Freud, Sigmund

(1856-1939)

   A Viennese psychologist, Freud was the father of psychoanalysis. While it is not correct to say that Freud discovered the unconscious, he did develop the notion that aspects of the unconscious can be repressed leading to mental illness, to overcome which pathology he developed the method of psychoanalysis. Freud added an element of scandal to his thought with the claim that much mental illness originates in the repression of taboo sexual desires that originate in infancy. Critics argue that Freud's goal of developing a science of the mind was a failure and that psychoanalysis has been only marginally successful as a therapy for mental illness. Freud was a life-long critic of theism (describing himself as a 'godless Jew'), believing that science and religion are inimical. He extended his theories to religion by claiming that theism arises from a projection of divine meaning onto a hostile universe (wish fulfilment), an idea he developed in The Future of an Illusion (1927). His final book, Moses and Monotheism (1939), argues rather fancifully that Moses was Egyptian and the religion of the Jews an Egyptian import; Freud then constructs an imaginative explanation for the origins of the conception of Christ as a crucified redeemer. Freud's projective interpretation of religion, while asserted rather than argued, has been enormously influential in shaping attitudes toward religion in twentieth-century Western culture.

   See atheism; Feuerbach, Ludwig

   Further reading: Freud 1928; Freud 1953-74; Lear 2005; Nicholi 2003