Religion protects against natural forces like death.

We are scared of death because it is something which we have no control over. The creation of religion by the mind helps us to overcome this with the promise of eternal life or reincarnation. It makes us feel like we are not completely powerless.
Religious belief is a reaction against helplessness adults are provided with a father figure who can protect. God is the ultimate ideal of a father, people have confidence that the future is safe in his hands.

Society is in conflict with our most basic desires: E.g. Oedipus desires his mother and wants to kill his father, but he understand this as wrong because of the guilt he experiences as a neurotic symptom. Society would not be able to operate if we acted upon basic desires like that which Oedipus feels.

Religion provides a reason to submit to authority: explains our suffering because we have the need to obey an omnipotent God who promises reward for our suffering. Religion provides motivation for sublimation the libido is forced into other areas e.g. art, music, charity work.

Libido is bodys most basic urge, therefore is most capable of causing psychological problems in development..
What Oedipus Complex is: A desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex. Child represses conflict and guilt deep into the unconscious mind.

Religion as an illusion, based upon wish fulfilment where the mind creates beliefs and images to satisfy its most basic longings..
Minds solution to trauma is to lock it away in the unconscious mind this is unsuccessful as the trauma later re-emerges in the form of religion.
Religion is therefore a neurotic illness afflicting all people. Physical symptoms (hysteria, obsessions e.g. OCD, anxieties and phobias) with no physical cause.

Sigmund Freud
Austrian neurologist 1856-1939
At the bottom of every case of hysteria there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience, occurrences which belong to the earliest years of childhood. -Freud

Religion as an inner psychological conflict, a collective neurosis..

How it results in religion: Repression is only partly effective: desires and guilt are long forgotten but mind is struggling to contain them there. This results in neurotic symptoms being channelled out. One of these symptoms is religion- the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity that arose out of the Oedipus Complex.

Freud established behavioural link between religion and neurosis with patients and their source of obsession and religious people in relation to their object of worship: -Both involve specific rituals with symbolic meaning for those who follow -Those who do not follow cannot understand -Failure to perform results in severe guilt from follower

TERM Animism the belief that natural phenomena such as animals, rocks, trees, thunder or celestial bodies have life or divinity.

Animism and totems

Concerned with Oedipus Complex, used in Freuds theory of religion
When suffering from extreme guilt from a previous trauma, the mind creates totems where the feelings of guilt can be redirected towards this is animism. Amends are made through prayer and sacrifice.
The totem, often an animal, is the transformation of the father from Oedipus Complex who is regarded with ambivalence (conflicting emotions). Animist emphasis on totem proves unsatisfactory over time, reputation grows - divine significance develops, totem is now the gods of religion.