The way that various scholars analyze theological theories

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The way that various scholars analyze theological theories, greatly contributes to the spread of knowledge in the field of religious studies. Freud, a psychoanalyst, has influenced academic fields outside his own, especially the field of religious studies. When one looks at the impacts Freud's theories have made, they begin to understand the interconnectedness of these academic disciplines. When looking at the unconscious/thought, primal/totemic fathers, and phallic innuendos, Freud is able to compare and contrast his theories against his claims that there is a purpose behind the actions of mankind.

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Every action, according to Freud, has a purpose, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. These ideas can be observed through Freud's experiments which outline how he was able to extract the meaning behind the thoughts of individuals through their lucid dreams. People possess the innate ability to channel their inner desires, which can be extracted by a professional. These desires outline the frustration, thoughts, happiness, and ideas of the individuals, which can be used to explain their behaviour.

Freud was a unique figure in the realm of religious studies, and as a researcher he conducted experiments to back up his claims. Religion has been a central aspect of these theories, as seen through the application of Freud's theories to Judaism. Judaism has central features that are fundamental to the religion that can be further analyzed through a Freudian lens. Through the exploration of the unconscious/thought, primal/totemic fathers, and phallic innuendos, we are able to see how Freud's theories were able to explain Judaism and indulge greater insight on topics beyond the scope of its intended psychoanalyst audience.

The unconscious, according to Freud, is characterised through the channeling of the free flow of thought, usually in sessions with a psychologist who is trained in extracting this information. Freud would usually sit with his clients and allow them to talk openly about their dreams, after which we would begin to analyze their subliminal messages. There is a preoccupation individuals have with themselves, which may be seen in the disproportionate number of Jewish clients seeing counsellors and therapists and analysts. And the fact that a high proportion of these professionals are themselves Jewish is not coincidental. For Jews, "Coincidence is not a kosher word" (Cooper, 1985). Coincidence is not a kosher word because situations have meaning, or can be given meaning, that might not always be self-evident at first glance. That being said, Freud also posits the thought that every unconscious urge is not of mere coincidence, but carries a underlying message within. This takes the art of extrication to find the real meaning behind one's thoughts, and can usually be done so by a religious figure.There is a contemporary Jewish quest for help and self-understanding on the one hand, and on the other hand there is the need to help others in their search for understanding, and how neither of these is coincidental. Rather they are two inwardly- related aspects of a single, deeply felt - but perhaps largely unconscious - struggle that is taking place in the souls of Jews in this century. At the heart of this inner struggle is a tremendous insecurity about one's personal Jewish identity and our collective purpose. It is the roots and dimensions of this insecurity through which the soul is discovered. This century's revolution in the conception of the human personality after Freud, stems from his emphasis on "examining the neglected and hidden aspects of our souls" and coming to "understand the roles they play in our lives" (Cooper, 1985). So, the insecurity in our souls about our identity and purpose is the theme, but not in an abstract or theoretical way. Rather, one can see that as we progress a kind of case-study to illustrate some aspects of this insecurity about what a person is as a Jew. Similarity to unconsciousness, guilt and Judaism are closely interlinked and have a long historical legacy. After discussing recent work on anthropology and emotion focusing on shame and guilt, one can examine three theories purporting to account for this link: psychoanalytic, theological, and guilt as a cultural stereotype particularly the notion of the Jewish mother. Biological and evolutionary evidence indicates that emotions are not infinitely malleable and that there are primary emotions that are largely pre cultural (Cooper, 1985). This study showed that despite some idiosyncratic differences, the basic emotions anger, fear, sadness, and happiness are predominantly biological and thus, are universal, expressed and perceived in similar way across all cultures. It is noted that metaphors of emotion, for instance anger, are similar across cultures. These assertions have little historical backing although the description of Holocaust survivor guilt is well recognized. According to Freud, the guilt from the murder of Moses is inherited through the generations; this guilt then drives the Jews to religion to assuage their emotions (Dein, 2013). The Jewish mother or wife stereotype is one of the most common stereotypes and stock characters employed by Jewish comedians and authors whenever they discuss actual or fictional situations involving their mothers or other females in their lives who possess mother-like qualities. The stereotype comprises of a nagging, overprotective, manipulative, controlling, smothering, and overbearing mother or wife, who persists in interfering in her children's lives long after they have become adults and can care for themselves, also contributing to the broken family dynamics issue. This can be linked to the "mommy issue" that Freud was inferring exists within all men. Men have a dependance to find women and wives who possess these mother like qualities because of their Oedipus complex.

