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The Question of God
C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life
Reviewed by Sandra Alexander
7 April 2005

This book undertakes the task of examining the biographies of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, to see if the lives they actually led strengthen or weaken their arguments for and against the existence of God.

Nicholi defines Freud’s “believer-unbeliever” categories as particular worldviews. “Whether we realize it or not, all of us possess a worldview. A few years after birth, we all gradually formulate our philosophy of life. Most of us make one of two basic assumptions: we view the universe as a result of random events and life on this planet a matter of chance (unbeliever); or we assume an Intelligence beyond the universe who gives the universe order, and life meaning. Our world view informs our personal, social, and political lives. It influences how we perceive ourselves, how we relate to others, how we adjust to adversity, and what we understand to be our purpose. Our worldview helps determine our values, our ethics, and our capacity for happiness. It helps us understand where we come from, our heritage; who we are, our identity; why we exist on this planet, our purpose; what drives us, our motivation; and where we are going, our destiny. Some historians of science such as Thomas Kuhn point out that even a scientist’s worldview influences not only what he investigates but also how he interprets what he investigates. Our worldview tells more about us perhaps than any other aspect of our personal history.” (7)

Nicholi goes on to describe the world views of Freud and Lewis. Freud’s was the “materialistic or ‘scientific’ worldview, rooted in ancient Greece, with its emphasis on reason and acquisition of knowledge and its motto What Says Nature? Lewis, on the other hand, after converting to Christianity at age 30, adopted the spiritual worldview, rooted primarily in ancient Israel, with its emphasis on moral truth and right conduct and its motto of Thus saith the Lord.” (7) Although both Freud and Lewis thought the question of God’s existence to be life’s most important question, each arrived at different conclusions. Nicholi’s book undertakes the task of examining the biographies of both men, to see if the lives they actually led “strengthen or weaken their arguments and tell us more than their words convey.” (9)

The Question of God is divided into two parts. In Part I , ‘What Should We Believe?’ we learn that Freud considered all religions mere “fairy tales” (76) He could not accept the biblical concept of “conversion” (being “born again”) although he expressed true sympathy for St. Paul who experienced the most dramatic and famous of all conversions (Acts 22). (78) As Nicholi points out, if Freud’s assumption is true that God does not exist, “then the experience of Paul can only be explained as an expression of pathology, a case of visual and auditory hallucinations. Indeed, some modern neurologists have attributed his conversion experience to a seizure disorder known as temporal lobe epilepsy.” (79)

Taking the lead from Freud, until recently the field of psychiatry has tended to ignore the spiritual dimension of a person, dismissing all faith as “neurotically determined,” “an illusion,” “a projection of childhood wishes,” “a hallucinatory psychosis,” etc. (80)

Professor Nicholi describes a research project he conducted involving Harvard students who claimed that they had experienced a “religious conversion.” His purpose was to determine if these experiences were “an expression of pathology, i.e. isolating and destructive, or were they adaptive and constructive? Did these experiences impair or enhance functioning?” (80) Results published in the American Journal of Psychiatry stated that each subject described ‘a marked improvement in ego functioning, including a radical change in life style with an abrupt halt in the use of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes; improved impulse control, with adoption of a strict sexual code demanding chastity or marriage with fidelity; improved academic performance; enhanced self-image and greater access to inner feelings; an increased capacity for establishing ‘close, satisfying relationships’; improved communication with parents…; a positive change in affect, with a lessening of ‘existential despair’; and a decrease in preoccupation with the passage of time and apprehension over death.” (80)

Nicholi next discusses the conversion of C.S. Lewis whom he describes as being “even more certain of his atheism than was Freud.” (81) Lewis describes his surrender to the one whom he had so studiously refused to acknowledge: “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, (Oxford) night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity term…I gave in, and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” (85)

Lewis next began to investigate the central figure in Christianity, Jesus Christ, realizing that “the claim of Jesus Christ to be God and to have the authority to forgive sins left only one of three possibilities: he was either deluded or deliberately attempting to deceive his followers for some ulterior purpose, or he was who he claimed to be….Lewis came to the conclusion that the evidence weighed against this Person being evil or psychotic….the moral truth he taught is ‘full of wisdom and shrewdness…the product of a sane mind’” (89)….Lewis also adds, “a man who was merely a man and said the things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic….or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice…You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (God in the Dock) (89)

Nicholi finds similarities between C. S. Lewis’ conversion experience and the conversion experience of the Harvard undergraduates he researched. (93)
1. All the experiences occurred within the context of a modern, liberal university where the climate tended to be hostile to such experiences.
2. Both Lewis and the students observed in the lives of people they admired some quality they found missing in their own lives….they were clearly influenced by their peers.
3. Both Lewis and each of the students made a conscious exertion of their wills to open their minds and examine the evidence.
4. Both Lewis and each of the students, after their conversion, found their new faith enhanced their functioning. People who knew Lewis and those who knew the students before and after their transition confirmed these changes.

In Part II, ‘How Should We Live,’ Nicholi begins with a discussion of Happiness. Freud equates happiness with pleasure, specifically the pleasure that comes from satisfying our sexual needs. (100) Freud also admits that “as a culture, we need..prohibitions to control our sexual and aggressive instincts and, thus, to protect us from one another. The price we pay for this protection is a marked decrease in our capacity to experience happiness.” (101) Freud ultimately concludes, “…one feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in the plan of ‘Creation.’” (103)

C.S. Lewis counters Freud’s conclusion saying that “God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there…We were meant to establish a relationship with the Person who placed us here. Until that relationship is established, all of our attempts to attain happiness—our quest for recognition, for money, for power, for the perfect marriage or the ideal friendship, for all that we spend our lives seeking—will always fall short, will never quite satisfy the longing, fill the void, quell the restlessness, or make us happy……” (104,105)

“For Freud, the nature of physical pleasure is fleeting, making general unhappiness unavoidable. He saw the future as dark and ominous. Lewis, after his conversion, became optimistic and saw the future filled with hope. Which one was right?” (107)

The writings of both Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis continue to have a profound impact on our culture a half century after their deaths. Both of them agreed that the “most important question concerned God’s existence: “Is there an Intelligence beyond the universe?” Freud refused to confront the evidence, perhaps confusing the biblical God with his ambivalent feelings towards his own father; perhaps explaining the longing within him (Sehnsucht) as mere “wishfulness,” not based in reality; perhaps using the anti-semitism he experienced in Austria, often at the hand of so-called Christians, as evidence only of a God he could never trust or respect and, hence, never believe in.

Sometimes, and perhaps Freud was trapped by this, “we conceptualize or judge God by the faulty actions of his fallible creatures……All fall short. Jesus of Nazareth was gentle and forgiving to the woman at the well who sought forgiveness, but severe with the religious leaders who failed to live what they professed.” (242)

C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, was able to escape his past hurts and finally opened himself up to the evidence of God. He wrote, “We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend. In fact to come awake. Still more to remain awake.” (Letters to Malcolm) (244)

Armand Nicholi’s book is fascinating. It is well written and well worth reading by those who seek answers to life’s most important question, The Question of God.

Dr. Nicholi is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has taught a course on Freud and Lewis at Harvard College and the Harvard Medical School for more than twenty-five years. He is the editor and coauthor of the classic The Harvard Guide to Psychiatry (3rd edition, 1999). For fifteen years he served as the psychiatrist for the New England Patriots. He has an active practice and serves as a consultant to government groups, corporations, and professional athletes. He is married, with two children, and lives in Concord, Massachusetts.

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