A Quote by Sigmund Freud

Religion: Something comparable to childhood neurosis

Sigmund Freud

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Childhood Comparable Neurosis Religion Something

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Sigmund Freud
Austrian - Psychologist
May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.

Sigmund Freud

In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis.

Sigmund Freud

In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.

Rollo May

It could be ventured to understand obsessive compulsive neurosis as the pathological counterpart of religious development, to define neurosis as an individual religiosity; to define religion as a universal obsessive compulsive neurosis.

Sigmund Freud

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities... If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.

Sigmund Freud

Religion (is) a universal obsessional neurosis.

Sigmund Freud

Religion [is] the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity

Sigmund Freud

We [Americans] have secularized the public life of our country in such a way to say something is religious is something negative. Religion has now turned into a way to discredit people. It is futile and dishonest to argue about religion. Religion is a phenomenological umbrella; there are all kinds of religions. It makes a difference when your religion is telling you something true or something false.

Francis George

Insects are what neurosis would sound like, if neurosis could make a noise with its nose.

Martin Amis

I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role, if any, religion plays in their development. I think that religion may be some random by-product of mammalian reproduction. If that's true, would non-mammalian aliens have a religion?

Arthur C. Clarke

I think, with most writers, their neurosis is finishing things. I have a different neurosis. I'm terribly anxious when it's not finished. Then I become really difficult to live with.

Theresa Rebeck

The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions; by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.

Sigmund Freud

You can see neurosis from below - as a sickness - as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

Abraham Maslow

I had been struck by the analogy between neurosis and romanticism. Romanticism was truly a parallel to neurosis. It demanded of reality an illusory world, love, an absolute which it could never obtain, and thus destroyed itself by the dream.

Anais Nin

Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

We may say that hysteria is a caricature of an artistic creation, a compulsion neurosis a caricature of a religion, and a paranoiac delusion a caricature of a philosophic system.

Sigmund Freud

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