Psychoanalytical - as exemplified by Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)
(not an anthropologist per se, but heavily influenced them)

Sigmund Freud

"A brilliant Jewish atheist" whose major source of field work were his well-to-do neurotics of a puritan, sexually repressed, urban middle-class Vienna patients. Freud refocused the discussion and level of analysis away from society to the individual and innate psychological struggles that in turn become manifested in society. He asked, how do we mediate and control our basic psychological instincts, which can be selfish and destructive? Key points:

• Freud saw man as driven by his instincts and anxieties derived from two unconscious processes: the "id," i.e., passion, desire, pleasure, sexual gratification, evil, and 2. the "superego," i.e., morality, conscience, good.

• When confronted with an impasse between the two, they are overcome either by rational, logical processes, or by withdrawal into fantasy, dreams and illusions.

• One form of this second option is "religion" - defined as an illusion (something that only exists in one's head - there is no God, as it is something created by man in his own image) which functions to represent the triumph of the superego over the desires of the id.

• Exemplified in the "origins of religion." Given the Oedipus complex, in primeval times, the fathers monopolized all women for themselves and their sons envied them, resulting in a rivalry over access to the women. In uncontrolled passion, the sons kill their fathers and eat them - the id at work. In remorse and guilt, superego personifies "fathers" as God to watch over and see that it doesn't happen again.

• The images and content of religious illusion is the structure of child-family imagery, projecting morality and the triumph of the superego onto society. Such can be observed in the functioning of "male initiation rituals" and their degree of severity. In instances of close son-mother associations and need of strong adult male solidarity, find enhanced Oedipus rivalry and stronger male initiation rituals, resulting in subincision and circumcision rituals. Such rituals focus on the penis, symbolically and literally cutting ties with mothers and identifying with adult males.

• Problems:
  1. Not the best source of informants, and thus difficult to extend beyond his sample to all the human condition.

• Contribution:
  1. Role of childhood experiences and family structures influencing larger societal structures.

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