Chapter Brief Summary of Moses and Monotheism - Study Guide by Sigmund Freud

Brief Summary

This is Freud's last work on religion, and essentially consists of a wide-ranging application of individual psychology to the analysis of a national group and its religion. Discrepancies in the Biblical descriptions of Moses and monotheistic religion are accounted for by exploring the nature of historical and religious truth and its distortions in tradition. Freud closes with observations on the influence of religion on the Jewish character, and with comments on the relations between circumcision, the castration complex and anti-Semitism.