Freud & Faith: Part 6, O God, Our Mother and Father

One of the more provocative theories Freud posited was his notion of the Oedipus Complex. According to Freud, at a critical juncture in childhood the child would experience sexual desire for the opposite sex parent and rivalry/aggression toward the same sex parent. The names for the Complex come from two Greek tragic figures, Oedipus and Electra, who unwittingly killed their same-sex parent and married their opposite-sex parent.

Given the power differentials between the child and the parents during the Oedipus Complex, the child finds themselves psychically and sexually thwarted and frustrated. That is, the sexual and aggressive drives cannot be expressed. According to Freud, the child resolves this dilemma by identifying with the same-sex parent. The boy becomes the father or the girl becomes the mother. For Freud, this process of identification is important for the formation of the superego. That is, the superego, the moral voice inside our heads, is the internalized parent.

What should we think about all this?

As best I can tell, modern scientific psychology has rejected any strong notion of the Oedipus Complex. However, if we approach the Oedipus Complex in the fuzzy manner I suggest (see Part 1) then some interesting things emerge.

First off, we all know that the relationships between parents and children can be volatile and ambiguous. And Oedipal dynamics do seem ubiquitous. When boys have intimate and idealized relationships with their mothers we call them a "mama's boy." Conversely, when girls have intimate and idealized relationships with their fathers we call them a "daddy's girl." Notice how these relationships fall along Oedipal lines. Further, conflict in the home is often hottest between the child and the same-sex parent. Sons fight with fathers and daughters fight with their mothers. Again, this is consistent with an Oedipal alignment. None of this is sinister or weird, but it does go to show that Freud wasn't pulling this stuff out of thin air.

Second, the resolution of the Oedipus Complex leads to the internalization of the parent's voice. I think most of us know what this is like. Messages and scripts from our childhood get into our heads to shape our identities and how we see the world. Often, these parental voices are toxic; we internalize the voice of the parent who told us we were fat, or stupid or worthless. Once that voice has been internalized it is very difficult to shake. The shadow of a parent (inside our heads) can be very, very long.

And, finally, let's talk theology.

Freud's basic claim is that our interactions with our parents shape our identity, relational style and conscience. Although most of us would reject the specifics of the Oedipus Complex I think we can see the larger point Freud was making. Child-parent dynamics are complex and formative.

This is important to recognize because God is primarily understood as being a parent, generally a father. Consequently, our experiences with our parents have implications for how we approach and experience God. Given that God is mostly seen as a Heavenly Father, our experiences with our fathers can be critical in determining the shape and style of our spiritual journey.

This impact is by no means predictable. For example, I know people who have been sexually abused by their fathers. Many of these people struggle with the notion of God as Father. The relational schema of father is toxic to them. Thus, any mention of God as Father in church, Scripture or worship just pushes them away.

By contrast, many people with abusive paternal relationships often find in God the loving Father they never had. For these people the metaphor of God as Father is deeply healing and comforting. In short, the effects of abusive or conflicted relationships with parents, fathers in particular, do not seem to have any predictable or uniform outcome. Regardless, the relationship with parents does have an impact upon how one experiences God.

What if the father-schema has been traumatically broken? Is it vital to the Christian faith that God must be understood as Father? Or is this metaphor dispensable? Might the father-metaphor be a product of a bible-times patriarchy that our more egalitarian era can correct?

No doubt, God is understood as Mother at times in the bible (e.g., Isaiah 49.15; 66.13). Consequently, this has prompted a demand for bibles that are gender-neutral or gender-inclusive. For example, rendering "God our Father" as "God our Father and Mother."

The parental metaphor imbalance is less acute in the Catholic and Greek Orthodox traditions where the veneration of Mary as the Mother of God is integral to the Christian experience, in worship, prayer and devotion. Protestants, however, generally worship only with masculine metaphors. Recently, some Protestant writers and thinkers are beginning to explore Mariology, hoping, I think, to find a place for the feminine in Christian devotion. I think this impulse for redress is what sits behind a lot of the fascination with books like The Da Vinci Code.

Now, I'm not interested right now in getting into the political and social debates about feminist critiques of the bible and Christian parental metaphors. Nor am I interested right now in the place of Mary in Christian devotion. What I am interested in, in this post, is how our early experiences with parents impact how we experience God. And I wonder how those experiences might affect how we experience the paternal and maternal metaphors of God. That is, I wonder how old Oedipal issues might be driving things like the gender-inclusive language debate. And, finally, I wonder how, from a pastoral perspective, we are to approach a person whose father-schema is so poisoned that they practically vomit inside a Christian worship service.