Mental Health, Religion & Culture September 2006; 9(4): 401–405 Freud and the American physician’s religious experience JANETTE GRAETZ SIMMONDS Monash University, Melbourne, Australia 3800 Abstract Freud wrote a curious short paper at the end of 1927, the year in which his book, The future of an illusion was published. The paper is remarkable in that we as readers also have the evidence that Freud drew on, that is, a letter by an American physician unknown to Freud, detailing his religious experience. (This situation of having the same source material is not completely singular, as we also have access to Da Vinci’s painting of the ‘Madonna and Child with Saint Anne’, the subject of a previous exercise by Freud (1910a) in interpreting religious material in a reductive manner.) Having available the exact text that Freud used for his analysis enables a close examination of Freud’s use of the material. It becomes clear that in his analysis of the physician’s experience, Freud makes a string of interpolations, breaking his own rules concerning wild analysis. It can also be seen from the paper how he ignores considerations of context and culture. In his writings on religion, Freud saw religion primarily as a defence against feel- ings of helplessness. His major thesis in The future of an illusion was that religious ideas ‘are not precipitates of experience or end-results of thinking: they are illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind’ and that they ‘come near to psychiatric delusions’ (Freud, 1927, p. 30). Freud’s very short paper (three and a quarter pages in book format), A religious experience (‘Ein religio ¨ ses erlebnis’) was written soon after The future of an illusion, Correspondence: Dr Janette Graetz Simmonds, Institute of Human Development and Counselling, Faculty of Education, Building 6, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia 3800. Tel: þ61 3 9905 2902. Fax: þ61 3 9905 2779. E-mail: janette.simmonds@education.monash.edu.au ISSN 1367-4676 print/ISSN 1469-9737 online ß 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13694670500370519