The Future of an Illusion

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The Future of an Illusion

This book has been translated by Dar Al-Talyaa

Of the various English translations of Freud’s major works to appear in his lifetime, only one was authorized by Freud himself: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud under the general editorship of James Strachey.

In the manner of the eighteenth-century philosophe, Freud argued that religion and science were mortal enemies. Early in the century, he began to think about religion psychoanalytically and to discuss it in his writings. ?The Future of an Illusion ?(1927), Freud’s best known and most emphatic psychoanalytic exploration of religion, is the culmination of a lifelong pattern of thinking.

“Gregory C. Richter’s fluent new translation shows one of Freud’s most popular books to be as clear, colloquial, and compelling as anything else by the master of psychoanalysis, and Todd Dufresne’s entertaining introduction makes a good case for its surprising contemporary relevance, in spite of its often puzzling arguments.

“–Thomas Kemple, University of British Columbia –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

• The concept of civilization is associated with a built-up knowledge base about extracting “wealth” or otherwise useful things from Nature.
• The concept of civilization is associated with a set of rules for controlling (A) those actions of people which affect other people, and (B) the distributiuon of wealth among people.
• These two associated things (the knowledge base and the rule set) are not independent of one another. There are three reasons why this is so:
  1. Relations between people are influenced by the degree to which a person is instinctually satisfied. (Instincts are part of Nature.)
  2. People themselves have value, either by the work they perform or by their personal characteristics, such as sexuality, persona, etc.
  3. Each person is an enemy of civilization; civilization must therefore be protected from individuals and groups. [Note: Civilization is sometimes the enemy of the individual.

The Future of an Illusion

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