By Paul C. Vitz
Spense Publishing. (Dallas)
174 pages. £14.99. ISBN 1 890626 12 0 (hardback)
Available via Amazon Books website.
Probably most readers will be familiar with the central psychological hypothesis which Paul Vitz seeks to stand on its head in this book. That is, the idea that religion is some kind of projection of those characteristics we want in a father figure, but have never found. The pop versions of this idea have filtered down to us in comments like: 'All Christians are weak people who need a psychological crutch in God.'
This initial thesis which Vitz spells out is related to that of another, the famous Oedipus complex formulated by Sigmund Freud. And, like the projection idea, it has become something of a commonplace in discussions about God. Freud claimed that young boys want to supplant their fathers and take their place at their mother's side, in a kind of psychological remix of Sophocles' Thebian plays, where the anti-hero, Oedipus, unwittingly ends up doing just that: patricide and incest.
