Sigmund Freud's last major work proposes that Moses was an Egyptian, a follower of the monotheist pharaoh Akhenaten, and that the Jewish people killed him and later returned to his teaching. Freud uses this story to explain religion through the return of the repressed and a sense of collective guilt, and to ask why the Jews have survived as a people. He wrote it as Nazism rose and finished it in exile in London.
It suits readers of psychoanalysis and the history of religion who want to see Freud's method applied to a large historical question. It is speculative and has always been controversial.
Deep and open-ended; a demanding read.
Best for readers like The Literary Connoisseur. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1939
- Language
- EN
