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It was this religion that was so deeply connected to his separation anxiety, and it was to this kind of religion that Freud returned over and over.
Yet another but related way of clearly seeing Freud’s rejection of religion as an illusion is to understand this rejection as an expression of “derealization.” As noted in Chapter Six, Freud described this psychic mechanism as that way in which the ego defends itself by denying reality. In introducing derealization in the context of his interpretation of his one vaguely religious experience, the one on the Acropolis, Freud directly implied that his ego used exactly such a neurotic defense against religious reality. The Future of an Illusion was, then, a neurotic derealization of religious reality and a projection of Freud’s own past disillusionment with his “unfaithful,” religious nanny-mother. His reactions—that is, his intellectual interpretations of religion—were based on his strong, persistent, unconscious, childish needs, connected to his nanny’s early abandonment of him and his first experience of helplessness. In short, Freud’s religious neurosis was deeply satisfied by his theory that religion is an illusion. Origins of Freud’s AtheismI now turn to a new but closely related topic—the factors behind Freud’s explicit atheism, as distinct from his conceptualization of religion as illusion. I begin by recalling his life-long rejection of Jewish religiousness, which contrasted with his acceptance of the Jewish ethnic and cultural heritage. As a young man, Freud was so disturbed at the prospect of being married in a Jewish wedding ceremony, which he called “loathsome,” that he contemplated assimilating to Christian culture by becoming a Protestant! In spite of the persistent complaints of his wife, who came from a seriously practicing Jewish family, Freud always refused to allow any Jewish religious ceremonies in their family life. As mentioned earlier, Freud does not appear to have had any seriously religious Jews among his friends or intellectual associates (though he did have one good Christian friend and colleague, Oskar Pfister). Freud never spoke positively of Jewish religiousness, as expressed, for example, in Orthodox or Hasidic life of the times. Finally, in his last book, Moses and Monotheism, Freud attacked Judaism by claiming that its great hero (and, to a considerable degree, founder), Moses, was not a Jew but an Egyptian, and that the Jews murdered Moses. Thus, Freud deprived the Jews of their claim of being the first monotheists. Not surprisingly, Freud’s thesis was experienced by religious Jews as an unexpected and exceedingly painful |