Emile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud Essay

For me, coming from a background in sociology, the concept of collective consciousness seems natural. If society is composed of various social institutions that were shaped, are shaped, and will be shaped by the peoples participating in them, it only makes sense that this idea of shared consciousness would explain the institutional formation of religion with its sacred rites, beliefs, and symbols. While I am not a fan of how he chose ‘Church’ as his specific word to define the social organization involved with religion, for its basis is rather ethnocentric, the definition he ascribes to the religious social body is appropriate. According to Durkheim, a ‘Church’ is “a society whose members are united because they imagine the sacred world and its relations with the profane world in the same way, and because they translate this common representation into identical practices” (41). Similarly, he later describes this ‘Church’ as “one single moral community” and that “it conveys the notion that religion must be an eminently collective thing” (44). Durkheim’s sole focus of his definition revolves around

Pope and Johnson (1983) state that Durkheim proposed that society revitalizes individuals and gives them strength to persevere in the face of the vicissitudes of everyday life. Stones (2008), further states that Durkheim felt that we acquired all the best in ourselves and all the things that distinguish us from other animals from our social existence. Thought, language, world-views, rationality, morality and aspirations are derived from society. Thus, the unsocialised individual, the individual divorced form society, the beast within us, is a poor approximation of the highly socialised beings that constitute societies.

Emile Durkheim, was a French sociologist. His theories and writings helped establish the foundations of modern sociology. Durkheim disagreed with most social theorists of the late 1800 's because they thought that individual psychology was the basis of sociology. Durkheim regarded sociology as the study of the society that surrounds and influences the individual. Durkheim explained his theories in his book The Rules of Sociological Method (1895). He says there is relationship between moral values and religious beliefs, which establishes unity in society.Emile Durkheim has long been viewed as one of the founders of the so called variables oriented approach to sociological investigation. Durkheim developed the theory that societies are bound together by two sources of unity. He called these sources mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity refers to similarities that many people in the society share, such as values and religious beliefs. Organic solidarity results from the division of labor into specialized jobs. Durkheim believed that the division of labor makes people depend on one another and thus helps create unity in a society. Durkheim studied thousands of cases of suicide to demonstrate his theory that a person commits suicide because of the

Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber are all important characters to be studied in the field of Sociology. Each one of these Sociological theorists, help in the separation of Sociology into its own field of study. The works of these three theorists is very complex and can be considered hard to understand but their intentions were not. They have their similarities along with just as many of their differences.

In DHN, Durkheim argues that sociology must examine what an individual consists of because it is a result of the whole society. It is this society

Durkheim’s generation at Ecole Normale Superieur was full of brilliant people. He quickly became a participant of the political and philosophical debates that characterized the school, though he was more interested in academics than politics. He found the literary nature of the school to be very disappointing but became very inspired by two of his teachers, Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges and Emile Boutroux. Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges taught Emile the importance of religion in social institutions and could be studied rationally and objectively. Emile Boutroux taught him that atomism, the reduction of phenomena to their smallest constituent parts, was a fallacious methodological procedure and that each science must explain phenomena in terms of its own specific principles. The theories he learned later influenced his theories on the subjects.

As organic solidarity is typical of complex, industrialised societies, Durkheim’s theory is very applicable to modern life and the first world in particular. Individuality is a major feature of people living in the western world today e.g. the USA, UK, and Ireland. This is evident in our political and social thinking. Much emphasis is placed on personal rights and the belief that nothing is more important than us. (Hughes et al, 1995) Meanwhile we are not self-sufficient; we rely heavily on the expertise of thousands globally to live our daily lives e.g. the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the cars we drive etc. (Macionis and Plummer, 2005)

Conversely, according to (Turner 23-109), Durkheim points out that religion is part and parcel of the society and that each society has religion. Emile Durkheim’s purpose was to assess the connection between particular religions in various cultures, and finding a common cause. Basically, he wanted to comprehend the three major aspects of religion; that is the empirical together with the social and the spirituality components. His definition of religion is that; it is a joining arrangement of beliefs together with practices in relation to sacred things. According to him, it is religion that establishes the contemporary society as

to bourgeois Western civil society. During Freuds time he experienced the journey of seeking social

