ABSTRACT
Religion was a more significant—and complex—topic of discussion for the Viennese analysts than has been formerly recognized in the psychoanalytic literature. Transcripts of comments on religion just in the minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society alone run to sixty-one single-spaced typed pages, and the members' associated published writings are even more extensive. Religion had an especially significant role to play as "the first and most powerful guardian of all cultural achievement, because the gratification which every individual must renounce for the sake of civilization is projected outwards toward God, as 'union with God' by means of identification." Religion was never explicitly defined by the group per se, but following Freud's implicit usage, the term generally meant adherence to the worship of a transcendent God or gods—a cultural development viewed as "higher" than animism and totemism. Religion was generally classified by the group as falling within the realm of affect rather than what they valued more highly—rational thought.
