Abstract

KYRILLOS NETO, Fuad; BADARO, Stéphanie Alves Furtado  and  MACHADO, Rodolfo Rodrigues. Secularization and Religiosity: The Metapsychology of Belief from a Psychoanalytic Perspective. Gerais, Rev. Interinst. Psicol. [online]. 2022, vol.15, n.3, e18593.  Epub Jan 20, 2025. ISSN 1983-8220.  https://doi.org/10.36298/gerais202215e18593.

The upsurge of new religious manifestations has challenged the idea that religiosity is gradually losing its relevance for the contemporary subject. In this article, we aimed to investigate which aspects of belief are acquiring new contours and which psychic motivations contribute to preserving the importance of religiosity for subjects in a secularized society. To achieve our goal, we used the methodology of theoretical research in psychoanalysis to address the process of secularization and its consequences for religious manifestations. We subsequently present a synthesis of Freud’s metapsychology of religion. Lastly, we try to reflect on the reasons that lead subjects to engage in religious activities, considering the conjuncture and the contradictions of a secularized society, starting from the articulation in the conceptual system of Freudian psychoanalysis. We found that secularization, by reorganizing the coordinates of contemporary subjectivation, also brings new forms of psychological suffering and, consequently, a renewal in religious involvement.

Keywords : Religiosity; Secularization; Psychoanalysis; Metapsychology of religion; Belief.

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