← Volver a la ficha del textoSigmund Freud
and the
Jewish Mystical Tradition
by
DAVID BAKAN
Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Missouri
a)
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Dedicated
to the memory of
my grandfather
Yitzchak Yosef Rosenstrauch
(1859-1947)
We know that genius is incomprehen-
sible and unaccountable and it should
therefore not be called upon as an ex-
planation until every other solution has
failed.
Everything new must have its roots in
what was before.
Few tasks are as appealing as inquiry
into the laws that govern the psyche of
exceptionally endowed individuals,
—Sigmund Freud
Preface
The purpose of this essay is to explore an hypothesis concerning
the intellectual antecedents of Freudian psychoanalysis, From the
point of view of the history of ideas, psychoanalysis presents a spe-
cial problem. Movements of thought of the stature of psychoanalysis
usually have prominent antecedents in the history of man’s thought.
Although there are giants in every great movement of thought,
rarely do their contributions seem to arise full-blown, like psycho-
analysis, as the work of a single person.
Freud is sometimes viewed as an inexplicable genius who burst
upon the world, left his profound and complicated message, and de-
parted, In secking to understand the intellectual history of psycho-
analysis one can find many features of Freud's thought in the history
of ideas in the main streams of Western civilization. Yet the basic
mood of psychoanalysis is so radically different from all these other
modes of thought, that the question of its origins is still unsatis-
factorily answered.
The hypothesis of this essay is that a full appreciation of the de-
velopment of psychoanalysis is essentially incomplete unless it be
viewed against the history of Judaism, and particularly against the
history of Jewish mystical thought. This does not mean that we will
be able to read psychoanalytic propositions directly out of Jewish
mystical expressions. Our point is rather that Freud's repeated affir-
mation of his Jewish identity had greater significance for the de-
velopment of psychoanalysis than is usually recognized. He was a
participant in the struggles and the issues of Jewish mysticism; and
vii
PREFACE
where it was appropriate he drew from the Jewish mystical arma-
mentarium for equipment in these struggles.
‘As we hope we will make clear in the course of this essay, Jewish
mysticism played a special role in connection with Jewish contact
with the Western world. It was a movement within Judaism which,
especially after the seventeenth century, was revolutionary with re-
spect to the classical Jewish modes of life. It served to weaken the
classical patterns within Judaism and thus facilitated the entry of the
Jews into the wider streams of the Western world. Thus, our pres-
entation of Freud as a participant in the tradition of Jewish mys-
ticism need not do any violence to our basic conception of Freud as
a Western scientist and research worker.
A critical image in our analysis is that of Sabbatai Zevi, the false
Messiah of the Jews of the seventeenth century. Although he has
been fully repudiated in the history of the Jews—and we believe,
rightly so—the social eruption which surrounded this figure was
critical for the whole subsequent development of the Jews. Sabbatai
Zevi and the Sabbatian movement are, in a certain sense, paradig-
matic for some of the essential features of Freud's problems. What
the Sabbatian movement stood for in terms of emotional and social
Messianism, Freud grappled with as a scientific problem; and per-
haps therein lies his genius.
Our attempt to understand Freud in terms of Jewish history
should not be taken as indicating that we believe Freud to have been
a secret scholar of Jewish lore, An image of him poring over Kab-
balistic books in the dead of night is not supported by the facts; al-
though to have done this would not have been inconsistent with the
patterns of the Jewish mystical leaders. Nevertheless, Jewish mys-
tical thought was in the air in those parts of Europe from which his
parents and large proportions of the Jews of Vienna came. Jewish
mystical thought was largely embodied in the common oral expres-
sions of the Jews. We can suppose the kind of transmission which
takes place when a parent or grandparent makes a comment on this
viii
PREFACE
or that problem of the day. The communication can take place by
way of stories or jokes of the kind which Freud himself collected.
When the lore of Jewish mysticism is set down in books, it often
comes in the form of little nuggets. For example, the Hasidic An-
thology, edited by Rabbi Newman, is hardly an anthology of theo-
logical essays. It is rather, as described on the title page, “The
parables, folk-tales, fables, aphorisms, epigrams, sayings, anecdotes,
proverbs, and exegetical interpretations of the Hasidic masters and
disciples; their lore and wisdom.” * When a writer is interested in
presenting us with the social and political conditions of the Chassidic
Jews, he feels perfectly justified in basing such a treatment on an
analysis of the legendary material rather than on other forms of his-
torical data.* And the books of legends, which constituted the major
printed vehicle of transmission, are innumerable
In attempting to understand the development of psychoanalysis as
an expression of Jewish mysticism, it has been our endeavor to em-
phasize the word mysticism as much as the word Jewish. Jewish
mysticism was undoubtedly the major vehicle of transmission. It
operated, perhaps, by developing within Freud a certain perceptual
and emotional readiness, and by defining some basic patterns of re-
action in connection with the problems he encountered.
‘The author is aware of the fact that all forms of mysticism have
features in common, and that historically there has been a consid-
erable amount of cultural diffusion among the varieties of expression
of the mystical impulse. No effort has been made to separate out the
lines which have fed into or issued from Jewish mysticism. For
example, Pythagoreanism undoubtedly affected Jewish mysticism;
and we know that Goethe, for whom Freud had great respect,
studied Kabbala. These relationships are far too complicated to be
dealt with in this essay. In our treatment of Jewish mysticism we
have contented ourselves with the idea that we are dealing with
characteristic features, and that characteristic does not mean unique.
‘The question has repeatedly arisen, in discussions concerning this
ix
PREFACE
essay, as to what the author's own views concerning mysticism
may be. At this stage the author does not feel that he can formulate
and defend a satisfactory evaluation. Yet he cannot but feel that
within mysticism there is a depth and fecundity which are often
lacking in contemporary intellectual endeavors. The author is fully
aware that with mysticism there are linked a number of ideas and
beliefs which no modern scholar can respect. But perhaps in our
rejection of mystical modes of thought, we have rejected a great deal
more than superstition.
In our attempt to link Freud to the tradition of Jewish mysticism,
we have sought to avoid generating the impression that psycho-
analysis is reducible to the peculiarities of the mental life of its origi
nator. The glib technique of ad hominem reductionism is a repudia-
tion of the essential creativity in man. There exist in the literature
several attempts to dispose of the Freudian contributions in this way.
But the argument ad hominem is correctly counted among the logi-
cal fallacies in textbooks on logic.
We have sought to make the essay comprehensible to persons who
are well versed neither in psychoanalysis nor in Jewish history.
Wherever possible the references have been to sources available in
English. The reader who is interested in pursuing some of the ma-
terial on Jewish mysticism is directed particularly towards Gershom
G. Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and the Soncino
Press's edition of The Zohar, translated by Harry Sperling, Maurice
Simon, and Paul P. Levertoff.
The present essay falls into five major parts and an epilogue, In
the first part the question of the development of psychoanalysis as a
problem in the history of ideas is raised, and an attempt is made to
show some of the relationships between Freud and the Jewish tra-
dition. In the second part a brief sketch of some of the features of
Jewish history is provided. In the third part we deal with Freud's
writings on Moses, where, we believe, Freud permitted himself to
be most revelatory with respect to the role of his Jewishness in his
x
PREFACE
thought. In the fourth part we deal with the image of the Devil, an
image which contains, in a metaphorical sense, some of the critical
features of the development of psychoanalysis. In the fifth part, we
deal with some of the written works in Jewish mysticism in their
relevance to psychoanalysis. In the epilogue we have tried to come to
a somewhat deeper appreciation of the meaning of Freud's Jewish
identification, using as a fulcrum Freud’s analysis of “Heimlichkeit”
—the word which he also used to characterize his Jewish feeling.
Of greatest personal importance in the writing of this essay is my
grandfather, Yitzchak Yosef Rosenstrauch, to whose memory this
essay is dedicated. He was a man who made the deepest impression
upon me in my early life. He was, by any of the usual standards, an
uneducated man. His literacy was limited, until he was about sixty-
five, to the recitation of the prayers in a Siddur or Machzor. He
knew the meaning of only a few Hebrew words. At the age of sixty-
five he learned to read Yiddish, and gave the remaining years of his
life to devotion to God and to a handful of Yiddish books that had
come into his possession. He understood the meaning and signifi-
cance of devotion better than any other person I have ever met.
When I was young he would spend hours reading to me the fan-
tastic legends of the Chassidic leaders. Our favorite was Moishe
Leib of Sassov. I still recall Moishe Leib's words that one who does
not devote one hour to himself every day is not a person, and that to
help someone else out of the mud one must be willing to get mud
on himself.
As I grew into secular sophistication and cynicism I used to chide
him unkindly, “Mr. Itsche (this was the way we used to address
him), why do you davon (recite the prayers in the prayer books)
when you don't even understand the words?” His reply was always
the same, “Why do I have to understand, if the One Above under-
stands?”
Columbia, Missouri Die
September 1958
xi
NOTES
The three quotations facing the Preface are drawn from Moses
and Monotheism, trans. Katherine Jones (New York: Vintage
Books, 1955), p. 81; ibid., p. 225 and Freud's Preface to M. Bona-
parte, The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Imago
Publishing Co., 1949), p. xi
1. Louis I. Newman (ed.), The Hasidic Anthology (New York:
Bloch Publishing Co., 1944).
2. Menashe Unger, Chassidus un Leben (Chassidism and Life]
(New York, 1946).
3. CE, eg. the selections in Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim,
trans. Olga Marx (2 vols, New York: Schocken Books, 1947-
1948).
Acknowledgments
In the course of the work on this essay I have received assistance
from many quarters, although all responsibility for what is being
said is my own.
My principal debt is to Professor David C. McClelland. Owing
to his efforts I was appointed a Visiting Lecturer and Research
Associate in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard Univer-
sity and was greatly encouraged in this enterprise. He has been a
constant and continuing source of advice and encouragement and
has made many suggestions which I have followed, I am certain
that without his aid I could not have brought this essay to its present
state of completion,
In the summer of 1955, I was awarded a research professorship
by the Graduate Research Council of the University of Missouri,
which was provided with the means to go to New York City so that
I could use the libraries there.
I owe a special kind of debt to the B'nai B'rith. Rabbi Morris
Fishman, who was Director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation at
the University of Missouri, helped me to overcome the initial diffi-
culties associated with this research. I cannot but feel a certain pleas-
ure in the fact that I first presented some of these ideas there, just as
Freud first presented his ideas on dream interpretation to the mem-
bers of the B'nai B'rith in Vienna. In the same way as I was helped
in Missouri, 1 was helped by the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation at
Harvard. Rabbi Richard L. Rubenstein, Director of the Foundation
xiii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
at Harvard, gave unstintingly of his time to me and again made
accessible to me the facilities of the Foundation library.
In a work of this kind, the accessibility of libraries and the cooper-
ation of librarians are sine qua non. My first debt is to the library of
the University of Missouri, particularly for their pains in acquiring
materials by purchase and loan which were not immediately available.
I am deeply indebted for an eminently high degree of cooperation
and assistance to the following: Mrs. Eva J. Meyer and Mr. Robert
Melton of the Abraham A. Brill Library of The New York Psycho-
analytic Institute; the late Dr. Jacob Shatzky and Mr. William C.
Bryant of the library of the New York Psychiatric Institute; the staff
of the Judaica Collection of the New York Public Library; the staff
of the library at YIVO in New York; Mrs. L. C. Mishkin of the
library at the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago; Mr. Harry
L. Poppers of the Leaf Library of the College of Jewish Studies in
Chicago; and the staff of the Widener Library at Harvard Uni-
versity.
Many people have given fully to me of their time. The warmth
with which some of the ideas of my book were met was a constant
source of encouragement in overcoming the many difficulties I en-
countered on the way. My students at the University of Missouri
and at Harvard University listened and commented with astuteness
and interest as I was in the throes of developing point after point.
T have discussed the ideas in this essay with each of the following
persons and have received inestimable assistance of a kind that can-
not be repaid by mere mention of their names: Dr. Leslie Adams,
Professor Gordon W. Allport, Mr. William Aron, Professor Jerome
Bruner, Miss Josephine L. Burroughs, Professor Reuel Denney, Mr.
Harvey Fischtrom, Professor Marvin Fox, Dr. James Frank, Mr.
