Why Didn’t Freud Reject Pfister? A Response to Isabelle Noth and Christoph Morgenthaler
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Abstract
The Freud-Pfister correspondence is in some sense an Urtext for the most friendly debate imaginable between the self-identified “godless Jew” who founded psychoanalysis, and the liberal Swiss pastor who was drawn to psychoanalysis while retaining his belief in God. Why didn’t Freud reject Pfister? This article will probe this question using the tools of psychoanalysis itself. After reviewing Freud’s associations to childhood religion, the Bible, and his father (citing Rizzuto), I am proposing that Pfister functioned unconsciously for Freud not only as an admiring son and disciple, but also a father substitute—much like Freud’s beloved antiquities—who represented both a God and a father who would admire and love him, and carry Freud’s name forward in the Book of Life.
Keywords
Freud Pfister Rizzuto Judaism Anti-Semitism God Religion Phillipson Bible “Freud’s Last Session”References
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