The psychoanalytic approach to rituals, as explained by Sigmund Freud, views them as expressions of deep psychological processes within individuals and society. In his book Totem and Taboo (1918), Freud connects rituals to a mythic event in early human history, known as the Oedipal myth.
Freud suggests that in primitive societies, the “father” was a dominant, authoritarian figure who controlled all the group’s resources, both human and natural. This created jealousy among the sons, who eventually conspired to kill their father. After committing this act, they were overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, shame, and horror. To deal with this collective guilt, the sons created a totem, which was a symbolic representation of their father, and they began to worship it through rituals.
These rituals served an important psychological purpose: they allowed the group to express and manage their collective shame and guilt in a structured way. By performing rituals, the individuals in society could symbolically lay out their feelings and seek relief from their emotional burden. In this sense, rituals helped maintain social harmony by giving people a way to deal with these difficult emotions.
However, Freud also believed that rituals are non-rational. They do not follow a logical or practical purpose in terms of a clear goal or means-end relationship. Instead, they are based on deep, unconscious feelings and desires. While rituals can promote group unity, Freud saw them as a symptom of a deeper “collective neurosis” in society. In other words, rituals reflect the unresolved psychological conflicts of the group, particularly guilt from past events like the mythical patricide.
In summary, the psychoanalytic approach sees rituals as emotionally driven behaviors that stem from unresolved psychological issues within a society.
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