Nathan Glazer, Dr. H. Raphael Gold, Mr. Clement Greenberg,
Professor Abraham J. Heschel, Professor Elihu Katz, Dr. Herbert
Kelman, Professor Isadore Keyfitz, Mr. Irwin Kremen, Professor
Abraham Maslow, Rabbi Abraham Pimontel, Professor Simon
Rawidowicz, Mr. James Reiss, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Rubin,
xiv
‘ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
Professor David Riesman, Dr. Theodore Reik, Dr. A. A. Roback,
Professor Carl Schorske, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Professor
Lewis Spitz, Rabbi Judah Stampfer, Mr. Menashe Unger, Professor
Meyer Waxman, Professor Kurt H. Wolff, and Dr. Mark
Zborowski,
I would like to acknowledge my debt to my colleagues at the
University of Missouri and at Harvard University, who patiently
‘gave me support and cooperation when these were needed.
My wife, Mildred, has given me so much in connection with this
enterprise that I cannot speak of it. My children, Joseph, Deborah,
and Abigail, kept bringing me back to immediate reality from the
Kabbalistic and psychoanalytic reaches; and my debt to them is
great for the “instinctual renunciation” with which they engaged in
noble efforts—sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful—
“not to bother Daddy while he is working.”
For secretarial assistance I am indebted to the Dean's Office and
the Psychology Department at the University of Missouri, where
Mrs. Carol Lawson typed up some of my preliminary notes on this
essay; and to the Psychological Clinic at Harvard University, where
Mrs. Elizabeth Morse Atwood strove valiantly to decipher my mis-
erably handwritten manuscript to produce a legible typescript. The
final typescript was the work of Mrs. Irene Chase. The Index was
prepared by Mrs. Katherine F. Bruner.
For permission to quote I would like to express my appreciation
to George Allen and Unwin, Ltd, American Imago, Beacon Press,
Inc,, Basic Books, Inc. Ernest Benn, Ltd., E. P. Dutton and Co,
Inc, The Free Press, Harvard University Press, The Hogarth Press,
Ltd., The Jewish Publication Society of America, Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc. (the quotations from Moses and Monotheism are from the
Vintage Books edition, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc.), Liveright Publishing Corporation, Philosophical Library, The
Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Schocken Books, and The Soncino Press,
Lid.
D.B.
xv
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN:
Table of Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
Prerace vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
Part |—The Background of Freud's Development
of Psychoanalysis
1. Tie Prostent oF THE Onicins oF PsycHOANALysis 3
2, Hyporneses Retarine THe Onicins oF PsycHoaNaLysis To
Frevo’s Personat Lire 7
3, PsycHoawatysis as a PRrosient 1s THE History oF Ipras 21
4. Axtr-Senrrism 1 Vienwa 35
5. Tue Generar Question oF DissimutaTion 3
6. Dip Freup Ever Dissexceue? 8
7. Frevo’s Positive Ipenniricarion As a Jew 45
8. Frevo's Retationsmip to Furess ano His Orner Jewrsit
Associares 55
Part I_—The Milieu of Jewish Mysticism
9. Earty Kapaata 69
10. Movern Kazsara B
xvii
CHAPTER
i.
2.
BNRARLR
‘Tre Zoran
Tae Cuurinicr Penton
3. Jawisit Seur-GovernMeNnt
. THe Saspartan Erisope
. THe Franxist Eptsope
CHassipisM
Part Il1_—The Moses Theme in the Thought of Freud
. THe Moses of MicHELANGELO
3. Some Revevant BrocraPHicat Items
). Moses ano MonotueisM—A Book or Douste Content
Moses as an Eovertan
A. The Sabbatian Fulfillment
B. The Fantasy of the “Family Romance”
C. Moses and Anti-Semitism
D. The Dissociation of Moses from the Jews
Moses Was Knuzp sy THe Jews
Frevp’s Messanic Ibenniricarion
Part IV. —The Devil as Suspended Superego
}.. INTRODUCTION
}, THe TRANsITION
. THe Hypnosis anp Cocaine Erisoves
Tue Discovery or THE TRANSFERENCE
|. Tue “Fuecrere ...” of THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
3. Freup’s Paper on Demoniacat Possession
xviii
147
151
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
29. Tse Composrrion of Tue Invenrretsrion oF Dreams 221
30, Accremion of Meanincs to re Devi. nace 231
‘A. The Problem of “Distance” 231
B, The Devil as Knower 233
C. The Curative Power Inherent in the Devil 235
Part V—Psychoanalysis and Kabbala
31. Tum Prostea oF ScHOLARSHIP 241
32. TecHniques oF INTERPRETATION 246
A. Man as Torah 246
B. Interpretation en detail and en masse 253
C. Dream Interpretation in the Tractate Berakoth 257
D. Word-play 263
33, Sexvaury 27
Epilogue
Hemucurerr 303,
Inpex oud
xix
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN:
Part I
The Background of Freud’s Development
of Psychoanalysis
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN:
1
The Problem of the Origins
of Psychoanalysis
The year 1956 marked the hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Sigmund Freud, a man whose long life spanned al-
most half of the nineteenth century and over a third of the
twentieth. His essential modernity leads us to overlook how
much of his life was spent in an age which most contemporar-
ies cannot remember, and to ignore the historical factors that
may have played a role in the development of psychoanalysis.
Freud was evidently aware of the deep moment of his
contributions with respect to man’s self-evaluation. He once in-
dicated that there have been three major blows to man’s narcis-,
_sism. Copernicus delivered the cosmological blow; Darwin
“Aclivered the biological blow; and psychoanalysis delivered the
psychological blow.’ In addition to his profound effect upon
‘our ideas of the treatment of mental disorder, Freud has had
an overwhelming influence on psychology at large, the arts, the
social sciences, social reform, child rearing, and indeed every
problem involving human relationships.
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
The psychoanalytic movement seemingly originated as an
effort on the part of a physician to cure certain ailments that
were resistant to other forms of treatment; and it was in this
guise that it first presented itself to the world. Yet, shortly after
this introduction, it reached out to touch, infiltrate, and en-
compass practically every other form of intellectual endeavor.
The far-reaching consequences of Freud’s thought are para-
doxically confirmed by the degree to which his contributions
are taken for granted. Freudian concepts are used freely in
the contemporary intellectual world to win insight into other
problems, even as this essay, which is an attempt to understand
the genesis of psychoanalysis itself, will manifest. The liter-
ature of our day uses Freudian terminology without mention-
ing the source, as though it were gratuitous to do so. In a
world in which the method of allusion has in general gone out
of fashion—because writers cannot be confident that allusions
will be understood—allusions to Freudian notions are made
freely in full confidence that they will be appreciated by the
reader.
So much for the impact of Freud on modern thought, We
turn now to the major question of this essay: Against what
backdrop of the history of ideas shall we place these momen-
tous contributions of Freud? The tremendous impact of psy-
choanalysis makes the problem of its origins all the more
important, especially since we have learned from Freud that
only by the penetration of the mystery of origins can we come
to a full understanding of either the individual or society. The
editors of the letters and notes which Freud wrote to his friend
Fliess gave them an appropriate title beginning with the word
4
PROBLEM OF THE ORIGINS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
“origins,” used in the sense that it has for our question; and
the atmosphere of excitement which accompanied the publica-
tion of the letters and notes confirmed their significance to the
intellectual world.
In thinking through the problem of origins it is important
to take note of the findings of Freud and his followers about
the way in which distortion along these lines can take place.
Indeed such distortions have already been set in motion. As
an amusing example, when the citizens of Freiberg, Moravia,
Freud’s birthplace, decided to put a memorial tablet on the
house where he was born, they misread the birth records and
put Freud's birthday two months ahead of his actual birthday.
Since Freud was born almost exactly nine months after the
marriage of his parents, such an error would have thrown
doubt on his diological legitimacy, something which would
have gladdened the hearts of some of his critics. The lessons of
psychoanalysis suggest that such an error may be an uncon-
scious aspersion on the legitimacy of the origins of psycho-
analysis.*
Just as we must guard against the processes which would
undermine psychoanalysis, so must we guard against the geno-
typically similar processes which would lead us to overvalue
and idealize Freud. In this essay we will try to steer a middle
course. As pointed out by Ekstein, in the same way that the
death of Freud’s father brought to Freud an awareness of the
ambivalent nature of his feelings towards him, so it seems “as
if the death of Freud permits us now to learn more about
him, his life and consequently about Psychoanalysis. ... Our
own ambivalence, another example of the Oedipal theme, is
5
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
converted into scientific curiosity that aims at better insight
into and integration of the work he left us.”* A new genera-
tion may perhaps scrutinize him more objectively, in the ab-
sence of emotions stirred among those people who knew him
intimately and whose thoughts about psychoanalysis were con-
ditioned by their expectations of Freud’s own reactions.
NOTES TO CHAPTER I
1. Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, ed. James Strachey (5 vols.
London: Hogarth Press, 1950-1952), Vy p. 173:
S. Freud, The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters to Wilhelm
Fliess, Drafts and Notes: 1887-1902, eds, M. Bonaparte, A.
Freud, and E. Kris; trans. E, Mosbacher and J. Strachey; in-
trod. E. Kris (New York: Basic Books, 1954).
3. Cf. L. Adams, “Sigmund Freud's Correct Birthday: Misunder-
standing and Solution,” Psychoanal. Rev., 1954, 4% 359-362.
4. R. Ekstein, “A Biographical Comment on Freud's Dual In-
stinct Theory,” American Imago, 1949, 6, 210-216.
x
2
Hypotheses Relating the Origins of
Psychoanalysis to Freud’s Personal Life
It is one of the major paradoxes of contemporary psycho-
analytic thought that whereas it places so much of its emphasis
upon the analysis of “origins,” it itself seems to be without
origins. Let us consider what the apparent origins of psycho-
analytic thought are.
We note that Freud’s intellectual life falls into €w distinct
periods, the one that preceded the psychoanalytic period and
the psychoanalytic period “In the first period Freud con-
cerned himself largely with biological problems, and there are
only bare hints of an interest in psychology,’ indeed not much
more than might be expected from any typically well-educated
person. His pre-psychoanalytic bibliography ? was already such
as to earn him a respectable, although perhaps not outstanding,
place in science. He had made several noteworthy contribu-
tions, including his pioneering work on the properties of co-
caine.* It was not until he was in his late thirties that “he~
showed any indication of what was to come from him. The
7
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
change which took place in him has been aptly characterized
as follows:
When Freud startled his contemporaries with his first publica-
tion on the neuroses he was in his late thirties. He had behind
him years of training, ces anl naa practice in anatomy, physi-
ology and neurology. With every step he took in his new ven-
ture he became mofe of a stranger to his colleagues. They
could sce no link whatever between those years of solid and
fruitful medical research and his new interests and methods.
Later, many psychoanalysts used to take the opposite view of
the first part of Freud's working life: they looked at it as a
time spent in a foreign land, at best a period of preparation, at
Worst a waste of precious years as far as psycho-analysis was
concerned*
In pointing out the difference between the two periods,
Jones comments on how Briicke, Freud's materialistic-minded
scientific mentor, would have reacted to the shift.
Yet Briicke would have been astonished, to put it mildly, had
he known that one of his favorite pupils, one apparently a con-
vert to the strict faith, was later, in his famous wish theory of
the mind, to bring back into science the ideas of “purpose,”
“intention,” and “aim” which had just been abolished from the
universe.*
Freud himself, prompted by the question whether psycho-
analysis might be practiced without medical training, spoke of
his own medical background, which was associated in his mind
with neurology, physiology, and the like, as follows:
I have been engaged in the practice of medicine for forty-one
years and my self-knowledge tells me that I have never really
been a true physician. I became a physician owing to a com-
pulsory deflection of my original purpose, and the triumph of
8
ORIGINS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FREUD'S PERSONAL LIFE
my life is this: that after a very long way round I have re-
gained the path in which I began. . . .°
Jones writes:
To medicine itself he felt no direct attraction. He did not con-
ceal in later years that he never felt at home in the medical
profession, and that he did not scem to himself to be a regular
member of it. I can recall as far back as in 1910 his expressing
the wish with a sigh that he could retire from medical practice
and devote himself to the unraveling of cultural and historical
roblems—ultimately the great problem of how man came to
be what fe
it hee is."
