In the Shadow of Moloch: The Sacrifice of Children and its Impact on Western Religions. Martin S. Bergmann. New York:  Columbia University Press, 1992,  xi + 347 pp.

Martin Bergmann is a professor of psychology at New York University who has enjoyed a long career as a practicing psychoanalyst. He is known for his many contributions, especially his writings on the Holocaust. In the present book, he brings together a wealth of knowledge and experience to produce a thought-provoking and probing exploration into the ancient roots of religious thinking. His reflections cover the broad range of religious history, from the earliest records of human religious experience to the present. He explores and illumines consistently this rich material through a psychoanalytic lens that brings to light fresh insights and connections.

Bergmann's thesis is fairly straightforward and makes a sweeping generalization that embraces, yet goes beyond, more familiar and traditional Freudian and psychoanalytic analyses of religious phenomena. His argument runs as follows: The origins of archaic religions are tied up with the need to placate the anger of the gods by human sacrifice, particularly of little children. This dynamic has increasingly undergone repression and