Freud v Lewis?
The other day I came across a fairly recent (2023) and very underrated film drama – ‘Freud’s Last Session’ about a meeting that may have taken place in London during September 1939 just as Britain declared war on Germany between the famous founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and the great Christian apologist and academic CS Lewis. Freud is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins (who actually played CS Lewis some 30 years previously in ‘Shadowlands’) whilst Lewis is played by Matthew Goode.
It is a fascinating and absorbing drama between two giants of their respective fields who had completely opposite views about the existence of God, but who both agreed that the greatest mystery of the time was about God-whether He exists, and once you have made your mind up about that, what you do about it. It is based on a long running course at Harvard University on the question of God from Freud’s and Lewis’ point of views.
At the time of their imagined meeting, Freud and what remained of his family (he lost many family members in the concentration camps) was living in Hampstead, dying of mouth cancer and disputed CS Lewis’ worldview who had mocked Freud’s teachings in a recent publication.
CS Lewis was the most influential and popular believer of faith based on reason. He had become an atheist, originally thinking the Bible to be “..a fictional anthology of myths and legends” but was, amongst other incidents, himself challenged by friend and ‘Lord of the Rings’ author (and Catholic) JRR Tolkien to examine the evidence, which is what he did (some 1600 years or so of scholarship). The end result was that Lewis came to firmly believe famously stating: “In the Trinity Term of 1929 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”.
Freud for his part was convinced God was a fantasy linked to people wanting a commanding father figure in their lives, and that the idea of God was in his book “..a ludicrous and insidious lie..”, with science and reason meaning you no longer should believe in God.
‘Freud’s Last Session’ is then a meeting of great minds, mostly civil, where CS Lewis aimed to explain why an intelligent person such as him believed in God and Christianity and saying “I challenge your belief in disbelief”. It is thought provoking stuff with Lewis saying that you don’t , as Freud had suggested have to have an obsessional neurosis or be an imbecile to believe in God. Lewis’ main argument was that a critical assessment of the evidence leads to a strong conviction that Jesus and God are real, that He walked the earth, that His death transformed myth into truth with the promise that for those who believe in Him will in turn have their lives changed.
As Freud, Hopkins does not offer any proof that God does not exist, simply his psychological argument that God is a projection of a childish wish to have a father figure to protect and guide them. Freud’s arguments are cynical in that he argues that there is no Being who rewards you for obeying their rules, something CS Lewis deconstructs, showing that in the world we have signposts and lessons that point to a Great Intelligence being at work.
World War II had a huge impact on both Freud and Lewis. Within a few weeks of this meeting and with Freud’s terminal cancer worsening, the psychoanalyst committed suicide. Lewis took in evacuees and that led to that story of four children entering a magical kingdom called “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”- the start of the Narnia stories which were Christian allegories, and the world has probably not been the same since.
‘Freud’s Last Session’ is currently showing on Sky Cinema Premiere- the trailer for it can be found below.
https://www.sonyclassics.com/film/freudslastsession/
Tags: CS Lewis, Freud, Antony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Lord of the Rings, Freud's Last Session