Freud and the American physician's religious experience

Abstract

Freud wrote a curious short paper at the end of 1927, the year in which his book, The future of an illusion was published. The paper is remarkable in that we as readers also have the evidence that Freud drew on, that is, a letter by an American physician unknown to Freud, detailing his religious experience. (This situation of having the same source material is not completely singular, as we also have access to Da Vinci's painting of the ‘Madonna and Child with Saint Anne’, the subject of a previous exercise by Freud (1910a) in interpreting religious material in a reductive manner.) Having available the exact text that Freud used for his analysis enables a close examination of Freud's use of the material. It becomes clear that in his analysis of the physician's experience, Freud makes a string of interpolations, breaking his own rules concerning wild analysis. It can also be seen from the paper how he ignores considerations of context and culture.

Notes

Note

1. Common amongst students to this day, as I found both in my experiences studying human neuroanatomy, and in my work as a psychologist with medical students.