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9 Introduction Wolfgang Müller-Funk and Herman Westerink This book works out and connects the results of two ambitious international conferences held between 2009 and 2011 organised by the Sigmund Freud Foundation in Vienna: ‘The Force of Monotheism’ and ‘Does Psychoanalysis Set Limits? Authority, Norms, Law, …and Perversion’. The first refers to the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion, especially ‘Monotheism’, the other is focused on the question of whether Freud’s theory entails a normative framework and therefore at least an implicit value system, something like a modern ethics. What the two research issues have in common is that both quite clearly have a cultural frame. Culture in a broader sense – ‘culture’ in small letters – cannot be analysed properly without reference to religion and ethics. As one can see in Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud preferred a wide concept of culture, one based on an anthropological understanding. And it is also quite evident that religion as culture has an ethical dimension. So one may put the question; can psychoanalysis be interpreted as the modern heir of religious tradition, as an ethic for the individual in times of modernity? This question goes hand in hand with late-antique scepticism, but also has similarities with Montaigne. Discussing psychoanalysis as a form of post-religious phenomenon and not only as a form of cultural analysis also implies an understanding of secularisation that differs from the main stream, suggesting an end of religion in the name of the long-term project of enlightenment. As in The Future of an Illusion Freud is generally ambivalent with regard to religion, because it seems to be that human beings need that kind of illusion. The first topic of the book concerns the relation between religion and psychoanalysis, and focuses on the question if, and to what extent, monotheism in the strong sense (Judaism and Islam) or in a weaker version (Christianity) fits semantically and structurally together with psychoanalysis. One has to point out that in contemporary discourses on religion it is not so clear what ‘monotheism’ really means and if the binary opposition between ‘monotheism’ and ‘polytheism’, which often goes hand in hand with a colonial discrimination between European civilised and less civilised non-European people, works well. In Post-modernism (for example in Odo Marquardt but to some extent also in Jan Assmann) there is also a tendency to praise the Wolfgang Müller-Funk and Herman Westerink 10 pluralism of polytheism by bashing monotheism as the dictatorship of one God with capital letters. It would be a challenging project to deconstruct this kind of binary with the instrument of Derrida’s deconstruction. Freud’s relation to religion as such is deeply ambivalent. Appropriately, the different contributions to that theme entail all the different conclusions in the book. So there is by the end a Catholic, a Jewish, a Protestant and even an Islamic Freud. As an heir of historical Enlightenment, religion is for him at first glance an illusion. But it is not opium as in Marx or Heine; or if it is opium, it is something human beings need. The same is true with ‘monotheism’. On the one hand Judaism, when seen as the pre-runner of modern rationality has, as its critics argue, a dictatorial tendency, but on the other hand it makes an enormous amount of human progress possible. There is only one reason, as there is only one God in monotheistic religions. Both modern ratio and the God of the monotheistic religions have a strong force. As two different forms of superego (Über-Ich), they exercise power on human beings while at the same time bringing them forwards. This is the reason why Freud to some extent identifies with Moses. They represent a message that asks too much of their people, who feel discomforted because they are overburdened; therefore prophets such as Moses and Freud – this is a basic narrative in Freud – live under permanent thread of being killed, really or at least symbolically. Under these circumstances, the weak monotheism of the Catholic Church can be seen as a bearable compromise. Thus, one could argue, ‘monotheism’ is the historical precondition of the possibility of enlightenment in small and in capital letters. Psychoanalysis is seen here as a secondary form of Enlightenment and as a secular “religion”, as a reflexive and intellectual modern and individualistic way of life. To some extent, psychoanalysis is no longer only a therapy or a method of cultural analysis, but has become an integrative part of...

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