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political climate. Starting at about the same time Freud turned from medical science to psychology (i.e., from the 1880s on), there was an increase in anti-Semitism in Austria. By 1895-1897, the election of Karl Lueger as the mayor of Vienna signaled the end of much of the old liberal political system—and the end of the old Catholic liberalism, with its tolerant, positive support for Jewish assimilation.1 Hostility to the Jews had grown so strong that the liberal political climate favoring assimilation was clearly over; this political and social environment brought out Freud’s tough, obdurate ethnic (though not religious) Jewish resistance. Furthermore, the fact that Freud had moved out of the university world (where Gentiles and assimilated Jews like Gomperz dominated)—first into the essentially Jewish world of private practice (with primarily well-to-do Jewish patients), and then in time into the very Jewish world of psychoanalysis—all meant that assimilation became increasingly irrelevant. In fact, for Freud and many others, assimilation became repugnant as Jews responded to anti-Semitism by increasing their identification with their Jewishness and emphasizing Jewish intellectual and moral superiority.2
As a result, Freud’s attacks on religion, most of which came in this last period, can be viewed not only as motivated by his political sympathies with the old liberal Austrian program of secularism, but also as a way of fighting anti-Semitism, a great deal of which was associated with Catholic political parties. Thus, there is support for the contention of Thomas Szasz that “One of Freud’s most powerful motives in life was the desire to inflict vengeance on Christianity for its traditional anti-Semitism.”3 In a more psychological vein, Freud’s critiques of religion are interpretable as reactions (even “reaction formations”) against his earlier and persistent temptations to assimilate, as well as against his remaining unconscious motives. His “loathing” for such Jews as Adler, and for his student Tausk, both of whom assimilated by becoming Christians, can be seen in this light.4 However, from the previous chapters, we have seen that political and social motives were not the real forces that drove Freud, especially with respect to religious issues. It is now, finally, time to reflect on this knowledge of Freud’s personal relationship to religion, in order to clarify how it sheds a new light on his critique of religious belief. We need to begin by briefly reviewing the major features of Freud’s anti-religious position. Religion as IllusionFreud’s most powerful and influential attack on religion came in 1927, in his work The Future of an Illusion. The illusion was, of course, religion, and Freud’s conclusion was that it didn’t have any future. The essay dealt |