In this study, the author reviews and reorganizes data about Freud's development and life circumstances to provide a psychodynamic interpretation of his rejection of God. She contends that Freud's early life made it impossible for him to believe in a provident and caring divine being.

Compares and contrasts the beliefs of two famous thinkers, Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, on topics ranging from the existence of God and morality to pain and suffering.

The Birth of the Living God, her contribution to the psychoanalysis of religion. Contributors to this volume offer clinical and theoretical insights concerning Rizzuto’s examination of the origin of God representations in early childhood and their elaboration across the life cycle.

Argues that Freud was an atheist and that atheism was an important prerequisite for his development of psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud’s name is known throughout the world. He opened up the world of the unconscious, so people can understand themselves so much better than before. His unique ideas are discussed in academic circles. His psychoanalytic techniques influenced mental health, counselling, psychotherapy and psychiatry. His words form part of everyday language. Lying on a couch and having dreams interpreted by an analyst is an iconic picture of modern life and popular culture. Sigmund Freud: A Reference Guide to Her Life and Work captures his eventful life, his works, and his legacy. The volume features a chronology, an introduction, a comprehensive bibliography, and the dictionary section lists entries on Freud, his family, friends (and foes), colleagues, and the evolution of psychoanalysis.

Freud’s collection of antiquities—his "old and dirty gods"—stood as silent witnesses to the early analysts’ paradoxical fascination and hostility toward religion. Pamela Cooper-White argues that antisemitism, reaching back centuries before the Holocaust, and the acute perspective from the margins that it engendered among the first analysts, stands at the very origins of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The core insight of psychoanalytic thought— that there is always more beneath the surface appearances of reality, and that this "more" is among other things affective, memory-laden and psychological—cannot fail to have had something to do with the experiences of the first Jewish analysts in their position of marginality and oppression in Habsburg-Catholic Vienna of the 20th century. The book concludes with some parallels between the decades leading to the Holocaust and the current political situation in the U.S. and Europe, and their implications for psychoanalytic practice today. Covering Pfister, Reik, Rank, and Spielrein as well as Freud, Cooper-White sets out how the first analysts’ position as Europe’s religious and racial "Other" shaped the development of psychoanalysis, and how these tensions continue to affect psychoanalysis today. Old and Dirty Gods will be of great interest to psychoanalysts as well as religious studies scholars.