I have never doubted that religious phenomena are only to be understood on the pattern of the individual neurotic symptoms familiar to us.
Sigmund FreudThe liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization, though then, it is true, it had for the most part no value, since the individual was scarcely in a position to defend it. The development of civilization imposes restrictions on it, and justice demands that no one shall escape those restrictions.
Sigmund FreudThe communal life of human beings had . . . a two-fold foundation: the compulsion to work, which was created by external necessity, and the power of love.
Sigmund FreudIn this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is more correct to say: Originally the ego includes everything, later it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling - a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable connection of the ego with the external world.
Sigmund Freud