Freud, Women, and Morality The Psychology of Good and Evil by Eli Sagan New York:  Basic Books, 1988,  x + 270 pp., $19.95

Eli Sagan, a teacher at The New School for Social Research, has written a profound, scholarly, and thought-provoking book. An alternative title could well be. “Freud's ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’ Revisited and Revised.” It is a “moral” work in which the author declares his thoughts and feelings with an intensity of passion that is, at times, reminiscent of the Old Testament prophet. One of his basic theses is a rejection of the moral thought generated by 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers, who argued for the supremacy of reason over feelings; their influence over Freud was decisive. Sagan says that one must return to “feelings” of love, pity, and compassion, but to the extent of rejecting the wholly intellectual approach as a basis of moral thought, as did the early Christians. The morality, or more precisely, immorality, of man and society is described and then denounced, its causes given, and the way to “redemption” and “salvation” clearly delineated. Though it is in no way a formal tract of religion, it does have the distinguishing quality of the religious although placed within a secular, nontheistic, framework. This