Freud knew he had brought joy to the world with such words as "thanatos," "id," supergego," reaction formation," "sublimation," "transference," "manifest content," and other original concepts for which terms had to be found. He created a system for understanding the human psyche that could take the place of theology as well as traditional psychology – a system compaible with Einsteinian physics. The enmity to organized religion in his late books ("The Future of an Illusion," "Civilization and Its Discontents") eflects his rationalism, his belief that religion "infantilized" us. But unless he was a secret optimist, his atheism is inconistent with his understanding of he behavior of a mob or of a repressed id that volcanically explodes.
Freud: the very name signifies modernity of consciousness.
But words have lives of ther own, and his name also figures in such a triumph of the human spirit as Beethoven's Ninth symphony with Schiller's words ("Freude schöner götterfunken tochter aus elysium").
And you see Freud in Schadenfreude.
For Schadenfreude you can't beat the story The New York Post broke under the head "Turkish lawmaker has a heart attack after saying Israel ‘will suffer the wrath of Allah.’" The piece had Isabel Keane's by line; the date, December 12, 2023.
O Freud, how much we owe you, and how little your great genius is revered!
— David Lehman