If Freud had a psychoanalytic type of interest at this early
period, it was certainly not being developed in any deliberate
work. Jones aptly characterizes what we may call the suspen-
sion of whatever psychoanalytic interest he may have had in
the pre-psychoanalytic period, and writes of a mood in which
Freud
would be a laborious and painstaking student, but one not
likely to excel in the “exact” sciences. Biology offered him some
understanding of the evolution of life and man’s relationship to
nature. Later on physiology and anatomy would teach him
something of man’s physical constitution. But would this arid
path ever bring him nearer to his ultimate goal, the secrets of
man's inner nature, towards which the deepest urges impelled
him? We know that the medical study of man’s physical aflic-
tions brought him no nearer, and perhaps impeded his progress.
That, however, he finally attained his goal, though by an ex-
traordinary circuitous route, he rightly came to regard as the
triumph of his life.*
It is clear that, if we seck some explanation of Freud’s psy-
choanalytic developments in the formal preparation and the
Ed
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
professional work of his pre-psychoanalytic years, we find little
there to give us insight. The tradition of severe materialism
of Briicke, Helmholtz, and the like with which he came in
contact was certainly not one which he seemed to draw upon
in any essential way for psychoanalysis. It is even difficult to
maintain that the tradition prepared him for his later work
in the sense of providing him with issues on which he could
take a contrary position. The evidence provided by Freud's
psychoanalytic writings does not even begin to support the
hypothesis that these writings are a reaction to the tradition
with which he had been involved in his pre-psychoanalytic
years. The psychoanalytic writings seem rather simply to ig-
nore this other tradition and to strike out in completely new
directions.
If the scientific background with which Freud was inti-
mately acquainted does not provide us with any cogent clue to
the question of the origins of psychoanalysis, what other hy-
potheses might be advanced? Five types of explanation are
available, somewhat related to each other and referring pri-
marily to the person of Freud rather than to any tradition.
The first is that the idiosyncrasies of Freud’s personal life
were such that they formed him into a very special kind of
being who could make the kinds of discoveries which he did.
As instances of this kind of hypothesis we may include the
varieties of explicit and implicit assertions that Freud’s writings
are simply the work of a disordered mind and are to be dis-
counted as one would discount the assertions of a mentally
disturbed person.
Indeed, we also find this kind of hypothesis advanced in one
10
ORIGINS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FREUD'S PERSONAL LIFE
way or another by persons who are sympathetic to Freud.
Even Jones occasionally permits himself to be somewhat vic-
timized. For example: “In tracing, as best we can, the genesis
of Freud's original discoveries, we therefore legitimately con-
sider that the greatest of them—namely, the universality of the
Oedipus complex—was potently facilitated by his own unusual
family constellation, the spur it gave to his curiosity, and the
Opportunity it afforded of a complete repression.” ® Such argu-
ments may be appealing. However, by focusing attention on
such factors as an “unusual family constellation” or an “oppor-
tunity . . . of a complete repression” they can at best provide
only a partial explanation. They divert attention from the roles
of history and culture on intellectual production, even though
these must be channeled through an individual's life experi-
ences.
The second of these “personal” hypotheses is what may be
called the “flash” or “revelation” hypothesis. This hypothesis
claims that the insights of psychoanalysis simply “came” to
Freud. For example, Sachs puts it as follows:
In what way his ideas germinated is anybody's guess. What
was at first a small clue in psychopathology widened out by the
untiring concentration of an original mind, until eventually it
grew into a fundamental concept, of psychology, of human
civilization, and lastly of all organic development. Some of the
sudden enlightenments which marked a step in this evolution
have been described by Freud, for instance how the concept of
sublimation—that is, the process by which the primitive object
of a drive is exchanged for a higher, socially adapted one—was
revealed to him. It happened while he was looking at a car-
wens
bea
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Freud himself, as Sachs says, tends to lead us in the direction
of the “flash” hypothesis. For example, he writes that he thinks
of a marble tablet to be placed on the house where he had his
critical dream of Irma’s injection * inscribed as follows: “In
this house on July 24, 1895, the Secret of Dreams was revealed
to Dr. Sigmund Freud.”** And in the preface to the third
(revised) English edition of The Interpretation of Dreams he
says of the book, “Insight such as this falls to one’s lot but once
in a lifetime.” * Aside from the various considerations which
remarks of this kind are subject to, such as the possibility that
they are “stylistic,” or that they are motivated by a kind of
grandiosity, or that they are passing and idle, they succeed in
generating the impression of a “flash,” de novo, revelatory char-
acter for his discoveries.
These two hypotheses, the hypothesis of personal idiosyn-
cracy, and the “flash” hypothesis, are not unrelated to a third,
the Aypothesis of genius. This is the hypothesis that from time
to time the world is given individuals of profound and gigantic
gifts and that the nature of these gifts is inscrutable. Such an
hypothesis must be set aside for at least the reason that it stops
investigation by substituting reverence for analysis. Freud him-
self cautions us against succumbing to its lulling effect. He
says quite specifically: “We know that genius is incompre-
hensible and unaccountable and it should therefore not be
called upon as an explanation until every other solution has
failed.”
One of the important corollaries of the three hypotheses
mentioned, and a fourth one in its own right, is that Freud
had unusual psychological insight into the nature of man, and
12
ORIGINS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FREUD'S PERSONAL LIFE
that the psychoanalytic work simply provided him with a tech-
nical framework for its formulation. It is undoubtedly true
that he had a profound appreciation of the nature of man.
However, it is a far cry from psychological insight to, for ex-
ample, the method of free association, the detailed techniques
of the interpretation of dreams, and the theory of bisexuality.
The actual technical contributions of Freud go far beyond the
kind of psychological astuteness that is manifested by such
writers as Shakespeare, Proust, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Melville,
Hawthorne, and the like.*
The last of our hypotheses of a personal nature regards psy-
choanalysis as the result of a germinal idea or a germinal ob-
servation dropped on the soil of an extremely rich mind. We
find this hypothesis developed in a paper by Paul Bergman."*
It is one which Freud himself would have us accept and is
advanced in his essay “On the History of the Psychoanalytic
Movement.” He asserts that he is “the real originator of all
that is particularly characteristic” in psychoanalysis."° He then
"The presence of profound psychological understanding as it existed in the
literature of Western civilization prior to Freud is beyond the scope of this essay.
Understanding of man abounds in the literature of our culture. To illustrate this
point we might cite but one example from what is seemingly so remote a source
as Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote: “We not rarely find our personality doubled
in our dreams, and do battle with ourselves, unconscious that we are our own
antagonists. Dr. Johnson dreamed that he had a contest of wit with an opponent,
and got the worst of it; of course, he furnished the wit for both. Tartini heard the
Devil play a wonderful sonata, and set it down on awakening. Who was the Devil
but Tartini himself? 1 remember, in my youth, reading verses in a dream, written,
as T thought, by a rival fledgling of the Muse. They were so far beyond my jow-
cers, that I despaired of equalling them; yet I must have made them unconsciously
as I read them." We note that Holmes had already fully understood that which
we tend to regard as basic to Freud’s theory of dream interpretation, the proice-
tion of ourselves into dream personages——Oliver Wendell Holmes, Pages from
an Old Volume of Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1883), pp. 282-283, esay
entitled “Mechanism in Thought and Morals,” delivered at Harvard University,
June 29, 1870.
13
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
goes on to tell how he came upon the basic idea of the sexual
etiology of the neuroses.
‘There was some consolation . . . in the thought that I was tak-
ing up the fight for a new and original idea. But, one day,
certain memories collected in my mind which disturbed this
pleasing notion, and gave me instead a valuable insight into the
processes of human activity and the nature of human knowl-
edge. The idea for which I was being made responsible had
by no means originated with me. It had been imparted to me
by no less than three people whose opinion had commanded
my deepest respect—by Breuer himself, by Charcot, and by the
gynzcologist of Vienna University, Chrobak, perhaps the most
eminent of all our Viennese physicians. ‘These three men had
all communicated to me a piece of knowledge which, strictly
speaking, they themselves did not possess. Two of them later
denied having done so when I reminded them of the fact; the
third (Charcot) would probably have done the same if it had
been granted to me to see him again. But these three identical
opinions, which I had heard without understanding, had lain
dormant in my mind for years until one day they awoke in
the form of an apparently original idea.”
He then goes on to relate three incidents in which these men
discussed their patients, all suggesting that the disturbed con-
dition was due to sexual frustration. Breuer remarked, “These
things are always secrets d’alcove!”; * Charcot had said, “Mais,
dans des cas pareils c’est toujours la chose génitale, toujours...
toujours .. . toujours”; *® Chrobak had indicated that the pre-
scription for the malady which the patient was suffering from,
which could not be ordered, was:
R. Penis normalis
dosim
repetatur|™°
ORIGINS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FREUD'S PERSONAL LIFE
There are several things in this account which would make
it less significant than Freud would have us believe. Freud’s
complex theory of sexuality, particularly the role of infantile
sexuality in the development of neurosis, is considerably be-
yond these communications. The “piece of knowledge” that
Freud says they imparted to him is not more than the age-old
awareness of the psychological consequences of frustration of
sexual satisfaction. It is difficult to imagine Freud's having
been so sheltered that at least this much of the world’s com-
mon knowledge of the importance of sexuality in the adoles-
cent and adult should not have reached him earlier. Freud’s
statement that these communications had “lain dormant,” etc.,
can only be interpreted as the ascription to them of an impor-
tance which had been displaced from something else. An
hypothesis concerning the latter is the subject of this essay.
The passage quoted has all the earmarks of what Freud
calls a screen memory,” the retention in memory of an every-
day and indifferent event which could not produce any deep
effects, but which in its recollection has overgreat clarity. Its
function is to cancel from consciousness some other, related,
repressed material. As Freud writes about the screen memory,
“There is a common saying among us about shams, that they
are not made of gold themselves but have lain beside some-
thing that is made of gold. The same simile might well be
applied to some of the experiences of childhood which have
been retained in the memory.” *
With respect to screen memories, Freud also tells us that the
force of the actual repressed material is quite strong and that
the screen memory is a compromise. He tells us further that
15
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
the screen memory may, in spite of its evident clarity, actually
be false. If we look back over the episodes recounted by Freud,
we note that Breuer and Chrobak denied that they took place.
Either Breuer and Chrobak were mistaken or Freud was mis-
taken, and we shall never be able to ascertain which. Of Char-
cot, Freud himself adds, without the opportunity of actually
checking, that he would have denied it. A psychoanalytic
interpretation, that this presumed denial is the press of the
actual repressed material forcing itself to the fere, announcing,
in effect, “This is a screen memory,” seems to suggest itself
with considerable cogency. Moreover, the fact that Freud was
subject to screen memories is clearly demonstrated by Bern-
feld’s analysis * of such a screen memory in Freud.
Under any circumstances, whether or not we accept the pos-
sibility of this having been a screen memory, the objective con-
siderations make it very dubious whether Freud received the
sexual theory from Breuer, Charcot, and Chrobak in the way
that he describes.
Freud’s lack of clarity concerning the sources of his ideas
recurs on several occasions which we shall enumerate below.
This characteristic forces us to the conclusion that the origins
of his psychoanalytic thought are related to repressed or at
least suppressed material. To further demonstrate this char-
acteristic in him and to demonstrate the clearly unsatisfactory
nature of his explanations, we will cite three other instances
from his writings.
When he addressed the group at Clark University on his
trip to America in 1909, he said that it was Breuer who was
16
ORIGINS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FREUD'S PERSONAL LIFE
chiefly responsible for psychoanalysis. As he relates it in “On
the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement,”
The occasion was a momentous one for my work, and moved
by this thought I then declared that it was not I who had
brought psycho-analysis into existence. The credit for this was
due to another, to Josef Breuer, whose work had been done at
a time when I was still a student occupied with my examina-
tions (1880-82).
Freud goes on to say that since he, and not Breuer, has been
the object of “criticism and abuse,” he must conclude that he,
Freud, is the originator.* It is remarkable that neither his
reason for first ascribing it to Breuer, nor his reason for chang-
ing his mind, are particularly cogent with respect to the objec-
tive question of the real sources of his thought.
The possibility that his own utterances with respect to the
origins of psychoanalysis are without reliability is clearly indi-
cated also by the following passage about his relationship to
Fliess. This concerns the idea of bisexuality, an instance in
which he evidently did get an idea from someone and forgot
the source:
In the summer of 190 [1900], I once remarked to a friend with
whom I was then actively engaged in exchanging ideas on sci-
entific questions: “These neurotic problems can be solved only
if we take the position of absolutely accepting an original bi-
sexuality in every individual.” To which he replied: “I told
you that two and a half years ago, while we were taking an
evening walk in Br. At that time, you wouldn't listen to it.”
