While listening to the radio during the week, I was amused to hear, that the county I hail from is amongst the top five most superstitious counties in Ireland! This is according to a nationwide investigation by the analysts at Casino.org Ireland, who also rank the superstitious beliefs that are still held. Despite coming from the second most superstitious county, I never considered myself superstitious. I do, however, hold truck with the uncanny, having written about it in a previous article here.
In his 1919 essay on 'The Uncanny,' Sigmund Freud described the phenomenon as “that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.” [1] Superstition is linked to the uncanny, as it taps into the uncanny feeling of a strange connection between a common, everyday event (thus familiar) and a supernatural and often negative outcome, for example breaking a mirror bringing seven years bad luck. Superstitious fears, such as the "evil eye," can be a source of uncanny feelings. How many of us frantically search for a second magpie when only one appears in our field of view? Superstitions thus amplify the unsettling feeling of the uncanny. This demonstrates how beliefs in supernatural forces can create a sense of dread and uncertainty, making ordinary fears feel strange and powerful. Credibility can be enhanced by linking them to other belief systems, such as religion. The bad luck associated with the number thirteen can be traced to the biblical Last Supper, where the thirteenth person betrayed Jesus. Thus not having thirteen seats at a table or having a thirteenth floor in a building became a much practiced way of avoiding bad luck. How many times have we experienced people urgently seeking to touch wood to preserve the good fortune they have just decribed? This practice is thought to be linked to when people worshiped spirits in trees and thus believed the wood to be alive. Knocking on a tree would wake it (and the spirits) up. [2]
Psychologist Stuart Vyse believes that “superstitions are a subset of paranormal beliefs that are pragmatic,” - they have a use in controlling the uncontrollable by telling us how to act in order to invite good luck or deter bad luck in our lives. [2] Superstitions can also explain the unexplicable or events that lack a clear cause, such as a string of bad luck. This need to impose order on randomness is a key factor in both superstition and the uncanny. The unsettling feeling of the uncanny is rooted in not being able to fully explain what is happening. Both concepts demonstrate the mind's struggle to make sense of reality and are often fueled by fear and anxiety.
Vyse contends we become superstitious by three main avenues [2]:
(i) direct teaching by parents – for example, not to walk under ladders or step on a crack. The latter carries the warning “or you’ll break your mother’s back.” Interestingly and ironically, this fear instilling aspect is also to be found in the fairy tales and nursery rhymes parents have been reading to their children down through the years!
(ii) observation and imitation – we see others do it and assume the same action and behaviour ourselves
(iii) accidental conditioning - where a person set up a certain belief or behaviour that has a personal meaning to them such as the lucky socks they must wear for the match or the lucky necklace they must wear to the job interview. The cause and effect are created that most likely doesn’t exist in reality. In states of anxiety, beliefs can lead to ritualisitic practices e.g. “nothing bad will happen as long as there are three folds in the centre of the towel on the rail, before I go to bed.”
The casino.org investigation supports Vyses’s contention that superstitions have stood the test of time and remain relatively untouched by modern science. Why? As Vyse says, anything that enables us to feel we have some control of the unscontrollable is appealing. Ditto explaining the unexplicable. For the most part superstitions can have calming effects, especially if they have a ritualistic aspect to them like any belief system. They become potentially harmful if they become the focus of obsessional behaviour or endanger life e.g. not taking life saving medicine or treatment.
References
1. Freud, S. (1919). The “Uncanny”. The Standard Edition 17 (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works (pp. 217-256). London: Vintage.
2. The Psychology of Superstition (2024). https://insideuni.uni.edu/campus-community/psychology-superstition#:~:text=According%20to%20psychologist%20Stuart%20Vyse,the%20uncontrollable%20in%20our%20lives.
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