THE INDIVIDUAL UPROOTING OF THE RELIGIOUS FEELING

Guidelines for mass mental hygiene can be obtained from the comprehension of the bio-psychic anchoring of mysticism. The changes that take place in the mystical man in the course of character-analytic treatment are of decisive importance. The insights we gain from character-analytic treatment cannot be applied directly to the masses, but they reveal the contradictions, forces, and counterforce in the average individual. I have already described how mystical ideas and feelings become anchored in the human structure. Let us now attempt to trace the principal features in the process of the uprooting of mysticism.

As might be expected, the mystical attitude operates as a powerful resistance to the uncovering of unconscious psychic life, especially to repressed genitality. It is significant that mysticism tends to ward off natural genital impulses, especially childhood masturbation, more so than it tends to ward off pregenital infantile impulses. The patient clings to his ascetic, moralistic and mystical views and sharpens the philosophically unbridgeable antithesis between ‘the moral element’ and ‘the animal element’ in man, i.e., natural sexuality. He defends himself against his genital sexuality with the help of

moralistic deprecation. He accuses those around him of not having an understanding for’ spiritual values’ and of being’ crude, vulgar and materialistic’. In short, to one who knows the argumentation of the mystics and fascists in political discussions, and of the characterologists and ‘scholars’ in natural scientific discussions, all this sounds all too familiar. It is one and the same thing. Characteristically, the fear of God and the moralistic defence are immediately strengthened when one succeeds in loosening an element of sexual repression. If one succeeds in getting rid of the childhood fear of masturbation and as a result thereof genitality demands gratification, then intellectual insight and sexual gratification are wont to prevail. To the same extent to which the fear of sexuality or the fear of the old parental sexual prohibition disappears, mystical sentiments also vanish. What has taken place? Prior to this the patient had made use of mysticism to hold his sexual desires in suppression. His ego was too deeply steeped in fear, his own sexuality too deeply estranged, to enable him to master and to regulate the powerful natural forces. On the contrary, the more he resisted his sexuality, the more imperative his desires became. Hence, his moralistic and mystical inhibitions had to be applied more rigidly. In the course of treatment the ego was strengthened and the infantile dependencies on parents and teachers were loosened. The patient recognized the naturalness of genitality and learned to distinguish between what was infantile and no longer usable in the instincts and what was suited to the demands of life. The Christian youth will soon realize that his intensive exhibitionistic and perverse inclinations refer partly to a regression to early infantile forms of sexuality and partly to an inhibition of genital sexuality. He will also realize that his desires for union with a woman are wholly in keeping with his age and his nature, that indeed it is necessary to gratify them. From now on he no longer has need of the support offered by the belief in an all-powerful God, nor does he have need of moralistic inhibition. He becomes master of his own house and learns to regulate his own sexual economy. Character-analysis liberates the patient from the infantile and slavish dependency upon the authority of the father and father surrogates. The strengthening of the ego dissolves the infantile attachment to God, which is a continuation of the infantile attachment to the father. These attachments lose their force. If vegetotherapy subsequently enables the patient to take up a satisfying love life, then mysticism loses its last hold. The case of clerics is especially difficult, for a convincing continuation of their profession, whose physical consequences they have felt on their own body, has become impossible. The only course open to many of them is to replace their priesthood with religious research or teaching.

It is only the analyst who does not understand the genital disturbance of his patients who will not be able to confirm these processes in the mystical man. Nor, however, will they be confirmed by the well-known psychoanalyst and pastor who is of the opinion that one ‘may sink the plummet of psychoanalysis into the unconscious only so far as ethics permit’. We want to have as little to do with such’ nonpolitical’,’ objective’ science as with that science that not only goes all out in its fight against the revolutionary consequences of sex-economy as ‘polities’, but even advises mothers to fight the erections of small boys by teaching them exercises in holding their breath. In such cases the problem lies in the process that allows the physician’s conscience to accept this line of reasoning and to become a pastor, without however rehabilitating him in the eyes of political reaction. He acts very much as the German SPD members of parliament who

sang the German national anthem at the last sitting of parliament enthusiastically and pleadingly, and still ended up in concentration camps as ‘Socialists’.

We do not discuss the existence or non-existence of God -we merely eliminate the sexual repressions and dissolve the infantile ties to the parents. The destruction of mysticism is not at all a part of the therapeutic intention. It is merely treated as every other psychic fact that functions as a support of sexual repression and saps one’s natural energies. Thus, the sex-economic process does not consist of a contrasting of the mystical view of life with the ‘materialistic’, ‘anti-religious’ view. This is intentionally avoided; for it would not affect any change whatever in the biopathic structure. The process consists rather in the unmasking of the mystical attitude as an anti-sexual force; the energy that nourishes it is utilized for other purposes. The man whose ideology is moralistic to an exaggerated degree, while perverse, lascivious and neurotic in reality, is freed of this contradiction. Along with his moral-ism, he also loses the anti-social character and immorality of his sexuality in the sex-economic sense of the words. Inadequate moralistic and mystical inhibition is replaced by sex-economic regulation of sexual needs.

From its point of view, therefore, mysticism is right when, to preserve and reproduce itself in man, it takes such a strong stand against sexuality. It merely errs in one of its premises and in its most important justification: It is its ‘morality’ that produces that sensuality, the moral mastery of which it feels itself called upon to accomplish. It is the abolition of this ‘morality’ that is the pre-condition of the abolition of immorality, which it seeks to eliminate in vain. This is the harsh tragedy of every form of morality and mysticism. The uncovering of the sex-economic processes, which nourish religious mysticism, will lead sooner or later to its practical elimination, no matter how often the mystics run for tar and feathers.

Sexual consciousness and mystical sentiments cannot coexist. Natural sexuality and mystical sentiments are the same in terms of their energy, so long as the former is repressed and can be easily transformed into mystical excitation.

These sex-economic facts necessarily yield a number of consequences for mass mental hygiene. These we will set forth after we have answered some obvious objections.