Conclusions

Abstract

I began this book by speaking of Freud as an Enlightenment rationalist, perhaps the last great exponent of such a mode of thought, and as a modernist. I have finished by describing him as a Romantic and a materialist. This is a pretty heady combination of characteristics to ascribe to anyone! Yet perhaps this gives us a clue to Freud’s wideranging influence, which continued to the end of the twentieth century, and shows no sign of sexuality, anthropology, religion, and so on. We could say he was a great European thinker, bringing together many of the influences that have fertilized that continent’s thought for centuries, including Judaism, empirical scientific studies, a Romantic fascination with the individual and a fierce anti-Christian polemic that is crucial to his psychological stance, which rejects overly ethical considerations of sexual behaviour.