Hidden in Plain Sight: Freud's Jewish Identity Revisited

Psychoanalysis’s Cultural Dissociation Meets Ethnic Minorities: Reply to Commentary by Kimberlyn Leary

“…As a result, a complex, but obscured nature of psychoanalysis's cultural identity is emerging. That Freud's experience as a Jew living in the particular historical and cultural context profoundly shaped his psyche and his theories is little in doubt; many have pointed out Jewish aspects to his work (Aron & Starr, 2013;Bakan, 1958;Bergmann, 1995;Richards, 2010;Salberg, 2007;Yerushalmi, 1991), even as Freud himself denied them: He denied knowledge of Hebrew (Ostow, 1989), omitted themes related to Jewish experiences in his published cases (Blum, 2010), and employed Greek myths, not Hebrew Bible stories, for his central ideas. A part of this denial was due to his conscious desire for scientific respectability but a significant portion was his unconscious, internalized anti-Semitism: Aron and Starr (2013), Boyarin (1997), Gilman (1993), among others, argued that Freud had internalized anti-Semitism, in particular an anti-Semitic image of Jewish men, which he then unconsciously repressed and displaced onto women.…”

Freud's Jewish identity, circumcision, and the theory of castration anxiety: problem or pride?

“…Some of Freud's public neglect of Jewishness might therefore be seen as strivings to shield both himself and his family from anti-Semitism, and psychoanalysis from becoming viewed as a Jewish science, rather than as reflecting his true attitudes (Gilman, 1991). Given the anti-Semitism of the time, this attitude seems understandable as well as reasonable (Reijzer, 2011;Salberg, 2007). It should however be noted that when Freud was coming of age, his devotion to Jewishness and Jewry seemed to increase, the late work Moses and monotheism (Freud, 1939(Freud, -1964a being an example of this interest.…”

“…It is important to acknowledge that a "Jewish" science was not a neutral, describing term, but Jewish in this context should be understood as inferior, and sometimes even as fraud (Gilman,968 E.H. Punzi 1991). The moving back and forth between a wish to break free from the limitations of belonging to the Jewry, regardless of whether these were connected to anti-Semitism or the limitations that are connected to a traditional Jewish life, and a wish to be true to one's heritage, pervaded European Jewry during the turn of the nineteenth century (Geller, 2007;Reijzer, 2011;Salberg, 2007). The ambivalent attitude towards the Jewish identity that characterised Freud was thus characteristic of the current Zeitgeist, and the European Jews struggled with the question of how much one should embrace, and officially expose one's Jewishness, thereby risking anti-Semitic reactions, and how much one should conform to the norms of the society (Beller, 1989;Reijzer, 2011;Rozenblit, 2010).…”

“…Circumcision became equated with castration, and the circumcised Jew thereby was perceived as inferior to other men, a perception that fuelled anti-Semitism (Gilman, 1991). Salberg (2007) shows how male Jews were seen as feminised and thereby passive and inferior, and some Jewish men could strive to counteract these perceptions by adopting a distant attitude towards women and strive for activity and rational scientific thinking. In this climate psychoanalysis was developed, and Reijzer (2011) elucidates how anti-Semitism has been, and in some ways still is, a companion to psychoanalytic theory that needs to be acknowledged and counteracted.…”

Psychoanalysis Traumatized: The Legacy of the Holocaust

“…Recognition of psychoanalysis as a Holocaust survivor leads immediately to the challenge of understanding its avoidance and the implications for psychoanalytic institutions and ideas. If insight amounts to shining a light on something that is, in Salberg's (2007) felicitous phrase, " hidden in plain sight, " then Emily Kuriloff ' s examination of psychoanalytic theorists in the context of their personal Holocaust experience begins to illuminate the impact of personal trauma on psychoanalytic ideas. To use Geertz ' s concept ( Geertz, 1973 ), Kuriloff " thickly " describes psychoanalytic theory by adding a layer of traumatic historical context.…”