Sigmund Freud’s legacy of perversity

Ellis Washington | October 25, 2011

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and, to a great extent, modern psychology and psychiatry, came of age in Vienna in the late 19th century. At that time Vienna, despite its overt anti-Semitism, was a cultural and intellectual haven for Jews. Freud’s biographers aren’t exactly certain what series of events led to his virulent hatred and disregard of all religions (especially Judaism and Christianity), but what we do know is that in many of his most important writings – “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” (1905), “Totem and Taboo” (1913), “Civilization and Discontents” (1930) and the book I will critique in this essay, “The Future of an Illusion” (1927) – Freud repeatedly and shamelessly attacks religion as nothing but a grand illusion; psychotic delusions that people who consider themselves to be rational, intelligent and scientific should straightway give up, grow up and admit “man’s insignificance or impotence in the face of the universe.”