The Freudian psycho-anthropology posits a primitive father owning all the women of the tribe and a son inhibited from these women until, having endured the rigors of initiation, he receives with the father's blessing a wife from the father's hands (Cronbach, 1931). This tribal father, according to the Freudians, evolves into the Cosmic Father, the God of the modern worshiper, a God Who is in turn identified with the conscience of the worshiper. Like the primitive son, the spiritually minded man of to-day can not be at peace with his God unless he abstain from all women except "the woman that thou gavest me," acquired only after his hard initiation into economic competence and conferred only in the marriage ceremony presided over by the minister, the priest or the Rabbi the representatives of God (Cronbach, 1931). To the spiritually minded man, the sex urge having become sublimated, the beauty of girlhood is the beauty of the divine. This directly draws the similarity between the godly father, holding the ripe fruits of reward, until the son (mankind) proves he is worthy. In the same way if he is deemed not worthy, the father does not offer his blessing to the marriage, or if he commits a sin, then he is not held in good light with the heavenly creator. This explains the monotheistic revolution as a means that all these deities, along with their many functions and personae, are absorbed into a single being, one God, who has to represent them all. Yahweh, the god of the Israelites, comes to be seen as the God who rules Assyria and Babylonia as well as Israel. He is constantly asking Himself if it "will it be the white of forgiveness or the blood-red of vengeance? Shall I put on my kova ' yeshu'ah , the 'helmet of salvation?' Should I sit on the judgment-seat or the mercy-seat (Green, 2006)? The conflicts between the gods of old have become the internal conflicts of the single deity, forcing a complexity in the divine personality not required by the earlier formulations (Green, 2006). What we are seeing here, the cultural historian might claim, is a totemic representation of the increasing complexity of human personality. This role of judgment is then bestowed upon the Rabbi which is held in honor of reaching decisions for the people. He is seen as the father and leader of his tribe, preventing them from overthrowing the system due to the frustration and ency of young males. People who live complex and often conflicted lives need to imagine a deity who somehow reflects them, and bears within himself the painful choices faced by humans on a daily basis. The rabbis tended to schematise the divine personality into a two-fold model: the 'Aspect of Mercy' and the 'Aspect of Justice' together comprised the divine self, and God, in response to the actions of humanity, was constantly wavering between the two (Green, 2006). As leaders, they loved their people and wished to ease their burdens, especially to reassure them, in the face of historical tragedy, of God's unabated love. But at the same time the rabbis were judges, upholders of the law and administrators of its authority. As such they had to be bearers of an aspect of justice that surely brought them into tension with their desire to offer compassion and forgiveness, precisely the lens of conflict through which they saw God. Having admitted that our images of God indeed change according to the needs of the hour. When God appeared to Israel at the Sea, they said, as the people confronted the advancing Egyptian armies, 'He appeared to them as a youth.' On the day of battle one has no use for a tottering old God. But at Sinai, in giving the Law, 'He appeared as an elder.' Who wants to receive laws from a mere youth of a God? On the day of lawgiving, only an elder would do (Green, 2006). His appearance in accord with the people's needs or whether they just saw him that way, is reflected in the lens of their own desires. This shows how the desires of the people manifest into the teachings of their religion, whether or not the God is truly there at all. This point analyzes the acts or moral defilement in the instance of incest as outlined by the religious text for Jewish people, the Torah. Incest is seen as one of the major three sins, along with murder and adultery. This is shaped through the definition of ritual (totems) and moral impurity. Following the father figure of a singular god, it is in accordance to Freudian thought and its belief which resides in a guilt to not overthrow the system (Klawans, 1998). In the same way that Freud would draw the similarities in treatment between a father and child, there is no purification rite akin to those associated with ritual impurity: moral purity is achieved by punishment, atonement, or by refraining from committing morally impure acts in the first place. In this sense, the only way a wrong can be made right is through receiving a just punishment deemed acceptable by a father or god. The morally impure person may be subject to capital punishment or, in the case of unwitting female partners to sexual misconduct, permanent degradation and fewer options for marriage. When the land has been defiled to a great extent, then its people are exiled. This related to Freud's thinking of the primal horde and casing out members who refuse to follow the laws of the land. This is to prevent a revolution and an overthrow of the current regime, and its workings. There is to be a hierarchy in order to keep the followers in line, and how the group must restrain their desires for the good of community. This is, in theory, to stop the ID in Freud's theory, and revert to a child like state, in order to escape the realities of the world.

