Freud’s Jewish Identity Paper by Arnold Richards at NYPSI
Click Here To Read: Freud’s Jewish Identity by Arnold Richards, paper to be given at New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute at 247 East 82nd Street, New York, on May 11, 2010.
Click Here to Read: Freud’s Jewish Identity by Arnold Richards, long version.
Click Here to Read: Powerpoint for Freud’s Jewish Identity by Arnold Richards.
Click Here To Read: Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture by Arnold Richards.
Click Here to Read: Freud’s Need Not to Believe by Arnold Richards.
Click Here To View: Powerpoint for Freud’s Need Not to Believe by Arnold Richards
Explore posts in the same categories: Announcements, NYPSI Centenary 1911-2011, Papers
April 29th, 2010 at 7:52 am
Religion was the science of its time. It’s not so much that science has replaced religion as the questions asked and answered by religion have gradually been re-answered by or eliminated by science. Large steps in this gradual, evolutionary process were made by two Jews who were both products of their Jewish communities and yet independent from them at the same time: Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Their attitudes toward their Jewish identities were likewise intellectual and individual.
But isn’t this well within the Jewish tradition? The Bible proclaims the existence of one God, yet He says to Moses from the burning bush: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” One God, yes, but it is understood that each individual can only perceive God in his own way.
May 7th, 2010 at 6:13 am
Comment from Gerald J. Gargiulo:
Before religion collapsed into morality and dogma – with the threat of exclusion from either the community or from some life hereafter, it was meant to pull people out of the cave of their narcissistic self preoccupation by evoking awe and mystery and offering some rational for the events which befell them. Pantheism, despite the bad name given to it in the Judaeo/Christian traditions, (sky-god religions) was an attempt to recognize, and in some cases to placate, the various vital forces in the world that evoke awe and mystery. The mystical traditions, in both Judaism and Christianity, reflect such awe, mystery and vitality. Within the Christian tradition mysticism is known as negative or apophatic theology. Such a theology, which goes back centuries, has little, if anything, to do with fear and even less with any “definition” of what the word God might possibly mean. While I appreciated and learned a good deal from Arnie Richards’ discussion of “Freud’s Jewish Identity,” I think he concludes with an understandable but nevertheless one-sided definition of “religion” i.e., as exclusively based on fear.
Freud’s commitment to the secular intellectual life, as Arnie unfolds it, helps us understand Freud’s fierce reaction to religious loyalty oaths, under the rubric of dogma or exclusionary ritual. I do not believe we need Meissner’s conjectures, re Freud’s childhood, to explain it. Finally, I believe that the history of anti-Semitism, in the West, has its roots more in early Christian simplistic theology, in catering to the new non-Jewish converts and to political power as well as the ever present need to project the bad self (i.e., the non-believing self) than it does to the theoretical possibility of killing the primal father and/or Moses.
Psychoanalysis has many meeting points, as I have discussed in other publications, with some of the goals of apophatic theology. In its best moments it avoids dogma and enables patients to be real and to appreciate the joy and the awe of life. In resolving narcissism it enables sensible compassion and justice to have a seedbed. So perhaps psychoanalysis has not so much repudiate religion as much as it has secularized its best insights and made them available for everyman; along with lifting the pain that ignorance, defense and transference condemn one to. Thanks Arnie for keeping this topic alive….Jerry Gargiulo
gjgargiulo@gjg.us.com
–
Gerald J. Gargiulo, Ph.D
35 Brewster Hill Road
May 13th, 2010 at 5:25 am
Comment from the web by Mottel on the Letters of Thought blog.
Spending an evening out on the town with my dear wife, I decided to crowd-source our evening’s activities . . . of those that responded, one D.C. suggested that I check out a lecture on Freud’s Jewish Identity presented by Dr. Arnold D. Richards with Prof. Susannah Heschel at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.
After dinner, we did indeed go.
What follows is a collection of my thoughts and notes from the evening. I make no attempt to represent the complete opinions of those that spoke. I’ve made no attempt to check if my words hold water among academics, nor do I care to impress them . . . Rather what follows is a synthesis of ideas as they have occurred to me.
Richards (see his paper for a full discussion of the subject) seems to explore the essential dichotomy and/or duality of Freud’s Jewish identity – as exemplified through Bildung, Antisemitism and (something that was mostly skipped due to lack of time) his atheism.
Freud, the child of Galician immigrants (“Psychoanalysis is a Galicianer science.”) expressed an almost contradictory sense of pride in his Jewish roots and a shame of his Jewish, and especially Eastern European (Ostjuden), brethren. In an attempt to synthesize these two conflicting opinions, Freud re-imagined his lineage to that of Jews from Cologne (who, brought to the city by the Romans, preceded the Germanic tribes in the area), via Lithuania to Vienna.
He denied his ability to speak or read Hebrew and Yiddish, yet visited his mother, who primarily spoke Yiddish, every Sunday. He had a volume of the Talmud [I'm not sure which mesechta] with a German translation, as a gift from his father. Never truly at home as an Austrian or a Jew . . .
His work, Moses and Monotheism is in effect, a summation of Freud’s own Jewish dilemma – he sets Moses, the father of all prophets – the quintessential Jew – as an Egyptian . . . Yet Moses in-turn gives rise to the forced veneer of Jewish morality via christianity – forced upon the essentially pagan Teutonic tribes.
I wonder if the concept of analyzing Freud and his Jewish identity – in the light and context of psychoanalysis – exposes the essentially cyclical and self-referential nature of psychoanalysis. We wish to analyze Freud’s theories through the lens of Freud the man – yet we use the vocabulary of his thoughts to understand the background and society that created the man . . . A prisoner can not set himself free.