It is truly painful to be thus requested to renounce one's orig-
inality. I could neither recall such a conversation nor my
friend’s revelation. One of us must be mistaken; and according
to the principle of the question cui prodest?, I must be the one.
17
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Indeed, in the course of the following weeks, everything came
back to me just as my friend had recalled it. I myself remem-
bered that at that time, I gave the answer: “I have not yet got
so far, and I do not care to discuss it.” But since this incident,
Ihave grown more tolerant when I miss any mention of my
name in medical literature in connection with ideas for which
I deserve credit.
The last example in this connection has to do with the pre-
sumed source of the method of free association. Freud’s paper,
“A Note on the Prehistory of the Technique of Analysis,” **
deals with the source of the method of free association. Freud,
in an anonymously published, third-person answer to a sug-
gestion that he might have gotten it from J. J. Garth Wilkin-
son, who wrote in 1857, replies that free association was written
of even earlier, by Schiller in 1788, but “it is safe to assume that
neither Schiller nor Garth Wilkinson had in fact any influence
‘on the choice of psychoanalytic technique. It is from another
direction that there are indications of a personal influence at
work.” *" He then goes on to tell of a writer by the name of
Ludwig Bérne,* who wrote an essay in 1823 which clearly an-
ticipates the method of free association. When Freud was
fourteen years old he had been given the works of Borne and
was still in possession of them fifty years later. “Borne... had
been the first author into whose writings he [Freud] had
penetrated deeply.” * “Thus it seems not impossible that this
hint may have brought to light the fragment of cryptomnesia
which in so many cases may be suspected to lie behind appar-
ent originality.” *
* Ludwig Béene (1786-1837) was a Jewish-born writer whose original name was
Lab Baruch. He changed his name when he embraced Christianity in 1818,
18
ORIGINS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FREUD'S PERSONAL LIFE
The material of these three instances illustrates both the way
in which Freud would lead us to accept the hypothesis of the
“germinal” idea, as well as the unsatisfactory nature of such an
hypothesis. At best, the material suggests that Freud was un-
conscious of his sources, and that, exerting an effort to present
an honest picture (and in some sense aware of drawing on
something), he points, rather inadequately, to one or another
incident which does come to mind as the possible source of
his ideas.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2
1. Cf. R. Spehlmann, Sigmund Freud's neurologische Schriften
(Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1953).
2. H. Gray, “Bibliography of Freud’s Pre-analytic Period,” Psy-
choanal. Rev., 1948, 35 403-410.
3. Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (3 vols.
New York: Basic Books, 1953-1957), I, pp. 78-97.
4. E. Stengel, “A Re-evaluation of Freud’s Book ‘On Aphasia’:
Its Significance for Psycho-analysis,” Int. J. Psychoanalysis,
1954, 35 85-89, p. 85.
5. Jones, I, p. 45.
6. S. Freud, “Concluding Remarks on the Question of Lay Anal-
ysis,” Int. ]. Psychoanalysis, 1927, 8, 392-398, P. 394.
7. Jones, I, p. 27.
8, Jones, I, p. 35-
9. Jones, I, p. 11.
ro. Hanns Sachs, Freud, Master and Friend (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1944), pp. 99-100.
as. S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. and ed. J.
Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1955). This dream is dis-
cussed on pp. 106 ff.
12. Freud, Origins, p. 322.
19
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
13, Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. xxxii.
14. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 81.
15. P. Bergman, “The Germinal Cell in Freud's Psychoanalytic
Psychology and Therapy,” Psychiatry, 1949, 12, 265-278.
x6. Freud, Col. Papers, I, p. 288.
17. Freud, Col. Papers, I, p. 294-
18. Freud, Col. Papers, I, p. 295+
19. Freud, Col. Papers, I, p. 295.
20, Freud, Col. Papers, I, p. 296.
21. Freud, Col. Papers, V, pp. 47-69.
22, Freud, Col. Papers, V, p. 52.
23. S. Bernfeld, “An Unknown Biographical Fragment by
Freud,” American Imago, 1946, 4 3-19-
24. Freud, Col. Papers, 1, p. 288.
25. S. Freud, Basic Writings, trans. A. A. Brill (New York: Mod-
ern Library, 1938), p. 101.
26. Freud, Col. Papers, V, pp. 101-104.
27. Freud, Col. Papers, V, pp. 102-103.
28. Freud, Col. Papers, V, p. 103.
29. Freud, Col. Papers, V, p. 104. On the method of free associa-
tion, cf. pp. 75 ff, below.
3
Psychoanalysis as a Problem in the
History of Ideas
If the personal hypotheses seem to be at best fragmentary
we can find only a little more satisfaction in what may be re-
garded as the scientific forerunners of psychoanalytic thought.
It is certainly possible, after the fact, to assign a place to Freud
in the intellectual history of our civilization. This place would
be connected by lines of similarity to the tradition of Leibniz,
Herbart, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Brentano, Carus,
yon Hartmann, Du Prel, etc.’ There is certainly evidence to
indicate that Charcot played some part in “starting” Freud.
We can point to direct contact between Brentano and Freud,”
and the writings of Carus are present in the part of the per-
sonal collection of Freud which is now housed in the library
of the New York Psychiatric Institute. Carus in particular may
be worthy of attention. For example, in a work published in
1846 he had already written that the key to the understanding
of the life of the mind is in the region of the unconscious; and
that all of the difficulties and the presumptive impossibilities
21
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
concerning the secrets of the mind become clarified thereby.*
Carus also strongly suggested that some diseases are due to re-
pression into the unconscious, and that rapid cures may be
effected by bringing to memory events which have been re-
pressed.*
In addition there were general forces within the culture
which were moving along “Freudian” lines. A breakthrough
to the scientific and realistic study of sexuality had already been
made; and what we would today recognize as the uncon-
scious was touched upon by the academic group at Wiirz-
burg under Kiilpe in the first decade of the twentieth century
quite independently of the psychoanalytic movement.>
In spite of the existence of such harbingers of psychoanalysis,
the movement of thought which Freud developed still stands
as a mystery from the point of view of the history of ideas.
Although we can retrospectively assign a place to psychoanal-
ysis in a series of intellectual developments which articulate
with it, the question of its roots is still open. We do not deny
Freud's creativity; but we look for the tradition within which
he was creative.
A system of thought such as was developed by Freud, made
up of so many different propositions, so consistent in its mood,
containing so many far-reaching implications, and with sub-
ject matter so diverse, could only be the result of a culture;
and by a culture we mean the achievement of at least several
generations, involving relatively large numbers of people,
whose life experiences pool themselves into a characteristic en-
tity, a socially carried and organized personality. Psychoanal-
ysis is at least a theory of development, a theory of neurosis, a
22
PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
theory of healing, a theory of culture, a theory of the role of
sexuality, an armamentarium of devices for interpretation of
human imaginative productions, a pattern of interpersonal
relationship, and a philosophy of religion. And all of this is
seemingly the work of a single individual. It is difficult to
maintain that the whole tapestry of psychoanalysis could have
been drawn out of seeming historical nothingness. As Pum-
pian-Mindlin happily expresses it, “Psychoanalysis did not
spring full born from the head of its Zeus, Freud... ."° No
matter how high our opinion of Freud may be—and what is
being said here is not to be interpreted as in any way to Freud's
discredit—it would be a violation of all that we know of cul-
tural development to characterize the work of Freud as the
de novo work of a single individual, especially in view of the
fact that the work comes late in his life and appears as a burst
over a relatively short period of time, attached, as it were, to
a life that had previously been busy with other things.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 3
. For an excellent review of the material on the unconscious that
existed before Freud cf. H. Ellenberger, “The Unconscious
Before Freud,” Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 1957, 2% 3-15.
. P. Merlan, “Brentano and Freud,” J. Hist. Ideas, 1945, 6 375-
37; and “Brentano and Freud—A Sequel,” J. Hist. Ideas,
1949; 10, 451.
3. Carl Gustav Carus, Psyche (Jena: Eugen Diedrichs, 19263
originally published in 1846), p. 1.
Carus, Psyche, p. 66. Other works of Carus of interest in this
connection are Symbolik der menschlichen Gestalt: Ein Hand-
buch zur Menschenkenntnis (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1853): Uber
23
>
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Lebensmagnetismus, und iiber die magischen Wirkungen iiber-
haupt (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1925).
5. The latter is discussed in D. Bakan, “A Reconsideration of the
Problem of Introspection,” Psychological Bul., 1954, 51 105-118.
6. Ernest R. Hilgard, Lawrence S. Kubie, and E. Pumpian-Mind-
lin, Psychoanalysis as Science (Stanford, California: Stanford
University Press, 1952), p. 125.
4
Anti-Semitism in Vienna
‘The thesis of this essay is that the contributions of Freud are
to be understood largely as a contemporary version of, and
a contemporary contribution to, the history of Jewish mysti-
cism. Freud, consciously or unconsciously, secularized Jewish
mysticism; and psychoanalysis can intelligently be viewed as
such a secularization, As we hope will become clear in the
remainder of this essay, Freud was engaged in the issues set
by this history. Considerable illumination of the nature of
psychoanalysis may be arrived at by tying it into this context.
By separating the supernatural elements in mysticism from its
other content, Freud succeeded in making a major contribu-
tion to science. We believe that this pattern, from mysticism
to science, is one of the more important historical character-
istics in the development of general science.* We have but to
think of such major scientists as Newton, Kepler, and Fechner,
who, deeply immersed in theological traditions, succeeded in
so rationalizing the phenomena with which they were con-
"Cf. Bertrand Russell, “Mysticism and Logic” in Mysticism and Logic (New
York: Doubleday and Co., 1957).
25
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
cerned that the supernatural elements, which were an integral
part of their thought, could be abandoned as gratuitous. As
E. Caro, a rationalist of the nineteenth century, aptly put it,
“Science has conducted God to its frontiers, thanking him for
his provisional services.”
Let us attempt to get some idea of the circumstances in
which Freud found himself at what he called the “turning
point” in his life. The burden of proof rests very heavily on
our shoulders to demonstrate the importance in Freud's devel-
opment of a tradition to which he makes but scant reference.
In this section we will try to demonstrate that Freud had a
most excellent reason for not specifying this tradition—if, in-
deed, he was conscious of its role in his thought. The reason
is actually an eminently simple one: anti-Semitism, in which
Jewish literature was a primary object of attack, was so wide-
spread and so intense at the time that to indicate the Jewish
sources of his ideas would have dangerously exposed an in-
trinsically controversial theory to an unnecessary and possibly
fatal opposition.
As a reference date in Freud’s life let us take June 1882,
about a month after Freud’s twenty-sixth birthday. He had
been working in Briicke’s Institute as a demonstrator and had
some hopes of rising in the academic hierarchy. Freud says of
this time, “The turning point came in 1882, when my teacher,
for whom I had the highest possible esteem, corrected my fa-
ther’s generous improvidence by strongly advising me, in view
of my bad financial position, to abandon my theoretical ca-
reer.” *
Jones comments on this event, wondering “... why that im-
26
ANTI-SEMITISM IN VIENNA
portant talk took place just when it did. Nor does one see
what Briicke had to contribute to what Freud must already
have known.” * We believe that we can find the answer to the
problem raised by Jones by considering what was then taking
place in that part of Europe.
‘The year 1882 was a year of tremendous anti-Semitic agita-
tion. In the preceding year a Jew by the name of Joseph Scharf
had been brought to trial in Tisza-Eszlar in Hungary for pre-
sumably having murdered a fourtecn-year-old girl by the
name of Esther Solymossy for ritual purposes.
The antisemitic press of all countries discussed the case with a
passion characteristic and worthy of the middle-ages. A great
antisemitic congress took place in Dresden and the Hungarian
agitator, member of the “Landtag” Geza von Onody appeared
there, bringing an oil painting of the Jewish martyr Esther
Solymossy done from memory for agitation?
