Emile Durkheim and Sigmund FreudEmile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud are European sociologists who studied and wrote about the effects of industrialization and society. Emile Durkheim is known to many in the humanities and academia. Freud is familiar to anyone who has studied intellectual and scientific history. Durkheim and Freud believed that understanding the rules of society was vital to human survival. Durkheim compares Freud in some respects to religion. Both Emile and Freud were of European descent. Emile continued to study the rules of society to understand it better. He found the connection broken when a crime or problem arose. He ties it back to the scientific theory that has allowed the social group to play a huge role in sociology. The value of smaller individual tasks led to a larger whole. When one group produces something very efficiently and robustly, other groups rely on it and form an intergroup interaction. Yet the groups are independent, relying on each other to function. “Religion is something eminently social” (Pals 108). Durkheim believes that religion was passed down through the years from birth. Psychoanalysis, on which Freud's ideas about religion are based, is not as scientific as it is assumed. Although Freud was able to make people understand that there may be hidden psychological motivations behind religion and religious beliefs, it is clear that religion involves much more. Religious beliefs are expressions of symbolism for social realities; without those social realities that serve as a foundation, religious beliefs would be meaningless. Many have contested this attitude, arguing that religion is more than a simple expression of social reality... middle of paper... it is the center of the Catholic faith. When we receive the Eucharist, we eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus Christ, who suffered and died on the cross for us. The Eucharist is considered a meal and a sacrifice and this is a sacrament that is celebrated in every Catholic Mass during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is also called Holy Communion. Even with these similarities Durkheim and Freud are very different in many ways. Both have their own opinions and beliefs about religion and communion listed and explained in these paragraphs. Bibliography Freud, Sigmund 1946 Totem and Taboo, New York: Vintage Books 1967 Moses and Monotheism, New York: Vintage Books. Durkheim, Emile 1915 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life