A good example of repression, according to Freud, is the repression of the Oedipus complex; we push those feelings down into the unconscious mind. Eventually …

…sees the illusion of religion as protection from nature. The constant battle of nature versus culture leaves us looking for security. Religion offers this security through the promise of afterlife or salvation, so that we don’t worry about what will happen if we lose. Freud says that religion is an illusion. It is a fiction that we have come to believe as being true. It helps us cope with nature by giving us hope.