We know that Freud was interested in this case from the fact
that he commented on the psychiatric diagnosis of the chief
witness in a letter.*
The synagogue at Tisza-Eszlar and the house of the care-
taker were destroyed. In Pressburg, close to Vienna, excesses
against the Jews were taking place. Count Egbert Belcredi
gave money to the agitator Ernst Schneider to turn the fury of
the people against the Jews in connection with an anarchist
crime against a police officer. The Archduchess Maria Theresa
made funds available for the appearance of the first anti-
Semitic newspaper, the Oesterreichischer Volksfreund [Aus-
trian Friend of the People].
The work of August Rohling, Professor at the University of
27
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Prague, had appeared. This was a pamphlet entitled The Tal-
mud Jew, which had seventeen editions; thirty-cight thousand
copies of the sixth edition alone were distributed free in West-
phalia. Rohling wrote,
The Jews are authorized by their religion to take advantage of
all non-Jews, to ruin them physically and morally, to destroy
their lives, honour and property, openly by force, as well as
secretly and insidiously; all this the Jews are allowed to do,
nay, they even should do it for the sake of religion, so as to ac-
quire power and domination over all the world for their na-
tion®
After Rohling’s appointment at the University of Prague he
offered himself as an expert to courts of law with respect to
the truth of accusations of ritual murder.
Robling’s challenge of the Talmud resounded like a declaration
of war against Judaism through the streets of Vienna. Imme-
diately all the newspapers of the world heard the echo of this
great event. I€ he should triumph then all the pyres upon
which Jews had been burned, all the edicts by which the Jews
had been exiled, all the persecutions which had ever claimed
Jewish martyrs would now be justified.
Bloch, who was a major figure in the events of the time,
writes:
The year 1882 was not yet ended when a furious agitation
against the Talmud raged through the streets of the Austrian
capital, and that came about in the following way.
‘An antisemitic agitator, Franz Holubek . . . had on the 4th
of April 1882 under the presidency of Georg Ritter von Sché-
nerer summoned a meeting of Christian tradesmen at the
“Three Angels,” a large hall in Vienna, 36 Grosse Neugasse
where he made the following speech:
28
ANTI-SEMITISM IN VIENNA
“The Jews are no longer our fellow citizens, they have be-
come our masters, oppressors and tormentors.
“The Christians are to be weakened, annihilated, defamed, in
the metropolis of the Empire of the Habsburg. Matters have
come to such a pass that we must tremble to confess ourselves
Christians.
“A nation which was already signally stigmatized by Tacitus
has set up as our master, and is there nothing left for us but to
bear this yoke?
“Judge if such a people has any right of existence amidst
civilized society. I don’t intend to stir you up, but hear and
judge! This book, the Talmud! Do you know what this book
contains? The Truth! And do you know how you are de-
scribed in this book? As a herd of pigs, dogs and asses!"?
Such were some of the events that provided the social and
political context of the “turning point” in Freud's life. These
events serve perhaps to clarify Jones's query as to “why that
important talk took place when it did.” We cannot tell from
the available literature whether the remarks by Briicke were
merely advice or constituted an interview in which it was more
strongly suggested to Freud that he separate himself from the
Institute. Under any circumstances, even if Freud were not
dismissed, it is clear that inevitably the pressure of anti-
Semitic agitation was upon him. He must have been aware
that the attacks which were taking place were directed not
only against the Jews as people but also against the whole Jew-
ish tradition and culture. Among the various charges made
was one to the effect that the Zohar, the most important docu-
ment in Jewish mysticism, which we will discuss presently,
taught the Jews to sacrifice Christian virgins for God's pleas-
ures
29
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
In the last two decades of the nineteenth century the ritual
murder theme arose again and again in Europe, deeply affect-
ing the Jews of Vienna and elsewhere. On June 29, 1891, the
body of a boy was found at Xanten in Rhenish Prussia, and
his death was attributed to the Jewish penchant for collecting
blood.® In 1893 a pamphlet appeared entitled A Ritual Mur-
der, Established as Fact by Official Documents of a Trial, by
Father Joseph Deckert. This pamphlet told of a trial in 1474
of Jews accused of ritual murder. Deckert had engaged a Jew
by the name of Paulus Meyer, presumably a “Tsaddick
pupil,” who alleged that he had been a witness to ritual mur-
ders in Russia." Accusations of this kind were prevalent in
Russia, especially after the ascension of Nicholas II in 1894.
There were blood accusations and riots against the Jews in
Irkutsk, Shpola, Kantakuzov, Vladimir, and Nikol.”* In 1899
a Jew by the name of Hilsner was convicted of ritual murder
in Bohemia.*
The “Jewish Question” was a frequent topic of conversation.
Karl Lueger* and the anti-Semitic Christian Socialist Party
which he headed were powerful and influential. That Freud
Ik is one of the ironies of history that a person of Jewish descent (thoixh
partial) like Lueger should have played an indirect but important role in the worst
massacre of the Jews in history, that which took place under Hitler. Hitler said
that it was Lueger who first convinced him of the correctness of the anti-Semitic
position. Lueger was Hitler's hero. Hitler read the Volksblart, which Lueger
trolled, with great avidity—A. Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York: Reynal and Hitch-
cock, 1939), pps 71 ff. Lucger himself was a descendant of a Jewest who had
permitted herself to be baptized rather than be burnt in an affair in which 240
Jews were killed. “In this descendant of the Jews saved from the stake the anti-
semitic faction got a highly gifted commander, who knew how to excite the mastes,
to concentrate and keep them together, to change the catchword according to the
necessity of the moment, and to give the lead to suit the desires of the crowd."—
Bloch, p. 229.
30
ANTI-SEMITISM IN VIENNA
concerned himself with these affairs is indicated by remarks in
his letters. For example, in a letter to Fliess in which he talks
of his struggles to stop smoking he says that he “only over-
indulged one day for joy at Lueger’s non-confirmation in of-
fice.” * He also discusses the Dreyfus affair.’*
It is difficult, in the perspective of modern America, where
the Jews are under less oppression than ever before in their
history, to fully appreciate the intensity and reality of anti-
Semitism at that time. The events which were taking place in
Vienna can best be understood from the fact that they led
eventually to the complete annihilation of 6,000,000 Jews, whose
lives were systematically extinguished in places such as Bergen-
Belsen, Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald. It was this mas-
sacre-in-preparation which provided the social and political
background in which psychoanalysis was being developed.
NOTES FOR CHAPTER 4
1. Freud, An Autobiographical Study, trans. J. Strachey (Lon-
don: Hogarth Press, 1935), p- 16.
2. Jones, I, p. 6.
3. Joseph S. Bloch, My Reminiscences (Vienna and Berlin: R.
Lawit, 1923), p. 30.
4 Jones, I, p. 190.
5. Bloch, p. 29.
6. Max Grunwald, History of the Jews in Vienna (Philadelphia:
Jewish Publication Society of America, 1936), pp. 432-433-
7. Bloch, p. 61.
8. Bloch, p. 146.
9. Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval
Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-
semitism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943), p- 138
3r
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
s
. A Zadik was a Chassidic leader. Cf. pp. 110 ff, below.
11, Bloch, pp. 375 ff; Grunwald, pp. 445-446.
. Jacob S. Raisin, The Haskalah Movement in Russia (Philadel-
phia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913), pp.
275 ff.
Grunwald, p. 429. Actually the charges of ritual murder did
not quite come to an end in the nineteenth century. In 1935
in New York City, two pamphleteers, Raymond J. Healey
and Ernest F. Elmhurst, reasserted the libel that the Talmud
commands Jews to kill Gentiles for ritual purposes—The Jew-
ish Encyclopedia, Vol. Il, p. 4ot.
14. Freud, Origins, p. 133.
15, Freud, Origins, p. 245.
J
5
The General Question of Dissimulation
In Chapter 4 we indicated that Freud would have had good
reason to deliberately conceal his sources if he were conscious
that psychoanalysis was a development in the tradition of Jew-
ish mysticism. In this chapter we will offer some ideas about
dissimulation in publication generally, and later we will re-
view some of the facts of Freud’s life which may have some
bearing on the question.
We are fortunate in having at our disposal the excellent
analysis of the problem of dissimulation-in-writing by Leo
Strauss.’ He says,
Modern historical research, which emerged at a time when per-
secution was a matter of feeble recollection rather than of force-
ful experience, has counteracted or even destroyed an earlier
tendency to read between the lines of great writers, or to attach
more weight to their fundamental design than to those views
they have repeated most often. Any attempt to restore the ear-
lier approach in this age of historicism is confronted by the
problem of criteria for distinguishing between legitimate and
illegitimate reading between the lines. If it is true that there is
a necessary correlation between persecution and writing be-
33
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
tween the lines, then there is a necessary negative criterion:
that the book in question must have been composed in an era
of persecution, that is, at a time when some political or other
orthodoxy was enforced by law or custom?
Freud was indeed writing at a time when persecution was
taking place. Strauss demonstrates with great clarity that when
persecution is taking place the great writer will express him-
self so that he will not be personally persecuted. He will write
in a way to avoid censorship on political or social grounds;
and in spite of such censorship he will somehow succeed in
getting his ideas across to those with whom he is interested in
communicating.
Strauss characterizes the opposed scholarly view, what we
can consider the “face value” approach, as follows:
The only presentations of an author's views which can be ac-
cepted as true are those ultimately borne out by his own explicit
statements. {This} . . . principle is decisive; it seems to exclude
a priori from the sphere of human knowledge such views of
earlier writers as are indicated exclusively between the lines.
For if an author does not tire of asserting on every page of his
book that @ is 5, but indicates between the lines that a is not
4, the modern historian will still demand explicit evidence
showing that the author believed @ not to be 8. Such evidence
cannot possibly be forthcoming, and the modern historian wins
his argument: he can dismiss any reading between the lines as
arbitrary guesswork, or, if he is lazy, he will accept it as in-
tuitive knowledge?
In the context of modern views about integrity in writing,
the idea that we are advancing, that there may have been a
concealment of his sources, even if he was aware of them,
34
THE GENERAL QUESTION OF DISSIMULATION
might indeed be taken as a sign of disrespect for Freud and his
work. Strauss says on this point,
Every decent modern reader is bound to be shocked by the mere
suggestion that a great man might have deliberately deceived
the large majority of his readers. And yet, as a liberal theo-
logian once remarked, these imitators of the resourceful Odys-
seus were perhaps merely more sincere than we when they
called “lying nobly” what we would call “considering one’s
social responsibilities.” *
Strauss analyzes three writers in detail to make his point
about dissimulation-in-writing and its relation to persecution,
He chooses for his treatment three Jewish writers, Maimonides,
Halevi, and Spinoza, although he does not argue that this kind
of writing is unique to Jewish writers. In the history of the
Jews, persecution is a commonplace, repeated century after cen-
tury. Strauss’s analysis of Maimonides is particularly interest-
ing because it deals directly with the problem of presenting
Kabbala, the Jewish oral mystical tradition, in a way to pro-
vide against unfortunate consequences.
We believe that Freud often wrote with obscurity, that he
was motivated, consciously or unconsciously, to hide the deeper
portions of his thought, and that these deeper portions were
Kabbalistic in their source and content. The Kabbalistic tra-
dition itself has secrecy as part of its nature and deals with
secret matters. The Kabbalistic tradition has it that the secret
teachings are to be transmitted orally to one person at a time,
and even then only to selected minds and by hints. This is
indeed what Freud was doing in the actual practice of psycho-
analysis, and this aspect of the Kabbalistic tradition is still
maintained in the education of the modern psychoanalyst. He
5
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
must receive the tradition orally (in the training analysis). As
the modern practicing psychoanalyst is quick to tell anyone,
psychoanalysis is not to be learned from books!
On this point Strauss’s analysis of Maimonides’ The Guide
for the Perplexed * is very helpful. His analysis leads him to
believe that Maimonides permitted himself to violate the tra-
dition by writing because the Jews seemed to be doomed to a
continuing diaspora which made the matter of the dissemina-
tion by oral communication too hazardous. “Indeed,” he
writes, “as it seems that there existed no Kabbalah, strictly
speaking, before the completion of the Guide, one might sug-
gest that Maimonides was the first Kabbalist.”* As a conse-
quence of the double pressure to record the teachings and at
the same time not to violate the tradition by recording it,
Maimonides set the teachings down in such an obscure way
that only a small number of people would be able to penetrate
and understand them, presumably only those who should re-
ceive this holy secret tradition.*
If we accept Strauss’s analysis of Maimonides, Halevi, and
Spinoza, it would seem that there exists a tradition in Jewish
thought, forged in the crucible of persecution, to write in such
a way that what is being expressed is veiled. If we accept the
idea that Freud is in the mystical tradition (though a scientist
too) then the communication of his ideas in a veiled way is
even further supported by the intrinsic nature of the tradition.
