Mark Laynesmith
 

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Richard K. Fenn, The Return of the Primitive: A New Sociological Theory of Religion.

Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2001. Pp. vii, 131. £15.99.

This relatively accessible book, aimed at a psychoanalytically-friendly readership, seeks to argue that individuals and societies will be rendered more healthy with an examination of the 'unconscious'. The 'unconscious', Fenn argues, can also be designated as whatever is considered 'primitive'. As such it can be a dangerous object of fascination, something to be denied and projected upon others or, handled properly, a potent source of energy to imagine new ways of living. Its creative harnessing depends upon a stark denial of all magical (i.e. self-aggrandising and fantastical) ways of thinking. Fenn argues that this process is best performed in the psychoanalytic tradition, a tradition which he prefers to Christianity since he considers the latter polluted by its own magical thinking and its history of coercion (although in the final chapter Fenn draws on Thomas Altizer to sketch a purified form of Christianity). Fenn takes in an extended tour of the literature of dreams (mainly Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian) and the genre of the descent into hell (Dante and Faust) to explore how we might heal the soul by excavating what is primitive or unconscious.

            Although the book is accompanied by positive reviews, this reviewer is not persuaded. Despite the subtitle there is nothing startlingly 'new'. It is a re-issuing, with some re-application, of classical Freudian theory principally derived from the historically problematic Moses and Monotheism (albeit with minor concessions to modern studies, pp. 7-9, 43-4). Surprisingly there is no mention of any modern re-reading of Freud (e.g. the important work of Girard) which would have had a significant bearing on Fenn's final verdict on Christianity. Nor even is there anything definitely 'Sociological' about the work. Is the social merely the individual writ large? Fenn toys non-committally with the idea of the collective unconscious, but never satisfactorily answers this question.

            Occasionally there is poor attention to historical detail, e.g. the Carolingians converting the 'Anglo-Saxons' (sic) (p. 39). Fenn's treatment of Drythelm's Vision repeats Freud's notorious habit of finding in a source what in fact derives from his own argument - a characteristic Fenn rightly criticises (p. 44). Fenn invents an earlier oral rendering of the Vision lacking 'ecclesiastical editing' which is more conducive to his argument (and simultaneously misattributes the Vision to Carolingian authorship - it is by Bede) (pp. 94-96). Further, logical inconsistencies undermine some arguments (e.g. Fenn seems to accuse Christianity of tendencies toward creating Führer-figures, but then ascribes the rise of Nazism to 'poorly christened' German pagans, pp. 38-9).

            There are some interesting passages, such as a comparison of Cassian and Freud in ch. 5. The ultimate flaw though is how in using dreams one is to distinguish between magical and non-magical thinking. It is unclear why some dreams may legitimately inspire humans to counter the status-quo (challenging racism or homophobia), but others are not to be relied upon if they lead one to imagine a benevolent deity, or the possibility of resurrection (pp. 4, 27, 38). Freud's atheistic assumptions are never challenged.

St. Mary's Church, Tadcaster                                                             Mark Laynesmith