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This book, more than anything else that I have worked on, is deeply
indebted to the scholarly contributions of others. It is a pleasure to
acknowledge these debts as best I can.
My first obligation is to the memory of the psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg, whose book Psychoanalysis and Religion (1962) started me thinking about Freud and Christianity in early 1976. It was Zilboorg’s writings that gave me the first glimpse of the importance of the present topic, and suggested there was much more to discover. I also acknowledge Professor Philip Rieff’s Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1979). This work was a major influence for it allowed me to understand Freud primarily as a great “negational symbolist.” My single greatest debt is to Peter Swales, a self-trained historian and Freud scholar extraordinaire. Swales is a kind of Sherlock Holmes whose relentlessly collected historical evidence, combined with historically based arguments, is in the process of changing the basic understanding of Freud’s personal life and its relevance to his theory. When I first spoke with Swales, in 1980, he had already understood the importance of literature for a basic grasp of Freud’s thought, and he facilitated my appreciation of this important influence on Freud. Also, it was Swales who informed me of the probable significance of Walpurgisnacht and especially of cocaine for understanding Freud’s “pact” with the Devil. In short, my discussion of these two ideas derives from Swales’s earlier insights. (My perspective on and interpretation of these events are, however, quite different from those to be proposed by Swales.) The various articles in which Swales’s own viewpoints are developed are essential for anyone interested in the broader context of this book, and I highly recommend them. Unfortunately, most of these articles are not widely available; however, some of his work will be accessible in his forthcoming book, Wilhelm Fliess: Freud’s Other. He is presently work- |