| Chapter Seven |
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Epilogue: A Biographical Critique of Freud’s Atheism IN SPITE OF Freud’s repeated expressions of attraction to Christianity, the fact remains, of course, that he did not convert or assimilate. Instead, after the crisis period of self-analysis (roughly 1895 to 1900), Freud emerged as a founder of modern psychology and as one of history’s greatest critics of religion. As we have seen, the underlying pro-Christian motivation never left him, but it appears to have dropped off, for there is less significant material relating to Christianity from the last three decades of his life than from any earlier period of the same duration. Certainly one of the more important reasons behind the reduction of Freud’s pro-Christian (or pro-assimilation) feelings was the decline in the intensity of his unsatisfied ambition: That is, he was increasingly acknowledged throughout the world as a major thinker, and this recognition appears to have slaked the fires of this need. I am also inclined to think that part of Freud’s somewhat greater peace of mind—and hence his reduced attraction to assimilation—came from his finally finding the field of intellectual life that was, in fact, most natural to him: psychology. In discovering that he was a psychologist and a philosopher of culture, not a natural or biological scientist, Freud was freed of some of the sense of failure and frustration that had troubled him for so long, and that would have remained with him had he remained oriented toward scientific medicine as the field in which he must excel. Another significant factor was that his self-analysis brought to consciousness the buried material about his nanny. This bringing to the surface of previously unconscious material could easily have reduced the extent of Freud’s unconscious attraction to his nanny—and to Catholic elements associated with her. A fourth important factor would have had to do with the changing |