Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

ut now, instead of being Oedipus, who wants to kill
his father and marry his mother, we become closeted
anarchic revolutionaries.
The state is not the only cultural institution that becomes a collective
superego by playing the role of the father. Organized religion does
so, as well.
In observing those who were deeply connected to organized
religion, Freud saw the same types of behaviors that he
observed in his patients who suffered from obsessive
compulsive disorder, including the need to repeat certain rituals
and a sense of guilt as a motivator for the rituals.
The major difference between obsessive compulsive individuals
and those involved in organized religion is that the former are
indeed individuals. They do not have a community who share
their neurotic behaviors or enforce and reinforce the need to
perform them. As such, Freud labeled organized religion a
collective neurosis.
This view of a collective superego and collective neuroses opens
up the possibility that other parts of the Freudian scheme could be
collective, as well. This was the line taken by Freud’s star student,
Carl Jung.
Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist who became Freud’s closest disciple,
although a rift later developed between the two. Jung accepted
Freud’s notion of the subconscious as a well for primal urges and
unconscious mind and the resulting repression were the cause of
many neuroses.
But Jung expanded the id to include what he thought was a crucial
element Freud had missed, the collective unconscious. There
is, Jung contends, a part of the mind that contains memories and
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