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This is a visually beautiful book (containing 28 colour-plate illustrations of icons and related photographs) that provides a wealth of information regarding the worship of icons of the Mother of God in Russia. In addition to reviewing its history and theology, Rancour-Laferriere presents his empirical observations of icon veneration. While this descriptive scholarship is of considerable interest, the author's approach to psychoanalytic interpretation is problematic in many respects.
In The Future of an Illusion, Freud (1927) distinguishes between illusion—a belief that, while neither validated nor invalidated scientifically, is accepted as true because one wishes it to be so, and delusion—a belief that is embraced despite the fact that it is known scientifically to be false. Although in Future he describes religion as illusion, only three years later, in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud abandons this distinction, without explaining his reasons for doing so, and refers to religion as delusion.
Since the existence of God, defined in the orthodox sense as an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent supernatural being, can neither be proven nor disproven by science, both theism—the claim that God exists—and atheism—the claim that God does not exist—are rationally and scientifically insupportable. Both are grounded in subjective wish rather than objective evidence, and hence both qualify as illusions in Freud's sense.