24. Freud's View of Evil

I could probably go on forever about Freud's philosophy, but I'm not going to because that would take days. I do, however, think that his name is worth mentioning because his idea of evil is mentioned in a very important scene of this book. He is mentioned when Father Callahan and Matt Burke are discussing the Force of the church against evil. More specifically, the Force of the church against vampires.

I found a website that had a lot of pertinent information on the philosophy of religion. Most of the information was based off of Freud's views of religion. What I have gathered from that site was that Freud thought that religion was just something that was made up in the human mind. But more importantly, his views on evil seemed to be very influential in the Catholic Church at the time Stephen King wrote this book.

What does this mean for Father Callahan? Basically it meant that Father Callahan had a lot of doubts going through his mind of his faith and the Catholic Church. Freud was changing the overall concept of evil in the church. The Catholic Church was beginning to look at evil as not one person, but like I mentioned earlier, evil in more than one form. This made a huge difference in how Father Callahan approached the vampires in the novel. His beliefs must be strong and focused if he was to agree to helping Matt Burke in his quest to destroy the vampires.