Sigmund Freud 1856-1939: Difference between revisions

Religion, in Freud's view, was simply a poor attempt to resolve the needs that often go unmet in human relationships. He developed this idea over 30 years in his enormous body of work, making it the main focus of his 1927 book, The Future of an Illusion, and extending his arguments from individual to society in his long 1930 essay, Civilization and Its Discontents. "Religion may be altogether disregarded," he wrote in the latter work, "Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of this human race." To be truly civilized, he believed, humanity had to be set free of its delusions and construct a better order than religion could give  

Though Freud committed suicide in 1939 by a lethal dose of morphine, his influence continued to spread as the field of psychology evolved. By the time of his death, there were dozens of psychoanalytic societies throughout the world, modeled after one formed in Vienna by early supporters such as Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Otto Rank.<ref>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/twolives/freudbio.html<ref/>