A further consequence of these considerations with respect to
our understanding of Freud is that we cannot hope to obtain
Even the Talmud was not set dow until persecution threatened its loss, and
when it was set down, there arose a protest that its living quality was thus de-
stroyed.
36
THE GENERAL QUESTION OF DISSIMULATION
any convincing evidence of the effect of Jewish mysticism on
Freud by pursuing the question of what Freud read. As we
will see later on, the Jewish mystical tradition translated itself
from esoteric doctrine to large-scale social movements in the
culture of Eastern European Jewry. With these developments
the number of Jews who were personal bearers and transmit-
ters of the tradition becomes quite large. In our analysis of the
effect of Jewish mysticism on Freud we will resort to citations
from the mystical literature, since these are what are directly
at hand. However, this does not mean that Freud had nec-
essarily read in this literature. Rather, the argument must
rest on the historical continuity of the Jewish mystical tradi-
tion as it was embodied in the culture out of which Freud
arises. As we shall see, when we analyze the features of Freud's
self-identification as a Jew, it is this essential identification
which emerges as critical.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 5
. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IIL:
Free Press, 1952).
. Strauss, pp. 31-32.
Strauss, p. 27.
Strauss, pp. 35-36-
Strauss, Chap. 3, pp. 384. “The Literary Character of The
Guide for the Perplexed”; Moses Maimonides, The Guide for
the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedlaender (2d ed., New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1936). Maimonides was born in 1135 and died in 1204.
Strauss, p. 51. Although Strauss is essentially correct, the ex-
istence, for example, of the Sefer Yetzirah (cf. pp. 69-70, be-
low) prior to Maimonides might Iead one to qualify this as-
sertion.
wee yp
oy
37
6
Did Freud Ever Dissemble?
Our hypothesis pertains to the Jewish mystical tradition, and
not to whether Freud’s participation in it was conscious or un-
conscious. Although the available evidence is completely in-
adequate on the conscious-unconscious question, it is still
interesting to see if there is any evidence to indicate that Freud
ever pursued a strategy of concealment. One can, of course,
readily cite the reservations which he avows in The Interpre-
tation of Dreams. There he stops short of further analysis
because of considerations of discretion, and he tells us that he
is doing so. But here the manifest reason is that the concealed
material is personal.
Beyond this avowed use of discretion, it is of note that Freud
is sometimes discreet without avowing it. We have a paper
by Bernfeld in which he convincingly demonstrates that a
presumptive case discussed by Freud is really Freud himself.
Bernfeld says, “Here Freud resorts to outright lies. He dis-
guises his identity radically by means of contrast, assuring us
that Mr. Y’s* profession is far distant from psychology.” *
* The choice of the letter ¥ is interesting. The yod (¥) often designates a Jew.
38
DID FREUD EVER DISSEMBLE?
An instance of concealment of another kind is the manner
in which he published his essay “The Moses of Michelangelo.”
As we shall later see,” this essay is of particular significance
with respect to our hypothesis concerning the role of Jewish
mysticism in Freud’s thought. Freud published the essay anon-
ymously in Imago in 1914 with the following note by the ed-
itor:
Although this paper does not, strictly speaking, conform to the
conditions under which contributions are accepted for publica-
tion in this Journal, the editors have decided to print it, since
the author, who is personally known to them, belongs to psy-
choanalytical circles, and since his mode of thought has in point
of fact a certain resemblance to the methodology of psycho-
analysis?
Besides showing that Freud would engage in concealment, this
note by the editor also makes another point manifest. As will
be seen, this paper can be interpreted as a contribution to the
Jewish mystical tradition, and the “certain resemblance to the
methodology of psychoanalysis” is accordingly worthy of note.
Significant evidence that Freud would withhold or conceal
out of consideration of consequences is present in his Moses
and Monotheism. He indicates that his original intention (be-
fore he went to England) was to withhold the last and major
part from publication.
We are living here in a Catholic country under the protection
of that Church, uncertain how long the protection will last.
So long as it does last I naturally hesitate to do anything that
is bound to awaken the hostility of that Church. It is not cow-
ardice, but caution; the new enemy *—and I shall guard against
i, German National Socialism.—Translator.
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
doing anything that would serve his interests—is more dan-
gerous than the old one, with whom we have learned to live
in peace. Psychoanalytic research is in any case the subject of
suspicious attention from Catholicism. I do not maintain that
this suspicion is unmerited. If our research leads us to a result
that reduces religion to the status of a neurosis of mankind
and explains its grandiose powers in the same way as we
should a neurotic obsession in our individual patients, then we
may be sure we shall incur in this country the greatest resent-
ment of the powers that be. It is not that I have anything new
to say, nothing that I did not clearly express a quarter of a
century ago.t All that, however, has been forgotten, and it
would undoubtedly have some effect were I to repeat it now
and to illustrate it by an example typical of the way in which
religions are founded. It would probably lead to our being
forbidden to work in psychoanalysis. Such violent methods of
suppression are by no means alien to the Catholic Church she
feels it rather as an intrusion into her privileges when other
people resort to the same means. Psychoanalysis, however,
which has travelled everywhere during the course of my long
life, has not yet found a more serviceable home than in the
city where it was born and grew.
I do not only think so, I know that this external danger will
deter me from publishing the last part of my treatise on Moses.
T have tried to remove this obstacle by telling myself that my
fear is based on an overestimation of my personal importance,
and that the authorities would probably be quite indifferent to
what I should have to say about Moses and the origin of mono-
theistic religions. Yet I do not feel sure that my judgment is
correct. It seems to me more likely that malice and an appe-
tite for sensation would make up for the importance I may
lack in the eyes of the world. So I shall not publish this essay.
But that need not hinder me from writing it. The more so
since it was written once before, two years ago, and thus only
+ Freud is evidently referring to Totem and Taboo.
40
DID FREUD EVER DISSEMBLE?
needs rewriting and adding to the two previous essays. Thus
it may lie hid until the time comes when it may safely venture
into the light of day, or until someone else who reaches the
same opinions and conclusions can be told: ‘In darker days
there lived a man who thought as you did.’*
This diary-like entry by Freud shows clearly that he would
conceal material on the grounds of social, religious, and politi-
cal considerations. It indicates that he had a conscious con-
ception of strategy with respect to the publication of the work
on Moses, and we can perhaps infer that such considerations
could have been operative in connection with his other writ-
ings, with more or less deliberateness. Indeed, in The Inter-
pretation of Dreams, Freud tells us that dissimulation is a
frequent social event in his life and specifically refers to writ-
ing. In his discussion of distortion in dreams he writes:
I will try to seck a social parallel to this internal event in the
mind. Where can we find a similar distortion of a psychical act
in social life? Only where two persons are concerned, one of
whom possesses a certain degree of power which the second is
obliged to take into account. In such a case the second person
will distort his psychical acts or, as we might put it, will dis-
simulate. The politeness which I practise every day is to a
large extent dissimulation of this kind; and when I interpret
my dreams for my readers I am obliged to adopt similar dis-
tortions. The poet complains of the need for these distortions
in the words:
Das Beste, was du wissen kannst,
Darfst du den Buben doch nicht sagen.*
* From Goethe's Faust, Part 1, Scene 4, spoken by Mephistopheles. “After all,
the best of what you know you may not tell to boys.” The editor adds that “These
were favourite lines of Freud.”
4r
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
A similar difficulty confronts the political writer who has
disagreeable truths to tell those in authority. If he presents them
undisguised, the authorities will suppress his words—after they
have been spoken, if his pronouncement was an oral one, but
beforehand, if he had intended to make it in print. A writer
must beware of the censorship, and on its account he must
soften and distort the expression of his opinion. According to
the strength and sensitiveness of the censorship he finds him-
self compelled either merely to refrain from certain forms of
attack, or to speak in allusions in place of direct references, or
he must conceal his objectionable pronouncement beneath some
apparently innocent disguise {our italics]; or for instance, he
may describe a dispute between two Mandarins in the Middle
Kingdom, when the people he really has in mind are officials
in his own country. The stricter the censorship, the more far-
reaching will be the disguise and the more ingenious too may
be the means employed for putting the reader on the scent of
the true meaning."
Freud was eminently aware that the material he was writing
would arouse resistance on the basis of its content alone, as
well as because he was Jewish. The resistance would probably
have redoubled had he indicated the Jewish sources of his
thought. He concludes his essay, “The Resistances to Psycho-
analysis,” which enumerates several sources of resistance, with
the following:
Finally, with all reserve, the question may be raised whether
the personality of the present writer as a Jew who has never
sought to disguise the fact that he is a Jew may not have had
a share in provoking the antipathy of his environment to
psycho-analysis. An argument of this kind is not often uttered
aloud. But we have unfortunately grown so suspicious that
we cannot avoid thinking that this factor may not have been
without its effect. Nor is it perhaps entirely a matter of chance
4a
DID FREUD EVER DISSEMBLE?
that the first advocate of psycho-analysis was a Jew [our ital-
ics]. To profess belief in this new theory called for a certain
degree of readiness to accept a position of solitary opposition—
a position with which no one is more familiar than a Jew.®
In this passage, in the italicized sentence, we find the clearest
indication by Freud of a linkage between his being Jewish and
his creation of psychoanalysis. Yet the qualification, or the
explanation, which he adds, is that the Jewish characteristic
to which he has reference is the ability to stand alone in the
face of opposition. We can certainly accept this explanation on
Freud's part, although one cannot but wonder about its his-
torical adequacy. The ability of the Jew to withstand opposi-
tion has historically been based in the Jewish community
rather than in individual heroes. In instances in which indi-
vidual Jews have stood alone in the face of opposition or in
the willingness to accept martyrdom, they have done so with
a sense that they were defending a tradition, rather than as
“solitary opposition” for the sake of a radical innovation.
If we are skeptical of his explanation as to why it was not
“entirely a matter of chance that the first advocate of psycho-
analysis was a Jew,” an “explanation of the explanation” read-
ily presents itself, On the one hand, if he wanted to suggest
that psychoanalysis is related to the Jewish tradition, he here
indicated it clearly. On the other hand, for him to say it in
its bare clarity, without qualification, would invite even greater
resistance than that which is the subject of his paper.
43
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
NOTES TO CHAPTER 6
1. S. Bernfeld, p. 16.
2. CE. pp. 121 ff, below.
3: Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 257.
4- Freud, Moses and Monotheism, pp. 67-69.
5. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, pp. 141-142.
6. Freud, Col. Papers, V, pp. 174-175.
7
Freud’s Positive Identification as a Jew
Thus far we have indicated that the question of the “origins”
of psychoanalysis is an open one, that the usual hypotheses for
explaining its origins are unsatisfactory, that great writers en-
gage in dissimulation-in-writing when they are under condi-
tions of persecution, that there was persecution of Jews at the
time Freud was writing, that he was capable of dissimulation,
and that he specifically talked of dissimulating-in-writing.
These considerations are background material for our attempt
to demonstrate that psychoanalysis is to be understood as devel-
oping in the tradition of Jewish mysticism.
We turn now to a consideration of some of the information
available concerning Freud’s self-identification as a Jew. A
deeply grounded sense of identification with a culture is not by
itself evidence of the effect of that culture upon a person's in-
tellectual productions. Owing to the great fractionation of
intellectual effort, there are many instances in which there is
little manifest relationship between intellectual or professional
pursuits and the original culture from which the person stems.
Yet there are noteworthy differences among pursuits. The
45
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
ethnic background of a chemist is no doubt less significant for
the appreciation of his work than is, say, that of a novelist.
In the case of psychoanalysis, its development is closely re-
lated to the ethnicity of its originator. For there has hardly
been a scientific pursuit which was so spun out of the being
of the investigator. The images which Freud uses to describe
his work on dream interpretation are pertinent in this connec-
tion. He writes of it: “None of my works has been so com-
pletely my own as this; it is my own dung-heap, my own
seedling and a nova species mihi (sic!).”* Freud’s major work,
The Interpretation of Dreams, is unique in the history of sci-
ence and medicine in that it draws so heavily and directly on
the most intimate features of the investigator himself.
