Abstract
With respect to our psychoanalytic frame of reference allowing us to study the extent of the hypotheses concerning the religious phenomenon as formulated by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, in the context of a cross approach between the accuracy of the concept of conversion and of psychic mechanisms or phenomena at stake within conversions, and based on the testimonials of subjects acknowledging themselves in the experiment of conversion, we try to understand if and how religion is anchored in our cultural era through subversive effects it may have on the subject.
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Notes
“Jouissance” is a concept forged by Jacques Lacan throughout his elaboration of psychoanalysis. Because this concept went through many revisions and precisions all through Lacan’s teaching, and so as to retain only the essential of what it designates, we will consider that jouissance is what the subject losts as soon as he starts speaking, and that it is what all his psychological activity aims at recovering under the form of partial objects and under the form of substitutive satisfactions. In some ways, it opposes itself to the homeostase of pleasure in the sense that it is in exces and painfull. For a more global approach of this concept, we will read with interest Miller J-A, “Les paradigmes de la jouissance,” La Cause freudienne, no 43, Paris, 1999, 5–21.
As to Kojève’s position, we shall refer to his text dating Kojève 1964, “The Christian Origins of Modern Science,” Adventure of the Spirit, L'Aventure de l'esprit (= Mixtures Mélanges, Alexandre Koyré), II, Hermann, 1964, 295–306. Lacan (1986/1997) claims his position in his seminary of February 3 1960; In: Le Séminaire, Livre VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, L'éthique de la psychanalyse, Paris, Seuil, 1986, p. 147.
“Religion is a symptom. Everyone is religious, even the atheists”, “Conferences and discussions in the north-American universities,” Yale University, 24 novembre 1975, In : Scilicet, 6/7, p. 32.
“The hypothesis of the subconscious, Freud underlines, can only stand up by supposing the Name-of-the-Father. the Name-of-the-Father certainly is God”., Le Séminaire, Livre XXIII, Le sinthome, Paris, Seuil, 2005, p. 136.
“Descartes places the field of his knowledge on the level of this larger subject, the subject supposed to know, God”; “As soon as the subject supposed to know exists somewhere, there is transference,” Lacan 1981, Livre XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, Paris, Seuil, 1973, p. 204; p. 210.
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Combres, L., Askofaré, S. Function(s) of Religion in the Contemporary World: Psychoanalytic Perspectives. J Relig Health 52, 1369–1381 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-013-9684-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-013-9684-3