Freud and Freudians on Religions: A Reader: Donald Capps New Haven and London  Yale University Press, 2001,  357 pp

The editor of this book, Donald Capps, is William Harte Felmeth Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary It is his stated purpose to present an introduction to the psychoanalytic study of religion for the general reader, not

the research scholar To this end, he has provided excerpts from books and papers directly and indirectly related to religion written by a wide variety of psychoanalytically oriented authors Sigmund Freud's early essay on obsessional practices, excerpts from Leonardo, Michelangelo's Moses, the demonological neurosis of the seventeenth century, are represented along with selected passages from The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and Its Discontents, and Moses and Monotheism Three of David Bakan's writings are excerpted, and the anthropological discussion of sacrifice—especially of the sacrifice by fathers of their sons—is given prominence in the selections Erik Erikson is represented by five discrete contributions involving trust, identity, and the life cycle Beginning with a review of Bergman's Wild Strawberries, moving to Young Man Luther and then Toys and Reason, and ending with an essay on the sayings of Jesus, Erikson's life-long concern with religious topics is highlighted In another section of the book, two of Donald Winnicott's works are represented along with writings by W W Meissner and Brooke Hopkins, both of whom use Winnicott's concepts of transitional objects and transitional space to look at religious phenomena The penultimate section of this reader presents five excerpts from the writings of Heinz Kohut (the first of which was co-authored with Ernest Wolf) Although Capps admits that there is little in the selections that has an explicitly religious focus, he feels that self-psychology's “tragic man,” in opposition to Freud's “guilty man,” warrants inclusion In his introduction to Kohut's theory, Capp emphasizes Kohut's opposition to Freud's scientistic critique of religion Religion, for Kohut, is a uni