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Freud on Femininity and Faith is located within feminist social theory and the academic tradition of Freud scholarship (Philip Rieff, Paul Ricoeur, etc.), and is avowedly non-clinical. It is the product of eight years of research at various U.S. universities, particularly their divinity schools.
Judith Van Herik's argument is that Freud's critical theory of religion cannot be separated from his critical theory of gender —‘These relationships run through his texts like a pattern through marble’. She identifies conceptual parallels between fulfilment and femininity and fulfilment and Christianity, and between renunciation and masculinity and renunciation and the Mosaic tradition. The contrasting attitudes to fulfilment and renunciation in The Future of an Illusion and Moses and Monotheisms, respectively are discussed in a most thought-provoking way. It is a carefully constructed book but in my opinion far too long; it would have made its mark as a Journal article. This is partly because there is too much exposition of the basic texts—both in relation to oedipal theory and the theory of religion, and too much