Drawn as it is from his personal being, that being is neces-
sarily the locus of our investigation. And for our purposes we
are interested in this locus as it contained within it a culture.
We consider first the opening of Freud’s autobiography.
After a few brief introductory remarks he writes:
T was born on May 6, 1856, at Freiberg in Moravia, a small town
in what is now Czecho-Slovakia. My parents were Jews, and
T have remained a Jew myself?
To assert that his parents were Jews and also that he re-
mained a Jew himself is not quite as redundant as it may seem.
For baptism stood as an invitation and temptation to all Jews
who encountered Western civilization. As Heine once put it,
baptism was an “admission ticket to European civilization” for
the Jew. Baptism held out the promise of the removal of the
obstacles that stood in the way of success. “A proof of their
46
FREUD'S POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION AS A JEW
[the Jews of Vienna] unfavorable political situation in Austria
is afforded by the large number of conversions to Christianity,
which amounted to 559 in 1900, and 617 in 1904.”* That
Freud should say he “remained” a Jew is indicative of his posi-
tion with respect to religious assimilation.
Freud expressed himself very clearly to Max Graf on the
matter of conversion. Graf says,
On the occasion of some of his visits the conversation would
touch upon the Jewish question. Freud was proud to belong
to the Jewish people which gave the Bible to the world. When
my son was born, I wondered whether I should not remove him
from the prevailing antisemitic hatred, which at that time was
preached in Vienna by a very popular man, Doctor Lueger.*
I was not certain whether it would not be better to have my
son brought up in the Chi faith. Freud advised me not
to do this. “If you do not let your son grow up as a Jew,” he
said, “you will deprive him of those sources of energy which
cannot be replaced by anything else. He will have to struggle
as a Jew, and you ought to develop in him all the energy he
will need for that struggle. Do not deprive him of that advan-
tage.” ®
The idea of Jewishness as a source of energy is one which
recurs several times in Freud’s writings.
One of his most interesting statements on his Jewish iden-
tification occurs in the speech that he prepared for delivery at
the B'nai B'rith in Vienna on the occasion of his seventieth
birthday. He said that in the years following 1895*
It seemed to me that I was like a man outlawed, shunned by
everyone. In my isolation the longing arose in me for a circle
of chosen, high-minded men who, regardless of the audacity
47
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
of what I had done, would receive me with friendliness. Your
society was pointed out to me as a place where such men were
to be found.
That you were Jews only suited me the more, for I myself
was a Jew, and it always seemed to me not only shameful but
downright senseless to deny it?
Participation in the B'nai B'rith lodge in Vienna was one of
the very few recreations that Freud permitted himself—among
his recreations was his weekly game of taroc,” a popular card
game based on Kabbala. It was there that he first presented
his ideas on dream interpretation. This was in December 1897,
about half a year before he first mentioned writing The Inter-
pretation of Dreams. He writes to Fliess about it:
I gave a lecture on dreams to my Jewish society (an audience
of laymen) last Tuesday, and it had an enthusiastic reception.
I shall continue it next Tuesday... 2
It was to this group also that he first expressed himself on
his most audacious theme, the theme of God and Satan.’*
Freud was a member of the Yiddish Scientific Institute
(YIVO) in Vilno. In a letter addressed to Dr. Jacob Meitlis
in 1938 he writes:
So you are going to South Africa in order to revive among our
people (Volksgenossen) there interest in our scientific institute
in Vilno, I do not doubt that your mission will be successful.
We Jews have always known how to respect spiritual values.
We preserved our unity through ideas, and because of them
we have survived to this day. The fact that Rabbi Jochanan
ben Zakkai immediately after the destruction of the Temple
obtained from the conqueror permission to establish the first
8
FREUD'S POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION AS A JEW
academy for Jewish knowledge in Jabnch was for me always
one of the most significant manifestations of our history.*
Once again our people is faced with dark times requiring us
to gather all our strength in order to preserve unharmed all
culture and science during the present harsh storms. The sig-
nificance of YIVO of Vilno among our other institutions you
know better than I do, and you will be able to pass it on with
conviction to our friends in South Africa."
From the article by Meitlis we learn several other things:
Freud believed that anti-Semitism was practically ubiquitous
in either latent or manifest form; the broad masses in England
were anti-Semitic “as everywhere”; he was of the opinion that
the book on Moses would anger the Jews; he expressed a love
for Hebrew and Yiddish, according to Freud's son; he refused
to accept royalties on Hebrew and Yiddish translations of his
works; he was sympathetic to Zionism from the first days of
the movement and was acquainted with and respected Herzl; *
he had once sent Herzl a copy of one of his works with a per-
sonal dedication; Freud's son was a member of Kadimah, a
Zionist organization, and Freud himself was an honorary
member of it.
A question of importance is that of the extent of Freud's
knowledge of Hebrew and Yiddish. There is a considerable
"We find this idea expressed in Moser und Monotheism as follows: “We
know that Moses had given the Jews the proud fecling of being God's chosen peo-
ple; by dematerializing God a new, valuable contribution was made to the secret
treasure of the people. The Jews preserved their inclination towards spiritual in-
terests. ‘The political misfortune of the nation taught them to appreciate the only
possession they had retained, their written records, at its true value. Immediately
after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Titus, Rabbi Jochanan ben
Sakkat asked for permission to open at Jabnch the first school for the study of the
Torah. From now on, it was the Holy Book, and the study of it, that kept the
scattered people tugether."—Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 147.
49
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
sprinkling throughout his writings of both Hebrew and Yid-
dish words. He could not have been around the Jewish quarter
of Vienna without running into Yiddish constantly. It is not
likely that he would make a collection of Jewish stories without
a knowledge of Yiddish. It is indicative that Freud felt some
shame or guilt, or at least some desire to conceal the collecting
of these stories, since he “confesses” to Fliess that he had made
“a collection of deeply significant Jewish stories” in 1897. As
far as Hebrew is concerned, Jones says, “He had of course been
taught Hebrew.” ** On Freud's thirty-fifth birthday, his father
gave him the Bible in which he had read as a boy, inscribed in
Hebrew as follows:
My dear Son,
It was in the seventh year of your age that the spirit of God
began to move you to learning. I would say the spirit of God
speaketh to you: “Read in My book; there will be opened to
thee sources of knowledge and of the intellect.” It is the Book
of Books; it is the well that wise men have digged and from
which lawgivers have drawn the waters of their knowledge.
Thou hast seen in this Book the vision of the Almighty, thou
hast heard willingly, thou hast done and hast tried to fly high
upon the wings of the Holy Spirit. Since then I have preserved
the same Bible. Now, on your thirty-fifth birthday I have
brought it out from its retirement and I send it to you as a
token of love from your old father.®
The internal evidence of the quotation and the fact that the
inscription itself is in Hebrew strongly suggest that Freud
himself must have known the language, since, it would seem,
Jakob Freud expected his son to understand it. Jones even tells
us the name of the man who taught Freud “Scriptures and
50
FREUD'S POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION AS A JEW
Hebrew,” a Professor Hammerschlag, with whom, moreover,
Freud was on intimate terms. Freud named one of his chil-
dren after Hammerschlag’s daughter and another after Ham-
merschlag’s niece. “Freud said of him, ‘He has been touchingly
fond of me for years: there is such a secret sympathy between
us that we can talk intimately together.’” *
In view of this evidence it seems strange indeed that Freud
should deny knowledge of these languages in print. In an in-
troductory statement to a Yiddish translation ** of one of his
works he addresses the translator by saying that he was happy
to have received a copy of the work and that he took it in his
hands with great respect. It is unfortunate, he adds, that he
can do no more with it. For, in the days when he was a stu-
dent, they gave no care to the cultivation of the national tradi-
tion. He, therefore, did not learn either Hebrew or Yiddish,
which he regrets very much. Nevertheless, he has still become
a good Jew, although perhaps, not a believer."* He makes a
similar denial in the preface to the Hebrew edition of Totem
and Taboo.
It may well be that although he had learned these languages
in his youth, he had forgotten much of them. However, we
cannot believe that his knowledge of Hebrew and Yiddish was
so slight that it would have been difficult for him to have
been influenced by Jewish traditions expressed in these lan-
guages—as witness the “deeply significant Jewish stories” *
which he collected. We can perhaps speculate that his denial
© Freud, Origins, p. 211. It is interesting to speculate whether these “deeply
significant Jewish stories” were exclusively of jokes, or whether they were nut out
of the treasury of Chassidic legends.
5st
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
may have been motivated, again consciously or unconsciously,
by the desire to avoid too close an association of psychoanalysis
with Judaism.
Jones tells us that Freud “. . . felt himself to be Jewish to the
core, and it evidently meant a great deal to him. He had the
common Jewish sensitiveness to the slightest hint of anti-Semi-
tism and he made very few friends who were not Jews.” *°
On one occasion he “announced that he was a Jew and neither
an Austrian nor a German.” ** He was extremely fond of tell-
ing Jewish stories and jokes and sometimes demonstrated an
extreme sensitivity about expressing Jewish character publicly,
a prudence which appears to be highly relevant to our pres-
ent thesis. For example, on one occasion, after the pub-
lication of one of Theodor Reik’s reviews, Freud referred to
one of Reik’s remarks as “a Jewish joke, too good for those
goyim+ and makes a bad impression.”* That he felt that
there were certain things about Jews which are better concealed
is indicated in a letter to his wife-to-be. He writes that George
Eliot’s Daniel Deronda had “amazed him by its knowledge of
Jewish intimate ways that ‘we speak of only among our-
selves.’”** When he was in America he sent greetings by
cablegram to his family on the High Holiday:
It is important to distinguish between Freud's sense of
identity as a Jew and his acceptance of Jewish religious doc-
trines. The intensity of his feelings on his Jewish identity was
matched by his rejection of religious doctrine and practice.
His works on religion are against the classical Judaeo-Christian
religious doctrines. Yet his sense of Jewish identity was so
+ Gentiles.
52
FREUD'S POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION AS A JEW
strong that we might consider his genetic conception of the
Jew,
most clearly asserted in his Moses and Monotheism, as
the theoretical counterpart of his deep feeling of Jewish iden-
tity.
yey en
NOTES TO CHAPTER 7
Freud, Origins, p. 281.
Freud, Autobiographical Study, p. 12.
The Jewish Encyclopedia, Xl, p. 437.
CE. pp. 30-31, above.
M. Graf, “Reminiscences of Professor Sigmund Freud,” Psy-
choanal. Quar., 1942, 11, 465-476 P. 473+
The year in which Freud had the dream of Irma’s injection
and presumably in which The Interpretation of Dreams was
conceived,
Freud, “On Being of the B'nai B'rith,” Commentary, March,
1946, 2324, P. 23.
. "On Saturday evenings I indulge in an orgy of taroc, and I
spend every other Tuesday evening among my Jewish breth-
ren."—Freud, Origins, p. 312.
|. Freud, Origins, p. 238.
Sachs, p. 105; cf. pp. 187 ff., below.
. Jacob Meitlis, “The Last Days of Sigmund Freud,” Jewish
Frontier, September, 1951, 18 (No. 9), 20-22.
. Theodor Herzl was the founder of the Zionist movement. Cf.
pp. 173{f,, below.
. Freud, Origins, p. art.
|. Jones, I, p. at.
. Le, the beginning of his thirty-sixth year. Cf. pp. 198 ff, be-
low.
. Jones, I, p. 19.
Jones, I, p. 163,
. Freud, Arainfir in Psichoanalyz [Introduction to Psychoanal-
ysis], trans. M. Weinreich (Vilno: YIVO, 1936).
53
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
19. CE. p. 296, below.
20. Jones, I, p. 22.
ar. Jones, I, p. 184.
22. Theodor Reik, The Search Within (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Cudahy, 1956), p. 637.
23. Jones, I, p. 174.
24. Personal communication from Theodor Reik.
8
Freud’s Relationship to Fliess and His
Other Jewish Associates
Freud spent his whole life in a virtual ghetto, a world made
up almost exclusively of Jews. Not, however, that there were
no noteworthy exceptions as, for example, Briicke and Jung;
and not that his non-Jewish associations were not important to
him. Still, the essential part of his cultural experience was with
the community of Jews.
