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Psychiatry’s Resistance, An Interview 53
from the men on the white horses because they usually lead us to destruction. Charismatic figures usually wind up doing something wrong—or worse. Hitler is an example.
S: Do you think that Christ and all the stories about his divinity are actually real?
Dr. A: I don’t doubt that there was an historical Jesus. Whether he was Christ or whether we made him one, I’m not quite so sure about. I don’t know how much of what we ascribe to him now is thrust upon him by our own need to have such a figure. What we say about him and describe about him now probably doesn’t bear much resemblance to the historical Jesus.
S: If he actually walked on water, would that interest you? Dr. A: I wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe my own eyes. S: If others saw it and it was documented in photographs—then
would it have any meaning?
Dr. A: Photographs mean nothing to me.
Notes
1. Primary process—Freud’s term for the kind of primitive, non-logical, wish fulfill- ing and magical thinking found in childhood, dreams and psychopathology.
2. Secondary process—Freud’s terms for the kind of intelligent, logical, reality testing and problem solving thinking necessary for successful adaptation to the outer social world.