Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices

Editor's Note

Zwangshandlungen Und Religionsübungen

(a) German Editions:

1907  Z. Religionspsychol.,  1 (1) [April],  4-12.

1909 S.K.S.N.,  2,  122-31. (1912, 2nd ed.; 1921, 3rd ed.)

1924 G.S.,  10,  210-20.

1941 G.W.,  7,  129-39.↗

(b) English Translation:

‘Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices’ 1924 C.P.,  2,  25-35. (Tr. R. C. McWatters.)

The present translation, with a slightly changed title, is a modified version of the one published in 1924.

This paper was written in February, 1907, for the first issue of a periodical directed by Bresler and Vorbrodt. At a meeting of the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society on February 27, Freud reported that he had sent in a contribution and also that Breslar had invited him to be a co-editor and that he had accepted. His name in fact appears in the (rather long) list of editorial advisers. The incorrect statement that the paper was read to the Society by Freud on March 2 is derived from Jones's biography (, 380). March 2 was in any case a Saturday and not a Wednesday. Jung was present at the meeting on March 6, when Adler read a case history. (See the Minutes, 1.) This was Freud's introductory incursion into the psychology of religion, and, as he points out in Section V of his ‘Short Account of Psycho-Analysis’ (1924f), it formed a definite step towards his much extended treatment of the subject five years later in Totem and Taboo. But besides this the paper is of great interest as being Freud's first discussion of obsessional neurosis since the Breuer period some ten years earlier. He here gives a sketch of the mechanism of obsessional symptoms which he was to elaborate in the case history of the ‘Rat Man’ (1909d), whose treatment, however, he had not begun when he wrote the present work.