Martin S. Bergmann spoke of the change that had occurred in the field of psychoanalysis in terms of its Jewish roots – in the past had anyone called Psychoanalysis a Jewish science, it would have been rooted in antisemitism. Freud’s decision to anoint Carl Jung, the handsome non-Jew, as the heir to the throne of psychoanalysis was an attempt to remove the field from its Jewish roots – to make it more palpable to the German public. Perhaps, Bergmann theorized, psychoanalysis’s Jewish roots stemmed from the attempt of its founders, who sought to understand the world through logic and science, to relate to the irrational and illogical hate of Antisemitism.
Another speaker thought to apply Bergmann’s view of psychoanalysis as a logical attempt to comprehend the illogical hate – as perhaps a desire to remove themselves from the illogical nature of religion and instead view the human story by means of science . . . and there I see the ultimate failure of the cyclical nature of the discussion.
Susannah Heschel indeed noted the failure of the argument that psychoanalysis is an attempt to provide a logical framework that can replace the illogical nature of religion – for if so, then psychoanalysis has become the new dogma that we subjectively view man with – at which point it can no longer effectively replace the illogical G-d, for it itself has become illogical.
Heschel stems from Chassidic roots – and her stance seems to make it eminently clear. Psychoanalysis isn’t the result of the chesbon hanefesh, as one suggested, or at least not the accounting of the soul as seen in light of the Mussar movement, but rather akin to the Chassidic Rebbes – who invested themselves into those who approached them. She seems to understand the third power that transcends both the logical and illogical.
Freud saw circumcision as an Egyptian act. Religion is fear, and circumcision is a symbolic substitute for castration. But Heschel sees the circumcision through its Jewish context – as a covenant – a physical reminder of our receiving the Torah from G-d. By the circumcision the Mohel performs metzitzah b’peh – akin to the kisses of the divine (Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine – Shir Hashirim), or the suckling of the child on the breast. It is not castration by G-d’s anger, but rather his kiss of love.
As mentioned by D.C. during the question period (mirroring my own thoughts), the Bris in Chassidic terms, takes place on the eighth day, because it transcends the realm of time and nature – the seven days of the week. The child, who can not think and reason, who can make no decision about the meaning of the circumcision, is able to connect to the transcendent quality of the creator.
The early psychoanalysts failed to understand religion because they were trapped within the realm of logic. In an attempt to understand the world through the lens of logic, G-d may not fit into the frame. As mentioned by one of the questioners, Judaism has a long history of analyzing the Torah with the mind – yet in the eye of ‘scientist’ it remains inherently illogical since the ultimate source of the discussion, G-d, is sacrosanct.
However in the tradition of Chassidus Chabad, there is no contradiction between the rational study of an ‘irrational’ Creator – for the rational and irrational are part of the mortal coil. Just as there is a failure to understand Freud as a product of his background, if we are limited to describe him only with the vocabulary of his own subjective thought, if we try to find the relative merits of critical logic and religion, we remain trapped in cyclical discussion.
The Creator is not irrational, but rather suprarational. By trying to understand the Torah, a transcendent knowledge, then we allow our physical minds to bridge the gap of logic and what is beyond logic.
In an institution that worships on the alter of German and Austrian fields of thought, Richard’s clearly Ostjude personality and vocabulary provide an almost ironic sense of the ultimate victory of the Eastern European, Chassidic, Jew.
In the past the NYPI would meet on Yom Kippur – in their attempt to flee to constraints of Jewish ritual and the shtetle, its members had in effect remained very much bound by their Jewish roots. Yet today, looking and listening to the crowd, I found only the faintest trace of German, even Judeo-German, culture . . .
Unlike Freud, who tried to hide, unsuccessfully, his Yiddish vocabulary and roots – these Jews were very much party of the cloth of the “Galician” story and scene.
I wonder what Freud would have said.
May 13th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Comment from Arnie Richards
I am very grateful for the comments I think you have presented an accurate summary of my thesis, but I don’t agree that me argument is circular I do not use Freud’s psychoanalysis to analyze Freud. The warrant for my approach comes from another Galitzianer the Cracovian Jew Ludwig Fleck who developed the sociology of scientific knowledge which stresses the contribution of historical sociological and personal determinants of ideas. My paper stress the role iof the mileau in the development of Freuds thought
May 13th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Comment from redzneakz:
Wow, I had never made the connection between the concept of a Rebbe drawing close his Chasid, and the psychologist/patient relationship.
The difference of course is that in Freudian theory, the transference and countertransference phases of the therapist/analysand relationship are part of a therapeutic process which ultimately results in the patient being “healed” and separating himself from the doctor.
The relationship between a chossid and his Rebbe is much more complex, and of course, also depends on the Rebbe’s particular path.
May 13th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Comment from Arnie Richards:
BTW Are you aware the Freud treated the 5th Lubovicher Rebbe?
May 13th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Comment from Mottel:
Arniedr: I was quiet pleased to see your immediate response to my post this morning (an aside – for a moment I thought the person commenting had been arendar (as in the Jewish arendators – an Орендар)).
The implication that you had analyzed Freud in light of psychoanalysis is indeed false – during the course of restructuring the post, that paragraph was left next to my discussion of your thesis . . . The order and wording has since been changed around to clarify things.
I’d be interested in knowing if you’ve further developed the Galician connection to the field of psychoanalysis. Do you view it as merely an interesting aside – or is there perhaps a deeper cultural or sociological connection between the two.
May 13th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Comment from Mottel:
In regards to Freud and the Rashab – I am indeed familiar with the connection . . . in truth, it was one of the reasons why we attended – I’d hoped, perhaps, that it might be mentioned. There was a paper written on the subject some time back have you ever seen it?