Discussion on the Compatibility of Freudianism and Marxism in Russian Psychology of Religion of the 1920s

Introduction. Although research on the relationship between psychoanalysis and the humanities in Russia has a relatively long history, religious studies issues are usually addressed in them only in the most general terms. As a result, in particular, some aspects that are significant for both the history of religious studies and the history of psychoanalysis were ignored, in particular, the development of problems of the psychology of religion in the framework of the discussion on the compatibility of Freudianism and Marxism in the 1920s. Content. During the discussion, questions of the psychology of religion were raised in the context of the discussion of contribution Freud and his schools in history and the sciences of society. Proponents of the convergence of Freudianism and Marxism pointed out that a number of propositions of Marxist historical theory - the conditioning of consciousness by being, the two main motives of human activity, and the construction of ideology - find confirmation and development in psychoanalysis. From their point of view, psychoanalysis is materialistic in understanding religion, primarily because it reveals its main psychological mechanism of sexual energy displacement. The forms of repression improve with the development of production forces and relations: if at the initial stages repression could have been involved only slightly - and therefore the corresponding way of thinking (way of representation) and the associated symbolism are called unconscious (or sexual) - then later the principle of reality prevails, and censorship and repression play become more sophisticated and organized. Their opponents insisted on the one-sidedness and groundlessness of the Freudian understanding of religion. Conclusions. The discussion under consideration contributed to the development of key issues in the psychology of religion in line with a new approach based on a combination of psychoanalysis and religious psychology. Freud and the Marxist understanding of history. However, no direction or school has developed on its basis. At the same time, the discussion revealed fundamental problems related to the limits (or even the expediency) of using the psychoanalytic method in the psychology of religion.