Greg McCracken- Outside Reading 4- Freud

As a psych major, I practically read Freud on a monthly basis and I figured some of his theory should be blogged on. Though his theory is pretty strange, he does make some very good points. His ideas of id, ego, and super ego have particular relevance to the idea of religion. The id is the primal instincts of the individual and the super-ego is the moral basis. A person takes these two parts of their self and controls it using their ego. In comparision, the id is seen as the little devil on your shoulder while the super-ego is your angel. According to Freud, "The hysterical ego fends off a distressing perception with which the criticisms of its super-ego threaten it, in the same way in which it is in the habit of fending off an unedurable object-cathexis- by an act of repression. It is the ego, therefore, that is responsible for the sense of guilt remaining unconscious."

As a religious being, I have experienced this sense of guilt from not following my moral sense. Primarily, I do not follow the moral sense out of laziness than anything else. Because truth be told, it is tiresome to be good all the time. I recommend trying. You get exhausted mid day and you practically force yourself to do something wrong just to relax yourself. It is possible that this is only something that happens to me, and the trained religious being probably learns to calm the anxiety of constantly being moral. But it is also always true that when I put in the effort to be a moral being, I always feel great about myself.

One thing I found very interesting that contradicts Freud's theory was found in movies like Fight Club. These individuals actually found the religious within their primal instincts, and rebelled against the moral imperitive found in society. With this in mind, it makes one wonder which shoulder one is supposed to follow, the id or the ego.