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freud

freud Sigmund Freud gives a psychological interpretation to Eliades analysis. I am going to explain Freuds understanding and apply it in a Fraudian evaluation of the “Menominee Medicine Bundle.” Freud says, religions say that sacred realities are the divine beings who dwell in some other useable realm. He states that these ideas are illusions, mere wishes. “Religious ideas are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end results of thinking: they are illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind”(pg.38). He says that religion is an illusion, and it’s the origin of the physical human mind. He says that sacred reality is a reality as we wish it were because there is no evidence to prove it. “Illusion itself sets no store by verification”(pg.40). People believe in gods (divine beings), because they need to believe that he will reconcile us to cruelty of fate and forgive us for our sins. Freud says that people gave the name God to some abstraction, which they created themselves not realizing that he is a metaphysical shadow. Since there is no prove that Gods really exist, to Freud they are a mere fabrications brought on by humans wishful thinking. Religion manifests in our midst by our parents. These illusions are “ready made.” They are handed down to us from generations. We accept these ready-made ideas because these wishes speak of what is most important to us and what we’re most afraid of, for example death. “Death itself is not extinction, is not a return to inorganic lifelessness, but the beginning of a new kind of existence which lies on the path of development to something higher”(pg.23). He states that religious ideas satisfy everything we are most terrified by. In reality we project human qualities on the forces of nature, because we are afraid and powerless against the superior forces of nature. “If men are thought that there is no almighty and all just God, no divine world order and no future life, they will feel exempt from all obligation to obey the precepts of civilization”(pg.44). He is trying to say that because we are so weak and powerless we cannot control the superior forces of nature. There will be chaos without it. Freud is trying to change our reality by saying that religion keeps us ignorant. It is constantly reinforcing us how powerless we are. It doesn’t make us more happy than we are without religion, it also doesn’t make us more mortal. “It is doubtful whether men were in general happier at a time when religious doctrines held unrestricted sway; more mortal they certainly were not”(pg.48). He is attempting to say that we should get rid of religion because it makes us ignorant. According to Freud, “grandfathers” and “grandmothers” are illusions. They were brought on by villagers because there was starvation. People needed to believe in the grandparents who send down the medicine bundle, because people needed hope and something to believe in. “Grandfarents and grandmothers of the Indians, took council and decided to give him a mighty charm that he might pass on to the people to help and save them”(pg.145). In Freudian perspective, the villagers need to believe that the grandparents gave this medicine bundle to Me’napus in order to cope with their reality of starvation. In his perspective, Freud says that in the original myth grandparents send Me’napus with powers, according to the religious men. The only power here is that divine beings believe that the villagers were weak and helpless. “Only men of great power may have it/ women must never use or touch the bag”(pg.147). According to Freud, divine beings wanted only men of great power like Me’napus to handle the medicine bundle because they believe that regular human beings were too powerless to handle the bundle by themselves. Freud says that this manifests because the original story is retold time after time. “Bundle owner makes a speech in which he explains how Me’napus got the bundle and its use to mankind”(pg.148). This is a constant reminder of how divine beings think of regular people as weak and helpless. In changing our realities, Freud is trying to say that the medicine bundle doesn’t give people magical power. They only think it does because that is what they were being told. This illusion was handed down to them from generations to generations. “They imitate at the same time the report of firearms, and all the things they say and wish for will come to pass through the aid of the medicine”(pg.151). According to Freud, villagers didn’t need the medicine bundle. Hunting together would have the same effect, and they would have succeeded. A medicine bundle also made them ignorant. “I want a big buck, I want a fat doe”(pg.151). It made them ignorant because they think that they can depend on it and get whatever they want. Thus, Freud thinks that people should get rid of the medicine bundle because it makes them ignorant and they can be happy without it. In conclusion, I gave Freuds psychological interpretation to Eliades analysis and applied it to the “Menominee Medicine Bundle.” Bibliography:

Word Count: 856