Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices In a prefatory note to the Hebrew translation of Totem and Taboo (1930) Freud describes himself as "an author who is ignorant of the language of holy writ, who is completely estranged from the religion of his fathers-as well as from every other religion" but who remains "in his essential nature a Jew and who has no desire to alter that nature". In An Autobiographical Study, originally published in 1925, Freud recounts that "My parents were Jews, and I have remained a Jew myself." Familiarity with Bible stories, from an age even before he learned to read, had "an enduring effect on the direction of my interest." In 1873, upon attending the University at Vienna, he first encountered antisemitism: "I found that I was expected to feel myself inferior and an alien because I was a Jew." Before his wedding, Freud desired to convert to Protestantism to avoid a Jewish ceremony but was ultimately persuaded not to. Freud considered God as a phantasy, based on the infantile need for a dominant father figure, with religion as a necessity in the development of early civilization to help restrain our violent impulses, that can now be discarded in favor of science and reason. Sigmund Freud's views on religion are described in several of his books and essays.
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