The Future of an Illusion

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1927

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-10

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Key Figures

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst whose influential writings helped to found the discipline of psychoanalysis at the turn of the 20th century. As a practicing neurologist in the late 19th century in Vienna, Freud developed an innovative technique for treating his mentally ill patients, often known as talk therapy or free association. The method focused on letting the patient voice whatever came into his or her mind during sessions, the doctor would then analyze what the patient had said to better understand the origins of the patient’s mental illness.

Through his clinical work, Freud developed a theory of the unconscious and believed that most mental illnesses arose from traumatic childhood memories or experiences. Freud believed the psyche was driven by certain key instinctual urges or drives, which individuals would try and repress as they developed into adulthood. The struggle to repress these drives would often manifest in adults as neuroses—obsessive behaviors or mental disorders that prevented the adult from living a fulfilling life. Freud developed these theories in a number of books throughout his career, including The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), The Ego and the Id (1923), and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930).

Written in 1927, The Future of an Illusion was one of a number of attempts by Freud to apply the insights of psychoanalysis to human culture and civilization as a whole. Throughout the text, Freud employs his theory of the nature of the human psyche to hypothesize how civilization first arose in early man, as well as to provide an analysis for the role religion plays in human societies. As psychoanalysis argues that individuals are governed by base instincts, Freud believes that religion exists to coerce individuals into repressing those instincts—presenting prohibitions against them as divine laws created by God. Freud notes that there is a certain danger in publishing his ideas, as it may bolster critics of the discipline of psychoanalysis: “‘Now we will see,’ [critics] will say, ‘where psycho-analysis leads to. The mask has fallen; it leads to a denial of God and of a moral ideal, as we always suspected’” (36).

Freud’s Opponent

One of the only other figures to appear in The Future of an Illusion, besides Freud, is his imaginary opponent. The figure first appears in Chapter 4, where Freud writes that presenting his argument without any criticism or objections will prevent his argument from being as robust as it could be. As a result, Freud imagines that he is speaking to an “opponent who follows my arguments with mistrust” and expresses this opponent’s objections by fully entering into the opponent’s voice (21). The imaginary opponent thus becomes a secondary character in the text, with Freud and the opponent often reacting to each other almost as though they were in a dialogue.

When the opponent first appears, his tone is merely skeptical of Freud, and he does not outright object to Freud’s arguments about religion. Rather, he notes that some of what Freud is saying “sounds strange to me” and prompts Freud to elaborate on his assertions, such as that “civilization creates these religious ideas” (21). However, as the book progresses, Freud’s opponent becomes increasingly critical of Freud’s argument and becomes a staunch defender of religion. Freud describes how the opponent’s “loud voice” interrupts to claim that Freud’s investigations are an outright danger to the fabric of society: “The doctrines of religion are not a subject one can quibble about like any other” (34). The opponent’s criticisms are mainly based out of the fear that without religion “everyone will […] follow his asocial, egoistic instincts” (34). In Chapter 10, the opponent claims that Freud’s faith in scientific thinking is an illusion just as much as religion is: “you emerge as an enthusiast who allows himself to be carried away by illusions” (51). The opponent argues that human civilization cannot exist without some form of illusionistic thinking and believes that religion should be embraced due to its long history.

God

Though God does not appear as an outright character in Freud’s text, part of Freud’s analysis of religion is an investigation into how the Christian idea of God emerged over the development of human civilization. Freud argues that the notion of gods first developed through the “humanization of nature” (16), in which early man imagined that human-like gods ruled over different natural forces to explain nature’s seemingly unpredictable behavior. As civilization progressed, humans realized that nature seemed to follow repeating patterns, and they no longer needed to imagine gods to explain the natural world.

In turn, the multiple gods of polytheistic religions coalesced into the single God of monotheistic religions such as Judaism and Christianity. Freud argues that the purpose of this God is to help individuals deal with their sense of hopelessness and insignificance, leading to a projection of the parent-child relationship: “Now that God was a single person, man’s relations to him could recover the intimacy and intensity of the child’s relation to his father” (19). By turning God into a father figure, individuals can imagine that God protects over them as a father would, providing a sense of reassurance to help with their feelings of helplessness.