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• Title: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FAITH
• Author : Sigmund Freud
• Release Date : January 20, 2014
• Genre: Philosophy,Books,Nonfiction,Health, Mind & Body,Psychology,Religion & Spirituality,Christianity,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 19267 KB

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PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FAITH

THE LETTERS OF SIGMUND FREUD & OSKAR PFISTER


The correspondence began in 1909 and ended in 1937, two years before Freud's death. It consisted altogether of 134 items by Freud, of which nearly a hundred, mostly unabbreviated, are reproduced here.


Oskar Pfister, the youngest of the four sons of a Protestant pastor, was born in Zürich in 1873. After attending school in Zürich he studied theology, philosophy and psychology in Zürich, Basle and Berlin. His first congregation was at Wald in the canton of Zürich, and in 1902 he joined the Zürich circuit, of which he remained a member until his retirement in 1939.

During the first years of his ministry Pfister wrote a paper protesting against 'the sins of omission towards psychology of present-day theology'. In 1908 he came across the work of Freud, which provided him with the tool for which he had long sought, enabling him to give additional aid to those whom his spiritual aid alone had been insufficient. He made his way to the unconscious and half-conscious sources of anxiety states, doubts of conscience and obsessional ideas of those who sought his help and, in so far as medical intervention was not called for, worked with them in loosening up and dispersing their psychological difficulties, fixations and repressions, and independently laid the foundations of a psychologically oriented system of education and pastoral work.
His relations with Freud continued through all the years of his ministry and were consolidated in numerous letters and occasional meetings. The two men were real friends. Their correspondence demonstrates how close and productive was the bond between them. Their temperaments, and the honesty and integrity which characterised both, often brought them into sharp conflict, but they also always showed true tolerance and mutual understanding.
A number of Pfister's works were stimulated by conversation and correspondence with Freud, and similarly Freud took suggestions from Pfister for his own work. There is, for instance, no doubt that he accepted the most varied suggestions for the technique of child analysis from Pfister's very concrete communications concerning the psychoanalysis of children and young persons at the stage of puberty.

In accordance with Pfister's calling, it was in the pastoral field that his analytic work was most fruitful. It is interesting to note that Freud, who speaks of himself as a 'secular pastoral worker', has an open ear for the technique and experiences of the religious and spiritual pastoral worker Pfister, while the latter emphasises the objectivity of Freud, who described himself as being devoid of religious feeling. In this connection Pfister quotes the letter Freud wrote him in which he said:

In itself psychoanalysis is neither religious nor non-religious, but an impartial tool which both priest and layman can use in the service of the sufferer. I am very much struck by the fact that it never occurred to me how extraordinarily helpful the psycho-analytic method might he in pastoral work, but that is surely accounted for by the remoteness from me, as a wicked pagan, of the whole system of ideas.

Pfister's contributions to the practice of psychoanalysis are contained in numerous publications. Even more important than the written word was the impact of his personality. His thesis that true religion can be a defence against neurosis was not denied by Freud, though he thought that in this loveless world it was a rarity and therefore not a thing not to be depended on.


We had hoped to publish his correspondence with Pfister in its entirety but, though Freud's original letters have survived, Pfister's have not. Some were destroyed by Freud at Pfister's wish, and others perished in the hazards of emigration. However, surviving shorthand notes of Pfister's have made it possible to reconstruct his letters and hence to fill in a number of important gaps.

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