ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud’s approach to religion is a topic which pervades not only his thinking in general, but participates in the knotty problem of the relationship between religion and psychiatry as well; a thorough study of this encounter would amount to a history and theory of modernity itself. This chapter aims to produce a concise history of Freud’s thinking and attitudes on religion, to point out the problems therein, and to present the opinions of some of our most creative thinkers on the topic. One of the strongest themes in Freud’s treatment of the subject is a diagnostic one. Freud had treated patients whose symptoms had religious content or who suffered from conflicts of religious doubt. In 1901 he began diagnosing religion itself. Very early in his career Freud had been exposed to several authors who had anticipated, in part, his notion of religion as projection.
