Angústia e amor na teologia e na psicanálise: Oskar Pfister e sua interlocução com Sigmund Freud

Abstract

Few figures had such a significant influence on the history of the complex dialogical interaction between Psychoanalysis and religious experience as Oskar Pfister, pastor in Zurich and Sigmund Freud’s interlocutor. As the theoretical-clinical building of a new knowledge about the human psyche spread, from Vienna to Zurich, the consequences of this listening, to which psychoanalysts dedicated themselves in their offices and health institutions, reached the ecclesial environment, albeit timidly, inspiring a passionate caregiver of souls, to bring the unconscious into the church. In the pastoral work, this theologian and psychoanalyst dedicated himself to treating various disorders of the loving capacity to enjoy life, appropriating Freudian concepts, to understand the dynamics of the religious faith of concrete people. This is how, starting from his experience during decades dedicated to the analytical healing of souls, the Swiss pastor undertook a broad review of the history of Christianity, seeking to interpret different phases, through his training in pietist and liberal reformed theologies, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, through Freudian metapsychology. In particular, this original reading of Christianity underlines the elements of intensification and mitigation of fear, present in this religious tradition, correlating them with the movements of approximation or distancing from the source of love, which connects the Christian, according to their belief, to God himself, through Jesus the Christ. Therefore, we seek to present and critically discuss the Pfisterian thesis, according to which, the unconscious psychodynamics of Christianity is characterized as a treatment of fear through love. It is noteworthy that the author’s hypothesis, as formulated in Christianity and Fear, is configured as a theological and psychoanalytic response to Freud’s critique of religious belief. This effort of theoretical reflection is not exempt from difficulties, because if, on the one hand, in the most advanced developments of Freudian theory, fear could not be reduced to a deformation of love, on the other hand, the salvific reality involved in the Christian praxis of agape, in its dimension of eschatological promise, cannot be reduced to the Psychoanalytic and Freudian conception of eros. Nevertheless, indicating the paths through which this trajectory was carried out, is relevant to highlight the originality of the Pfisterian proposal, when building a psychoanalytic reading of the Christian tradition, which does not start from the same point of view of the creator of Psychoanalysis, adept of the atheism, but assumes, as an epistemological presupposition, the Revelation announced by the Christian faith, as a religious cosmovision, a soteriological hope and an ethical imperative. Finally, an attempt is made to distinguish the pious deformations that occurred in the history of Christianity, through Pfister’s analysis of Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the creative sublimation, through a “transferential mystique”, according to the pastor’s expression, which would link the believer to the person and legacy of Jesus of Nazareth. This connection with the loving incarnation of God can be partially understood psychologically, without, therefore, wanting to reduce it to a psychologism, which disregards the dimension of spirituality. In this way, it is concluded that a fundamental dimension of the Gospel, in the Pfisterian perspective, consists in an experience of feeling called, by Christ, to dedicate oneself to the task of transforming fear, proper to the human condition of fundamental helplessness, through of a loving construction of one’s own existence, in a constant attitude of nurturing relational bonds with God, with other people and with nature.