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In this highly readable book, Paul C. Vitz, Ph.D., a psychology professor at New York University and author of several articles on Christianity and psychoanalysis, examines evidence of unconscious inhibitions regarding religion in the life and work of Sigmund Freud. Besides evidence of a substantial number of expressed pro-religious concerns and relationships scattered throughout Freud's life, Vitz discerns a more implicit unrecognized counterpoint to Freud's critical, negative feelings about religion. Drawing upon letters and other biographical material, some of which has only recently become available, Vitz shows not only how abiding was Freud's preoccupation with religion but especially how ambivalent. While most of Freud's experience of Judiasm was of a secularized, rather religionless sort, his immersion by his nanny in Catholic religious devotion and practice during the first three years of his life was intense. A fascination seems to have lived on, manifested in such ways as in his preoccupation in personal letters with Christian themes such as Pentecost and Easter, his longings for a Rome he could never reach, some suggestion of conscious and unconscious desires for conversion and baptism, and his professed enjoyment of rather ambiguous Christian literature such as the writings of Goethe, and Christian art such as the work of Leonardo de Vinci.
Vitz argues that, while Freud seems to have known very few strong believers, either Christian or Jewish, and probably never analysed a deeply convinced religious believer, there is some striking evidence that several individuals had a profound religious impact upon Freud. Vitz refers to such amicable life-long relationships as with the Swiss Reformed pastor and psychoanalyst, Oskar Pfister, and also the highly influential relationship lasting into the 1890s with the Austrian philosopher and ex-Catholic priest, Franz Brentano. Despite his claim of being a natural atheist, Freud wrote to his friend, Edward Silberst