The question is whether his criticism is correct.

No.

As someone who appreciates Freud’s work and invests quite a bit of time in it, I have to admit that Freud simply did not understand what religion is. He related to the experience that accompanies religion and thought that was the whole picture (pretty typical of him…). By the same token, one could say that Freud’s psychoanalysis was created in order to give him comfort and a sense of success in life. This is an interpretation of a psychological event. It does not contradict whether the theory is true or false.
By the way, later psychoanalysts, such as Erich Fromm, Jung, Bion, and others, did not view religion the way Freud did from the psychological standpoint.

And suppose, through some miraculous discovery, we were to reach the unequivocal conclusion that the God people speak about was invented by human beings so that they could find comfort in the fact that they are creatures destined to die. Would that exempt us from the question whether God exists or does not exist—or lead to the extreme conclusion from that, that God does not exist? What kind of argument is this anyway?

Zevulun,
I would say that a person places the intuition of God’s existence into subjective psychological patterns. But a person does that with respect to every object whatsoever, such as the state, the culture, or his psychologist. That does not mean the object does not exist in itself, only that it is colored by his projections.

By the way, Freud himself, in the article in which he attacks religion, “The Future of an Illusion,” writes that his criticism does not necessarily mean that religious truths (“there is a God”) are not correct, but rather that it constitutes a challenge and a suspicion of bias.

And one last point: Freud was not enough of a philosopher or theologian to understand what religion is talking about. And in general… Freud wrote a lot of nonsense that embarrasses his admirers to this day, such as belief in telepathy and numerology and other absurd speculations about history and the psyche. So “Freud said X” is not, in itself, a difficulty.

Most of Freud’s teaching consists of nice theories and unscientific speculations (the whole essence of Popper’s principle of falsifiability came into the world to attack Freud, and that is Freud’s main contribution to “science” 😊), so although he contributed a great deal to psychology, he should not be regarded as anything more than an excellent therapist, and his wonderful musings on religion are certainly of no interest to us.

Williamsburg,
The fact that Freud’s ideas do not meet the criteria of the natural sciences according to Popper does not make the ideas incorrect. This is a field of interpretations, not scientific theories. It is a metaphorical and pictorial language for conveying an impression of psychic life.
And I would cast doubt on the statement that Freud was an excellent therapist. Today therapeutic values have changed by 180 degrees, and working according to his method may harm quite a few people. One of his famous patients said: “Although Freud’s interpretation was plainly incorrect, his personality impressed me and influenced me.”
In my impression, Freud’s great contribution to psychology is the emphasis on a “theory of the clinic”—that is, an in-depth study of the individual personality instead of quantitative research. Most psychoanalytic theories were built by psychoanalytic thinkers through direct encounters with patients and adapting the theory and technique to changing needs according to place and time.

Let me clarify my meaning: Freud himself did indeed relate to psychoanalysis as science in every respect, and hence his excessive arrogance in speaking about things he did not understand, such as religion, history (monotheism was born in Egypt), and philosophy (after all, he is a scientist, so why shouldn’t he adopt the arrogance of scientists). Yishai’s question comes from the esteem he has for Freud, and to that Michi answered that Freud’s opinion interests him about as much as Moshele’s opinion, and that it is based on nothing. This claim—that religion was born to supply needs—is an empty statement. So I explained that treating Freud as a scientist and his theories as scientific is the wrong approach.