Collateral damage of Luther & Freud

The Protestant Reformation of Christianity by Martin Luther was triggered by the widespread corruption in the Catholic Church. To that extent, it was welcome & necessary. But so many desirable things also got washed away in the wave of Reformation, like the baby being thrown out  with the bathwater.

The foremost casuality was the mandatory celibacy of the people dedicating their life to the Church. Even Christine de Pizan (Book of the City of Ladies) who was a widow with three children, listed chastity as the foremost virtue of a woman. When one enters a religious order, the body & mind should be offered to God 24x7. If one is married, it is simply not possible as at least a modicum of time has to be devoted to the family.

The other was the reduction of direct communication with God or Mysticism, which was prevalent in the early days of Christianity (also among many Hindu Saints). The emphasis shifted towards service activities like education & healthcare (which as Sri Ramakrishna pointed out were only means to the end, which is God realisation.) So spirituality got watered down with worldliness.

Though Sigmund Freud was not first acclaimed by his peers, he was supported by his patients, who were helped by his interpretation of their dreams. But his use of Sophocles' play to explain the attraction of sons towards their mothers was ill-chosen. Oedipus did not have the slightest wish to either kill his father or marry his mother at all. Both events came about completely accidentally without his prior knowledge. So giving that complex the name of the unfortunate king is nothing short of ridiculous because it ascribes a conscious wish to an accidental event.

Worse is the portrayal of even much earlier events, historical or fictional, which had nothing to do with them, in the light of modern psychology. For example, Dickens writes in his masterpiece "David Copperfield" that he married his first wife Dora, when she was very young. So he would call her as his "child-wife" as a term of endearment. Implying that David was a paedophile based on this remark (as is done by some modern critics) is just monstrous. Like this, most works (conceived quite innocently) are being viewed through the (distorting?) prism of post-Freudian viewpoint & many perversions are being read into them, as if these modern aberrations have been there since times immemorial.