Among the most controversial figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. The rhetoric of the first of these men, Karl Marx, both inspired revolutions in China, Russia, and Cuba, as well as led to his expulsion from Germany, France and Belgium. As for Freud, Yale history professor Peter Gay notes in his biography of the psychologist: “[He] has been called a genius, founder, master, a giant among the makers of the modern mind, and, no less emphatically, autocrat, plagiarist, fabulist, the most consummate of charlatans.” (xvi). Though Marx is perhaps best described as a political theorist and Freud a psychologist, there is a great deal of overlap in the work of the two intellectuals. Most importantly, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx shared a fervent dissatisfaction with society and its oppressive mechanisms. Yet the source of this oppression was not a point of agreement among the two thinkers. Where Marx advocated class struggle and bourgeois domination as the main obstacles to a harmonious, peaceful society, Freud contended that the fundamental barrier to such a society is human nature itself, which, in his opinion, consists of a constant struggle between a desire for pleasure and the constraints of reality; while Marx believed that Communism could bring about societal contentment, Freud held that the pleasure which man derives from aggressiveness precludes the possibility of collective peace and, concurrently, the restraint with

Sigmund Freud's revolutionary ideas have set the standard for modern psychoanalysis in which students of psychology can learn from his ideas spread from the field of medicine to daily living. His studies in areas such as unconsciousness, dreams, sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and sexual maladjustments laid the foundation for future studies. In result, better understanding of the small things, which shape our lives.

Freud was particularly interested in the psychoanalytic school of thought and the founder of psychoanalysis. He believed that our unconscious minds are responsible for many of our behaviors. According to Freud, he thought that there was a significant relationship between slips of the tongue and what we are actually thinking. Today these are called Freudian slips. Similarly he believed that we get information, like our fears and wishes, out by just merely saying what comes to mind. He was able to tell a lot about people, including their past experiences, how they were feeling, and what they wished and feared, just by simply encouraging them to speak whatever came to mind.

Sigmund Freud is a timeless figure in psychology. To this day, his work of psychoanalysis is still mentioned and dream analysis and so much more are still used. Even though many people may have argued that Freud was crazy himself, he was one of the most influential psychologist known all around the world. However controversial, Freud sums up his works to be a sort of sexual complex such as the Oedipus and the Electra complex. The way he was raised and the relationships he had with his family plays a great impact on his work throughout his years. If it were not for his life experiences, Freud would not be as iconic as he is today.

Such a abstract ineffable sensation demanded (In Durkheim 's words) something material and tangible through which to be expressed. This emphasis on the external being internalised is similar to Radcliffe-Brown who believed religious acts were an expression of 'a sense of dependance on a power outside ourselves '. Durkheim noted how one "cannot detect the source of the strong feelings we have in an abstract entity" but "can comprehend those feelings only in connection with a concrete object" Such an object he labeled totemic, conveying how in 'primitive ' societies these miscellaneous items were believed to be endowed with sacredness. Such objects (or animals or plants) were and still are worshipped vehemently, they are bestowed with the utmost respect as tribal systems are constructed around them. But (apart from their physical form or lack of it) he did not envisage this relationship between the abstract and material as a conjunction of different entities: the sociologist stated that if such a symbol represents God and society "Is this not because God and society are one and the same thing?". One must note Durkheim was an Agnostic, not a staunch atheist, religion was very much a 'real ' concept for him, in the sense that it was derived from something very concrete: it was a process by which mankind expresses social facts. Although "this representation is symbolic and metaphorical,

Similarly to Weber, Durkheim believed that religion plays an integral part in society. He defined religion as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things… beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church...” (Durkheim EF: 47). This functional definition describes what Durkheim believes what role religion plays in contemporary society: it unities it. He analyzed religion within the context of the entire society and recognized its influence on people’s thoughts and behaviors. Durkheim was interested in the communal bonds forged by participating in religious activities and stressed the importance of the communal aspect of religion.