I was reading something about psychoanalysis, and wonderd a bit about Sigmund Freuds beliefs concerning God. Was he an athiets? I belive that he was raised as a Jew…did he practice this religion?
Freud was an atheist. I believe he considered himself culturally Jewish, based on a quote I can’t remember exactly ‘The Jewish community has hailed me as some kind of hero despite the fact that the only thing I have said about Judaism is not to deny that I am Jewish’.
The book The Question Of God contrasts Freud’s atheism with CS Lewis’ faith. It was adapted as a PBS documentary.
He was a Jew. Part of why he hooked up with Jung originally was to acquire some “legitimacy” by having a very Xtian partner.
The question was “…what were his religious beliefs…”.
He was an atheist, and very adamantly so I might add. Just because one is born a Jew does not make him a Jew religiously, no more than one who is born into a Christian family is therefore Christian. Religion is an intellectual decision.
He became obsessed with Moses during the last half of his life and wrote voluminously about him, though only in his last few years did he compile them into a book . It’s a fascinating read that shows Freud’s excellent scholasticism outside of psychology- he’d have made a helluva classicist or literary theorist. (The main insight into his religious views of this is a sort of pre-Joseph Campbell rejection of the literal truth of hero mythology in favor of an inherent archetypal truth, based this time on Moses rather than Oedipus [his most famous mythical archetype, of course]).
Freud considered it ironic that a man as secular as he lived was persecuted for his “religion”, but of course he was for many years before being held for ransom (“back taxes”) by the Nazis. Sadly his octagenarian sisters and many of his other relatives who didn’t flee with him to England died in the death camps.
Freud was definitely an atheist, and regarded religion as a kind of mass delusion that he had a duty to disabuse mankind of.
If you want to see for yoursewlf, check out his books “Moses and Monotheism” or “The Future of an Illusion.” In the former, he tries (extremely unsuccessfully, in my view) to paint Judaism as the result of a fraud (he thought Moses was an Egyptian huckster) and mass guilt (he maintained that the Israelites killed Moses, then felt guilty, and turned him into an incon).
Somewhat related interesting fact: One of Freud’s assistants was the first person to use the word “holocaust” more or less in its modern sense in reference to the Nazi persecution of Freud.