Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/95

 THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION .87

patients in prescription and prohibitions, and in the conce'^tions of antique and primitive religions. Of essential importance is his deri- vation of the phobia of the sun and of ghosts from infantile totemism» which at the same time tends to the establishment and confirmation of the Freudian totem-theory. The elimination of doubt in the sphere of religion, the prohibition of images of the divine being, the origin of the brooding and questioning of the Talmud and so on are for the first time though possibly not finally explained by this analytic method. The present writer's contributions to the psychology of religion are directed to making intelligible the psychic significance as well as the psychological origin and modification of certain rites and mydiical forms. In these Freud's method is closely followed, thus again bringing out the extraordinarily valuable com- parison between the present day usages of savage races with the rites known by us to have been practised among ancient peoples. Thus in the couvade and the puberty-rites of savages certain per- formances are observable, the prototypes of which have risen by a slow process of transformation to the level of outstanding and important social and religious institutions (61), while in their ana- lysis repressed and repressive tendencies which determine the form of these primitive ceremonies become recognisable. The fear of reprisals felt by the father in respect to the newly born son which plays a significant part in the couvade is recognised as an im- portant factor in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. The puberty rites of the savage tribes represent actions which are intended to aid the generation which has just reached manhood to overcome their unconscious desires for incest and murder. Simtiltaneously with the initiation into the totemistic religion the younger generation is in these rites introduced into the community and the male cults. The manifold and painful tests of the novices are likened to the sufferings of God in the ancient religions; the Way of the Cross of Christ seen in this light seems to be a kind of sublimated puberty rite. The archaic and conservative character of the Judaic religion reveals the likeness between certain ceremonies and the symptoms of obsessional neuroses on the one hand and with the rites of primitive peoples on the other as heuristically valuable. The present writer believes he has proved in the case of two significant examples taken from the Jewish liturgy, viz, the Kolnidre and the Schofar, that these apparently isolated usages admit of explanation as the effect of unconscious processes and of