SOURCE: Thielman, Samuel B. Review of A Godless Jew, by Peter Gay. New England Journal of Medicine 319, no. 13 (29 September 1988): 877.

In the following review, Thielman offers a positive assessment of A Godless Jew, describing it as “a careful assessment of Freud's attitude toward religion.”

Within the past decade, the literature on Freud and religion has become more objective, sophisticated, and thoughtful. Early works on Freud's attitude toward religion often sought either to defend religion against psychoanalysis by attacking Freud, or to deflect criticism of psychoanalysis by assuming that differences between the devout and the analysts were really only the result of misunderstanding. Hans Kung's Freud and the Problem of God (1980) and W. W. Meissner's Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience (1984) have in some measure corrected this imbalance. Now, within several months of each other, have appeared two new assessments of Freud and religion.

The first of these, A Godless Jew, is...