The Question of God

A Harvard psychiatrist confronts the question of God as seen through the eyes of Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis

For some 30 years, Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr. taught classes on Sigmund Freud at Harvard. In the early years he found his students fairly evenly divided: half agreed with Freud, half disagreed--strongly. But "the discussion ignited" when he made the course into a comparison of Freud with C. S. Lewis. The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex and the Meaning of Life presents that comparison in book form.

It's not just a set of debates; Nicholi, a psychiatrist, demonstrates how the two men's beliefs played out in the way they lived their lives. He speaks of their similarities, especially in their early years: both were strongly committed to atheism, both experienced significant grief and pain, and both were brilliant thinking. Both held a dark view of life and experienced depression; both were often scornful in their opinions of others; both had trouble making and keeping friends.

Then came Lewis's "transition," as Nicholi likes to call it--his conversion to the Christian faith. Freud, of course, experienced no such change. Now, I wouldn't try to hide my long appreciation for Lewis. This is not an unbiased book review. Still, there's no escaping the conclusion that Lewis looks a whole lot better in the end. Freud's darkness never departed. He struggled with depression and he drove away friends, like Carl Jung, to his last days. He treated his patients' pain clinically yet with no real long-term hope to offer them. He was proud; he fought for fame and recognition. One gets the sense he would not have been a treat to be with, to say the least. If one tests his theories by whether they actually worked in his own life, they don't stand up well.

Lewis, after his conversion, turned from a bitter, closed-in man into one who was able to write authoritatively on love and joy. It's impossible to read him without sensing his delight in life, a character to which his many friends and his biographers attest. His beliefs worked. He would insist that this is because they were true.

Beyond that, Lewis's thinking just makes more sense. Freud is largely discredited in the psychological world today. Some of his discoveries live on, especially that we organize a great deal of our lives at an unconscious level. His psychoanalytic methods--especially his sexualizing every aspect of life--are largely viewed with disdain by cognitive psychologists, who increasingly dominate the field today. Much of Freudianism fails the common sense test--at which Lewis consistently excelled, by the way, in spite of his academic prowess--as well as the test of research.

Both writers remain enormously influential. This is a great source for those who wish to sort out their opposing worldviews.

Posted: Wed - April 27, 2005 at 02:32 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

The Question of God

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson