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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF 414 -
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS E

VOLUME X JANUARY 1929 t PART ı

ORIGINAL PAPERS

A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

BY *

SIGMUND FREUD
In the autumn of 1927 I had, very willingly, feceived a visit from a
German-American journalist (G. S. Viereck), who then published a
conversation with me recounting my lack of religious beliefs and my
indifference to survival after death. This so-called interview was |
widely read, and, among others, it brought me the following letter from
an American medical man :— 5

" . . . What struck me most was your answer to the question
whether you believe in a survival of personality after death. You are
reported as having said, “ I give no thought to the matter”.

* I am writing now to tell you of an experience that I had in the
year I graduated at the University of X. One afternoon while I was
passing through the dissecting-room my attention was attracted to a
sweet-faced dear old woman who was being carried to a dissecting-
table. This sweet-faced woman made such an impression on me that a
thought flashed up in my mind, “ There is no God : if there were a God
he would not have allowed this dear old woman to be brought into the
dissecting-room ”.

“When I got home that afternoon the feeling I had had at the
sight in the dissecting-room had determined me to discontinue going
to church. The doctrines of Christianity had before this been the
subject of doubts in my mind.

“While I was meditating on this matter a voice spoke to my soul
that " 1 should consider the step I was about to take”. My spirit
replied to this inner voice by saying, " 11 I knew of a gertainty that
Christianity was truth and the Bible was the Word of God, then I
would accept it ”. "

2 SIGMUND FREUD

“Tn the course of the next few days God made it clear to my soul
that the Bible was his Wo" that the teachings about Jesus Christ
were true, and that Jesus Ms our only hope. After such a clear
revelation I accepted thé Bible as God's Word and Jesus Christ as my
personal Saviour. Since then God has revealed himself to me by

many infalliPlsjproofs.
“I beg 3- a brother physician to give thought to this most
important mætter, and I can assure you, if you look into this subject
with an open mind, God will reveal the truth to your soul, the same as
he did to me and to multitudes of others. . . 。

I answered this letter politely, saying that I was glad to hear that
it had been possible for him to preserve his faith in consequence of
such an experience. od had not vouchsafed so much to me ; he had
never let me hear an inner voice, and if he did not make haste—in view
of my age—it would Bot be my fault if I remained to the end what I
am now—an infidel Jew.

My colleague's well-intentioned epistle also contained assurances
that to be a Jew was no obstacle to acquiring the true faith and gave
various instances to prove this. It culminated by telling me that
prayers were being earnestly Offered for me to God that he should
grant me ` faith to believe.”

The result of this entreaty has still to show itself. Meanwhile our
colleague's religious experience offers food for reflection. I might say
that it calls out for an attempt to interpret it as affectively determined,
for in itself it is improbable and particularly illogical. As we know,
God allows other horr&s to exist in the world very different from the
body of an old woman with an attractive face being brought to the
dissecting-table. These horrors have always existed, and must have
been happening at the time the American doctor was pursuing his
studies, while as a medical student he cannot have lived such a sheltered
life as to know nothing of all such ghastliness. Why then did his
indignation against God break out particularly at that sight in the
dissecting-room ?

The explanation—to anyone who is accustomed to consider people's
inner experiences and acts analytically—is easy, so easy that it became
part and parcel of my memory of the occurrence. Onceina discussion,
when I was referring to my devout colleague's letter, I mentioned that
he had written that the dead woman's face had reminded him of his
mother. Wa, that was not in the letter, and one's next thought is
that that gua not possibly have been in the letter; but it is the

A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 3

explanation that inevitably forces itself on one in view of the tender
words he uses about the old woman... One may fairly attribute the
young doctor’s weakness of judge: iát to emotions evoked by the
memory of his mother. And since one cafinot rid oneself of the bad
psycho-analytic habit of finding proofs in all kinds of minutiæ that are
also capable of less deep-seated explanations, one will also remember
that later the writer addresses me as ‘ brother physic 通 ーan expres-
sion not easy to paraphrase. ⑧

It may be supposed, therefore, that what had happened was this.
The sight of the naked body (or one which was just going to be exposed)
of a woman who reminded the young man of his mother stirred up in
him the longing for her which derives from the (Edipus complex, and
this in its turn is instantly supplemented by'ffeelings of revolt against
the father. Father and God are not yet very widely separated in his
mind: the desire to abolish his father can¥become conscious in 6
form of doubts about God's existence, which may then be disguised
and excused by his reason into indignation at the ill-treatment of his
mother. It is typical, too, for a child to regard what his father does
to his mother in sexual intercourse as ill-treatment. The new stirrings
of feeling which have arisen on the store of religion are only a repetition
of the Œdipus situation, and consequently after a short time they
meet with the same fate. They succumb to a powerful contrary
feeling. During the conflict the two opposed feelings are no longer
retained on the ground to which they had been displaced ; no argu-
ments in justification of God are attempted, nor are we told what were
the infallible proofs by which God proved his existence to the doubting
man. The conflict seems to have been played out in the form of a
hallucinatory psychosis; inner voices make themselves heard and
utter warnings against opposition to God. The outcome of the
struggle again takes place on religious ground ; it isthat predestined
by the fate of the (Edipus complex : full subjection to the will of God
the Father; the young man becomes a believer and accepts all that
he had been taught since childhood about God and Jesus Christ. He
has undergone a religious experience, a conversion.

All this is so simple and transparent that one cannot avoid wonder-
ing whether the explanation of this case does not contribute something
to the psychology of religious conversion in general. I would refer
here to a very able book by Sancte de Sanctis (La conversione religiosa,
Bologna, 1924), in which, moreover, all the findings å psycho-analysis
are taken into account. This book confirms one’s CER that

4 SIGMUND FREUD

by no means all cases of conversion are so easy to understand as that
related here, but that our case does not at any point controvert the
conclusions which modern MCN has come to on this subject. The
special feature of the insténce I have quoted lies in its immediate
connection with a particular incident, which enabled the unbelief to
flare up once 7 before it was finally overcome for that person.