Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Ludwik Fleck, the Polish philosopher of science, maintained that scientific discovery is influenced by social, political, historical, psychological, and personal factors. The determinants of Freud’s Jewish identity are examined from this Fleckian perspective, as is the impact of that complex identity on his creation of psychoanalysis as a science. Three strands contributing to his Jewish identity are identified and explored: his commitment to the ideal of Bildung, the anti-Semitism of the times, and his “godlessness.” Finally, the question is addressed of what it means that psychoanalysis was founded by a Jew. For Freud, psychoanalysis was a kind of liberation philosophy, an attempt to break free of his ethnic and religious inheritance. Yet it represented at the same time his ineradicable relationship with that inheritance. It encapsulated both the ambivalence of his Jewish identity and the creativity of his efforts to resolve it.

Keywords

Freud psychoanalysis Jewish identity

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bein

(1990). The Jewish Question: Biography of a World Problem, transl. Zohn

Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses.

Boehlich

, ed. (1991). The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Eduard Silberstein, 1871–1881, transl. Pomerans

A.J.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Brabant

Falzeder

Giampieri-Deutsch

eds. (1993). The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi: Vol. 1. 1908–1914, transl. Hoffer

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Cuddihy

J.M.

(1974). The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Lévi-Strauss, and the Struggle with Jewish Modernity. New York: Basic Books.

Elon

(2002). The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743–1933. New York: Picador, 2003.

Fleck

(1935). Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, transl. Bradley

Trenn

T.J.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Freud

, ed. (1960). Letters of Sigmund Freud. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1992.

Freud

Abraham

(1965). A Psycho-Analytic Dialogue: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 1907–1926. New York: Basic Books.

Freud

(1900). The interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition 4/5.

10.

Freud

(1904). Obituary of Professor S. Hammerschlag. Standard Edition 9:255–256.

11.

Freud

(1908). Obsessive actions and religious practices. Standard Edition 9:117–127.

12.

Freud

(1912–1913). Totem and taboo. Standard Edition 13:1–161.

13.

Freud

(1925). An autobiographical study. Standard Edition 20:7–70.

14.

Freud

(1926). The future of an illusion. Standard Edition 21:5–56.

15.

Freud

(1936). A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis. Standard Edition 22:239–248.

16.

Freud

(1939). Moses and monotheism: Three essays. Standard Edition 23:7–137.

17.

Gay

(1987). A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis. New Haven: Yale University Press.

18.

Gay

(1988). Freud: A Life for Our Time. New York: Norton.

19.

Gilman

S.L.

(1990). Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

20.

Handlin

(1951). The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

21.

Kafka

(1958). Letters, 1902–1924. New York: Schocken Books.

22.

Klein

(1981). The Jewish Origins of the Psychoanalytic Movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

23.

Meissner

W.W.

(1978). Psychoanalytic aspects of religious experience. Annual of Psychoanalysis 6:103–141.

24.

Mosse

G.L.

(1985). German Jews beyond Judaism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

25.

Richards

A.D.

(2006). The creation and social transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 54:359–378.

26.

Rozenblit

(2006). Assimilation and affirmation: The Jews of Freud’s Vienna. Paper presented at conference, “Freud’s Jewish World,” December 2–4, Leo Baeck Institute, YIVO, New York.

27.

Schorske

(1980). Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1981.

28.

Wittels

(1924). Sigmund Freud: His Personality, His Teaching, and His School. London: Allen & Unwin.

29.

Yerushalmi

(1991). Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Freud’s Jewish Identity and Psychoanalysis as a Science

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References