Sigmund Freud; Father of the school of psychoanalytic psychology, he was no friend of religious beliefs. Freud's conception of religion, to put it bluntly, was that of an illusion. That is, not necessarily false, but developed in response to the need to overcome the conflict between our sexual nature and the nature of civilization. Starting from this, we can try to criticize this theory to see how "valid" it really is in the face of religion. For Freud's position to be truly valid, we must demonstrate that the Oedipus complex is a fully universal sexual trauma and that buried trauma can indeed manifest itself in the form of religion. He believed he had demonstrated both of these aspects conclusively and, in turn, believed that, due to the oppressive nature of religion, it needed to be overthrown. However, in light of recent research, very few of Freud's theories about religion seem to hold up. And this is where this essay begins. The place to start (in theory) is to criticize Freud's underlying methodological issues. As is common practice in the field of psychodynamic psychology, Freud developed a generalized version of his theory from a limited amount of very carefully selected case studies, often from patients who exhibited behavior of extreme proportions (e.g. The Wolf Man; Sergei Pankejeff). Although studies of extreme behaviors allow the psychologist to study such behaviors much more easily, it would be illogical to assume that the traits exhibited are applicable to the general public. Of course it can be said that Freud was a man of revolutionary intellect, but his tendency to take mere speculations and present them as facts is the clear brake on the dismantling of his theories on religion. Freud used Darwin's theory...middle of the paper...at best, as most people who engage in distracting activities are more than aware of why and why they do so. To put it simply, I believe that outside of the core ideas of the psychodynamic school (and even occasionally within that branch of psychology) its theories are simply not applicable. Works Cited1. Marcy, L. (ed.) Voelker, “Bronislaw Malinowski,” http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/malinowski_bronislaw.html.2. Michael Palmer, Freud and Jung on Religion (London;;New York: Routledge, 1997).3. Cherry, K., “Freud and Religion: Freud's View on Religion,” http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/p/freud_religion.htm.4. Jordan et al, Philosophy of religion: for A level, for OCR, OCR ed. (Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes, 2004).5. "Sigmund Freud - Bibliography", http://www.freudfile.org/bibliography.html.