Freud's understanding of the unconscious and anti semitism and how it is characterized by psycholytic understanding which reads about the castration being the deepest unconscious root of antisemitism. It explores how it is a reason of demeaning those of Jewish faith to the subordinate level of women at the time. Freud talks about women longing for the having the same biological parts as women and with the lack of the same genitals, are in regret that they were not born as such. This analysis in this journal explores how he compares Jewish people who are castrated and missing parts of their manhood to women who lack this part all together, leading to this being the cause of anti semitism towards the jewish population, and resulting from the improper development during the psychosexual stages (Geller, 1999). In the Judaic tradition, the act of killing the tyrant is only prohibited when the one who commits the act is not invested. Freud and Regicide in the word of God. The commandment has the expectation that one will not kill. But when God orders the murder, the law can be transgressed. This can be then extrapolated to Freud's theory of totemic rituals in which most days follow a certain code of conduct which can be amended for a certain period of time or for a certain person. Moses becomes the legislator of this monotheism, but because his people do not respect the weight of this newly acquired spirituality, they put the prophet to death and then repress the murderous act (Roudinesco, 2011). The repression is transmitted after wards from generation to generation while the monotheism, instituted in and by Judaism, claims the principle of election as the religion deified by the primitive fath. In the Christianity that follows after Judaism, the murder of the father can only be expiated by the killing of the son and also by the abandonment of the visible sign of election: circumcision. Between universalized Christianity and "fossilized" Judaism, there remains for Jewishness only a single path: that of eternity, of solitude, of uprooting. In this way Freud separates belonging to a religion from the feeling of belonging (the Jewishness) that makes a Jew feel like a Jew despite having ceased to be religious. That is where Freud's notion of being spiritual, not religious, comes into play. According to Freud, the feeling will be a sort of unconscious heritage transmitted for all eternity like the sign of renewed belonging. Psychoanalysis, one might say, will then be the extension of this Jewishness, and of this Godless Judaism. More than any of his books on religion, Moses and Monotheism lays bare the intense ambivalence and irresolution at the heart of Freud's Jewish identity. In this text, on the one hand, he treats biblical historiography as yet another example of concealment and denial; on the other hand, he extols the "evidence of the presence of a particular psychic aptitude" demonstrated by the Jewish people, who pioneered the idea of an abstract, immaterial god. These achievements, Freud insists, brought the Jews to a higher spiritual plane, and paved the way for the "primacy of the intellect," the prime mover in the scientific search for truth. Unsurprisingly, with this legacy Freud is more than happy to claim kinship, presenting psychoanalysis as its true heir. As recounted in The Interpretation of Dreams , the young Freud found his father's Jewish mannerisms shameful and "unheroic" (Richards, 2011). A well-known story that attests to this observation is that on the first Friday night of their married life, Freud prevented his wife Martha Bernays from lighting the Shabbat candles an action that peremptorily stifled attempts at both Jewish and female self-expression. This past of Freud's, coming from a Jewish family, sheds light onto the family relationships he struggled with, possible leading to the Oedipus Complex he later developed. This was due to improper upbringing and the article explores how his childhood trauma, may have lead to his partaking in the very theory he sought out to create.

Freud, through his development of the Oedipus complex, was able to explain many of the concepts relating to religion, and specifically Judaism. Judaism, and its relation to the primal horde, parent issues, totemic rituals, and idealization of certain figures, led to the connection between these concepts. It can also be inferred that Freud developed these theories in relation to the problems associated with his upbringing and childhood experiences. Through this analysis, Freud, raised in Judaism provided a biased lens of how the natural world operated, yet still provided useful insight into the theories that influence many academic field today. The thought processes involved in drawing these connections was paramount to creating a holistic view in explaining concepts through the lens of religious studies.