Passer la religion à « l'étamine » de la psychanalyse permettra de mieux comprendre pourquoi nous succombons aux fascinations du religieux : - fascination pour le « père grandiose » dont on attend qu'il restaure le narcissisme perdu - fascination pour le « sacrifice salvateur » aux dieux obscurs en vue de tenter de payer une dette inconsciente insolvable - fascination pour la « question du sens » de l'exister en réponse à l'énigme du vide que l'homme rencontre face à lui-même et à l'univers - fascination, enfin, pour le « discours du maître » qui se donne comme seul capable de combler le vide ou le rien.

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Looking at religion through the eyes of the psychoanalyst can permit is to understand why we succumb to its fascination: - the fascination for the father figure, whom we expect to restore our lost narcissism (...) the sublimated figure of God mentioned by Freud is the only one capable of re-establishing our unity - the fascination for the redeeming sacrifice to obscure gods, as we try to pay an unpayable and unconscious debt. A debt to life, to our parents, a symbolic debt. Religion allows the individual to assume that unconscious debt in the very act of sacrifice - the fascination for the question of the meaning of our lives (...) Of course religion is not alone in offering a response - philosophy and ideologies also do this. But religion offers a ‘great unifying narrative' including the why of our existence, our origins, our destiny - the fascination for the teachings of a master, which seems to be the only thing capable of filling the void. The religious message is also a reassuring lesson that avoids fundamental questions and banishes confrontation with the emptiness of existence and its absolute enigma. The author is a professor of philosophy at the University of Montpellier 1.