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This book is the most completely adverse criticism possible of Freud's views on religion. Many such have already been published, but presumably the author considers that with Freud's prestige the harm his views might do in the religious field is such as to call for yet another counterblast. The book is well written and gives on the whole a very fair account of Freud's writings on the subject. These are then criticized in full detail.
Dr. Philp expresses great admiration for Freud as a man, for his honesty and courage, but he holds that everything Freud wrote on the subject of religion was woefully mistaken. He made no contribution whatever to the psychology of religion. His main stricture on Freud's writings in this field is that Freud had a totally wrong conception of what religion really is: he confounded religious beliefs with religion itself. 'If what Freud described as religion covers all that religion is, it ought to be destroyed.' This is a strong statement. The beliefs that Freud suggested might be illusory, i.e. brought about by the process of wish-fulfilment, were: the belief in immortality; the belief in the existence of God, with the accompanying emotions of love, awe, and fear in relation to Him; and the Christian belief that a particular possibility had been offered men of salvation from their sins and sinful conscience. There were, it is true, other aspects of religion which Freud admitted to neglecting in The Future of an Illusion, but he made good this omission in his later writings. This temporary omission, however, seems hardly sufficient to warrant such an anathema.
Freud's conclusion that religion is an illusion Dr. Philp counters with the assertion that Freud's illusion was science. It is an attack concerning which Freud himself had a good deal to say, in his New Introductory Lectures and elsewhere.
The Totem book is dealt with at length, and Dr. Philp has no difficulty in finding anthropologists to quote who have expressed their incr