Sigmund Freud on the Oceanic Feeling
Sigmund Freud on the Oceanic Feeling
One of these exceptional few calls himself my friend in his letters to me. I had sent him my small book that treats religion as an illusion, and he answered that he entirely agreed with my judgment upon religion, but that he was sorry I had not properly appreciated the true source of religious sentiments. This, he says, consists in a peculiar feeling, which he himself is never without, which he finds confirmed by many others, and which he may suppose is present in millions of people. It is a feeling which he would Like to call a sensation of eternity, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded-as it were oceanic ....
The views expressed by the friend whom I so much honor, and who himself once praised the magic of illusion in a poem, caused me no small difficulty. I cannot discover this "oceanic" feeling in myself. It is not easy to deal scientifically with feelings. One can attempt to describe their physiological signs. Where this is not possible and I am afraid that the oceanic feeling too will defy this kind of characterization-nothing remains but to faLl back on the ideational content which is most readily associated with the feeling.
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