ABSTRACT
Some historians have portrayed Sigmund Freud as a man of science, taking refuge in his office, entirely focused on the work he turned out at a steady pace, and on its publication. Between 1933 and 1938, in his writings and particularly in Moses and Monotheism, Freud dedicated a major portion of his work to the analysis of the foundations of antisemitism. Freud has confidence in scientific advancement, but is pessimistic regarding the use humanity will make of it. The rest of his discussion further develops the comparison between the illusory progress linked with the advent of Bolshevism, and the conservative revolution advocated by National Socialism. Freud was speaking specifically of the restitution of self-esteem to the Jews by a great man, Moses, not belonging to these people but inspired by a monotheistic period in ancient Egypt: the era when Akhenaton imposed worship of one deity, a period subsequently forgotten after the ancients returned to polytheism.
