Freud Against God: The Development of Sigmund Freud’s Atheism
Part of The History of Psychoanalysis series - more in this series
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : November 2025
- Cover : Hardback
- Pages : 98
- Category :
Forthcoming - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98341
- ISBN 13 : 9781041143550
- ISBN 10 : 1041143559
Also by Christfried Toegel
Free UK Delivery over £25
There are currently no reviews
Be the first to review
Freud Against God traces the development of Freud's atheism, from his youth through to The Man Moses and the Monotheistic Religion, published in 1939.
Christfried Toegel takes a largely chronological approach, tracing how biographical developments in Freud's life and political events gradually led to his conviction that it is “a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up.” The book considers Freud’s life, his writing and the influence of politics and society. Chapter 1 covers the genesis of Freud's critical attitude towards religion and the influence of Ludwig Börne, Charles Darwin and John Stuart Mill. Chapter 2 focuses on Freud’s critiques of religion in his writing between 1907 and 1939. Chapter 3 describes how Freud dealt with the deaths of his daughter and his grandson, and with cancer and death. Chapter 4 focuses on religion, politics and society, particularly the role of the Catholic church in relation to Freud and psychoanalysis.
Reviews and Endorsements
We are already hugely indebted to Christfried Toegel's for his numerous and crucial contributions to Freud scholarship, above all the first complete edition of anything Freud published during his lifetime. Here, Toegel is setting the record straight: Despite frequent claims to Freud's 'hidden' or 'repressed' religiosity, he minutely traces the development of Freud's unabashed, unwavering, and indeed un-ambivalent 'absolutely negative attitude towards all religion.' Indispensable reading for anyone seeking an accurate understanding of Freud and, in a broader context, the uneasy relationship between science and religion.
Ernst Falzeder, former senior research fellow at University College London (retired), editor of Freud/Abraham and Freud/Ferenczi correspondence, author of Psychoanalytic Filiations: Mapping the Psychoanalytic Movement
Freud Against God takes us on a chronological guided tour through the landscape of Freud’s disbelief, beginning with the two-year-old infant preaching on ‘God Almighty’ and ending with the 82-year-old Professor stating his ‘absolutely negative attitude toward any religion’. There has never been any doubt about Freud’s antipathy towards religion, but it has often been obscured by other details of his life and work, or even overlooked. By bringing together a lifetime’s scattered comments Christfried Toegel underlines the fundamental importance of that ‘negative attitude’ in Freud’s science and life. There could be no better guide to this territory than Christfried Toegel. Over the past four decades his books and articles have greatly expanded the range of Freud biography. This concise study offers the newcomer an excellent overview of the theme: scholars familiar with the biographies will find here a useful compendium of references to the lifelong duel between Freud and religion.
Michael Molnar, an archivist, researcher and Director of the Freud Museum London between 1986 and 2009, he edited Freud’s 1929–1939 Diary Notes and wrote Looking through Freud’s Photos, a study of Freud’s photo library, and has published numerous articles on Freud biography
In famously characterising himself as ‘a completely godless Jew’ to his friend the Swiss pastor Oskar Pfister, Freud was not joking. He was a thoroughgoing atheist, who rarely lost an opportunity to challenge the illusions of religion, though he could see – and was not without compassion towards – how comforting these might be. In this succinct and eminently readable volume, leading international Freud scholar Chris Toegel guides the reader through Freud’s life and writings revealing in great clarity the key successive encounters he had with religion and religious belief. Toegel lets Freud speak, quoting his actual words extensively, thus leaving us in no doubt what the Professor actually thought and his still radical and trenchant proposals for policy and social reform in this area. With the place of religion in modern civil society remaining a highly contested subject, this unsparing volume will be an invaluable read for anyone who wants a reliable primer on the foundations of psychoanalytic thinking on god. Challenging, controversial, and eminently readable, Freud Against God will no-doubt prove one of the most compelling volumes on the subject. Buy it! Read it!
Roger Willoughby, Oxford Brookes University, UK, clinical psychologist and historian of psychoanalysis, author of Masud Khan: The Myth and the Reality and Freud’s British Family: Reclaiming Lost Lives in Manchester and London
Table of Contents
Prologue: "...exclude all believers ...from attending university"
1. The Genesis of Freud's Critical Attitude Toward Religion
2. Critique of Religion in Freud’s Writings
3. The Death of Daughter and Grandson, Cancer and the End
4. Religion, Politics and Society
Epilogue: Sigmund Freud and Charlie Hebdo
Chronology of Freud's Interest in Religion
About the Author(s)
Christfried Toegel is a Historian of science based in Switzerland, and former director of the SALUS-Institut for Evaluation and simulation of mental health care and of the Sigmund-Freud-Center in Germany. He is the author of more than 200 publications on the history and philosophy of science, editor of several editions of letters by Sigmund Freud and author of ten books on dream research and Freud biography, which have been translated into 8 languages.
Customer Reviews
Our customers have not yet reviewed this title. Be the first add your own review for this title.
You may also like
The Lost Legacy of Franz Alexander: A Psychoanalytic Pioneer Revisited
Ilonka Venier Alexander
Price £22.39
save £5.60
Identity and the Foundational Myth: Psychoanalytic Insights into Gender Distress
Marcus Evans
Price £23.19
save £5.80