Both of Freud's parents came from Galicia, a region whose
atmosphere was saturated with Chassidism, a late and socially
widespread form of Jewish mysticism. Freud says explicitly,
in a letter to Roback, that his father came from a Chassidic
milieu,' and we know from a paper by Aron that Tysmenitz,
the birthplace of Jakob Freud, Freud's father, was filled with
Chassidic lore and learning. Aron also reports a conversation
between Freud and Chaim Bloch in which they discussed
Kabbala, Chassidism, and Judaism in general. Aron remarks,
“What it was that moved Freud to interest himself in Kabbala
and Chassidism is not hard to understand. He must have felt
himself to be spiritually at home in these worlds.” *
55
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Freud's mother was born in the Galician city of Brody, one
of the great centers of Chassidic thought in Eastern Europe.
Her ancestry goes back at least to Samuel Charmatz, who died
in Brody in 17172
It is interesting that Freud's parents were married by a rabbi
associated with the Jewish Reform movement, Rabbi Noah
Mannheimer, who, moreover, in 1841 had engaged in a
polemic against Rabbi Isaac Bernays, the grandfather of Mar-
tha, Freud's wife,* whom we will discuss shortly.
The town of Tysmenitz is significant because of the early
efforts of the Jews there to move into Western civilization
while maintaining their Jewish identity. In a document * writ-
ten by the Jews of Tysmenitz in the mid-nineteenth century,
they openly declared their nationalistic convictions with re-
spect to Poland, and embraced the prevailing revolutionary
doctrine of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” The document
asserts the conviction that the new political events are indica-
tive of a new life for “the oppressed and deeply bowed Israel.”
The cleavage between Jews and Christians is attributed to the
old system and wholehearted allegiance is given to the new
political events of 1848. Some significance may be attached
to the fact that Freud was originally named Sigismund and not
Sigmund. This is the name that appears on his birth record
in Freiberg ° and the name he kept at least until his thirteenth
year as indicated by the Gymnasium records.’ The name Sigis-
mund is one which is traditionally associated with a liberal
attitude toward the Jews, the first, second, and third Sigis-
munds, kings of Poland, each having played the role of pro-
tector of the Jews.*
56
RELATIONSHIP TO FLIESS AND JEWISH ASSOCIATES
Freud’s intimate association with the Bernays family may
also be significant. Rabbi Isaac Bernays of Hamburg had been
called the “leading monarch of mind” for the Jewish world at
his time. He is described as “a queer and eccentric personality
and his philosophy of Judaism was full of mystic vagaries,
some of which were contrary and foreign to the true Jewish
spirit.” As we shall see later, the mystical mood often spilled
‘over into apostasy. Asa possible instance of this trend, it should
be noted that Isaac Bernays’ son Michael, uncle of Martha, was
converted to Christianity."° Freud’s sister married Martha’s
brother; and Martha's sister, Minna, lived in the Freud house-
hold for many years and evidently provided Freud with as-
sistance in his work and also moral support.
Owing perhaps to ambiguities in Freud’s writings about Josef
Breuer, the role that Breuer may have played in the develop-
ment of psychoanalysis is somewhat obscure. For our purposes,
it is of particular note that Breuer was, like Freud, a Jew,
and thus under similar cultural influences. He was the son of
Leopold Breuer, one of the most famous Jewish religious lead-
ers and teachers of his time.” In a brief autobiographical state-
ment written as a curriculum vite for the archives of the
Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaft in 1923, Breuer tells of
studying under his father and of the great significance his
father played in his development."®
Freud, as we recall, had attributed the original discoveries
of psychoanalysis to Breuer. In his Clark University lectures
he asserted quite forthrightly that Breuer was the originator of
psychoanalysis,"* although he disclaimed this later.
Furthermore, it may be argued that a cultural readiness for
57
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
psychoanalysis existed among the Jews in Vienna from the
facts that Freud’s first audience for his psychoanalytic ideas was
his “Jewish Society,” the B'nai B'rith, and that practically all
of the early psychoanalysts were Jews. The major non-Jewish
figure among them was Jung, who arises from a clearly
mystical tradition within Christianity.'* We recall in this con-
nection the affairs at the Second International Psycho-Analyt-
ical Congress at Nuremberg in 1910. Freud had proposed that
Jung be made permanent president. A protest meeting was
held in a hotel room. Freud appeared on the scene and said,
“Most of you are Jews, and therefore you are incompetent to
win friends for the new teaching. Jews must be content with
the modest role of preparing the ground. It is absolutely essen-
tial that I should form ties in the world of general science. I
am getting on in years, and am weary of being perpetually
attacked. We are all in danger.” Seizing his coat by the lapels,
he said, “They won't even leave me a coat to my back. The
‘Swiss will save us—will save me, and all of you as well.” **
Perhaps the most noteworthy of Freud's associations was his
friendship with Wilhelm Fliess, a Jewish physician living in
Berlin, with whom Freud carried on a very extensive corre-
spondence between 1887 and 1902. A substantial portion of
Freud's correspondence to Fliess has been made available. Be-
sides letter writing, they arranged for frequent “congresses” at
designated cities to spend time discussing each other's ideas.
“The letters cover the period from 1887 to 1902, from Freud's
thirty-first to forty-sixth year, from when he had just set up in
practice as a specialist in nervous and mental diseases until he
was engaged in his preliminary studies for Three Essays on
58
RELATIONSHIP TO FLIESS AND JEWISH ASSOCIATES
the Theory of Sexuality. To the years of this correspondence
there belong, besides his first essays on the neuroses, the Studies
on Hysteria (1895 . . .), The Interpretation of Dreams (1900
« +), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901 .. .) and
Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905 . . .)."*
Fliess is described as follows: “All who knew him emphasize
his wealth of biological knowledge, his imaginative grasp of
medicine, his fondness for far-reaching speculation, and his
impressive personal appearance; they also emphasize his ten-
dency to cling dogmatically to a once-formed opinion.”
There are two views of Freud's relationship to Fliess. Kris,
in his introduction to the published version of the corre-
spondence, says:
However, the true motive of the correspondence was not pro-
vided by the similarity in the two men’s origin, intellectual
background and family situation, or, indeed, by anything per-
sonal . . , All Freud’s letters that have come down to us go to
show that the true motive behind the correspondence was the
two men's common scientific interests."*
On the other hand, Jones advances the view that the rela-
tionship was primarily emotional. He refers to this friendship
as “the only really extraordinary experience in Freud’s life,”
and indicates that it is to be understood as a “passionate friend-
ship” for someone intellectually his inferior, a “passionate rela-
tionship of dependence” ® from 1895 to 1901. “The extreme
dependence he displayed towards Fliess, though diminishing
in degree, up to the age of forty-five has almost the appearance
of a delayed adolescence.’
59
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Jones cites a passage from a letter to Fliess written on New
Year's Day of 1896, in which Freud says,
People like you should not die out, my friend; we others need
the like of you too much. How much have I to thank you for
in consolation, understanding, stimulation in my loneliness, in
the meaning of life you have given to me, and lastly in health
which no one else could have brought back to me. It is essen-
tially your example that has enabled me to gain the intellectual
strength to trust my own judgment . . . and to face with de-
liberate resignation, as you do, all the hardships the future may
have in store, For all that accept my simple thanks."*
What may Fliess have meant to Freud? Fliess was a person
who had a deep and wide knowledge of biology, physiology,
and the general science of his day. He may well have been to
Freud an embodiment of contemporary scientific knowledge,
in part symbolic of the scientific materialistic superego of the
day, the same superego with which Freud's scientific back-
ground had provided him. In these matters, Fliess was more
competent than Freud, at least in Freud's opinion, and Freud
could look up to him. Thus Fliess could play much the same
role as Briicke, Freud's earlier scientific mentor. By virtue of
his scientific knowledge Fliess could represent to Freud the
authority of science.
Around the autumn of 1895, Freud wrote what the trans-
lator calls a “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” ** in immedi-
ate response to a “congress” with Fliess. It was written in three
parts and sent to Fliess. The first and second parts were begun
on the train on the return trip. The manuscript was truly a
Project for a Scientific Psychology in the tradition of the science
of the day.
60
RELATIONSHIP TO FLIESS AND JEWISH ASSOCIATES
Although Fliess may have embodied the scientific superego,
yet he permitted himself to be quite wanton with the scientific
tradition. In his own work he essentially abandoned the dis-
cipline associated with materialistic science. For example, in
1897 Fliess published his book on the relationship between the
nose and the female sexual organs." This book, by the scien-
tific standards of 1897 as well as of today, is readily dismissable.
Yet when a disparaging review of it appeared in the Wiener
Klinische Rundschau, Freud demanded redress for Fliess and
resigned in protest from his association with this periodical.
In his book Fliess argues for a relationship between menstru-
ation and the turbinate scrolls of the nose, and claims that
certain gynecological complaints can be cured by cauterizing
the appropriate parts of the nasal apparatus. The book is re-
plete with numerology. There are, he says, two major periods
in animal and vegetable species, and all the major events fall
on multiples of these numbers. The male period is twenty-three
days and the female period is twenty-eight days. On this basis
important events are determined. Presumably, the last battle
of Napoleon can be explained by such a numerological scheme.
Goethe's death was on his 30,156th day, or 1,077 cycles of
twenty-cight days; Goethe died “when the 1,077th feminine
menstruation had exhausted the last bit of his wonderful
organization.” *
The combination in a single person of great scientific com-
petence with speculative nonconformity must have been ex-
tremely important to Freud. For if Fliess, who had so much
more scientific knowledge than Freud, was unimpressed by the
scientific superego, then Freud too could win license to aban-
61
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
don worship of this image. The fact that he had never quite
been able to wear the cloak of the scientist with comfort made
discard all the easier when Fliess, who wore it well, could shed
it because it was not good. The fact that Fliess could abandon
the classical scientific image may have meant to Freud that
there was more reason than his own possible incompetence
for abandoning it.
Whether Fliess was really so eminently competent on scien-
tific matters as Freud may have believed is an open question.
All that matters is that Freud regarded him in this way. Kris
says that Freud’s high opinion of Fliess as a scientist
«++ lends support to the suspicion that his over-rating of Fliess’s
personality and scientific importance corresponded to an inner
need of his own. He made of his friend and confidant an ally
in his struggle with official medical science, the science of the
high-and-mighty professors and university clinics, though
Fliess's contemporary writings show that such a role was re-
mote from his thoughts. Freud, to bind his friend closer to
him, tried to elevate him to his own level, and sometimes ideal-
ized his picture of his assumed ally into that of a leader in the
world of science.™
Fliess, in his major thought, combined three important Kab-
balistic elements: the notion of bisexuality, the extensive use of
numerology, and the doctrine of the predestination of the time
of death—the doctrine of “life portions.” Thus Fliess may be
regarded as an even less secularized Kabbalist than Freud.
Freud, as we know, later despaired of Fliess’s scientific ex-
travagances. Fliess was further left than Freud ever dared to
be. Compared to Fliess, Freud was conservative. And perhaps
his contact with Fliess allowed him to liberate his imagination
62
RELATIONSHIP TO FLIESS AND JEWISH ASSOCIATES
in a way which the orthodox scientific superego could not
permit.
Fliess, then, represented the suspended scientific superego.”
We have no information concerning Fliess on the degree to
which he may have been immersed in the Kabbalistic tradi-
tion. Certainly his work, both technically and atmospherically,
seems to suggest this tradition. And it is evident that Freud
found in him someone who was permissive of deviations from
the strict scientific spirit. Thus the relationship between them
was neither exclusively emotional nor exclusively intellectual.
Just as neither Kabbalah nor psychoanalysis separates the in-
tellectual and affective, so these aspects were not separated in
the relationships of the two men.
We have pointed out that there was a cultural readiness for
psychoanalysis in Fliess, Breuer, and the early psychoanalysts.
In our view this cultural readiness is based upon the tradition
of Jewish mysticism. In the few instances in which Freud as-
signs priority to others, they were primarily Jews. To Breuer
he ascribes the beginning of psychoanalysis, although he later
retracted it. Fliess is the source of the theory of bisexuality.
To Bérne he ascribes the method of free association. And
finally he takes a deep bow in the direction of another Jew,
Popper-Lynkeus, this time for the theory of dream interpreta-
tion. In “On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement,”
he writes,
1 found the essential characteristic and most significant part of
my dream theory—the reduction of dream-distortion to an inner
conflict, a kind of inward dishonesty—Iater in a writer who was
familiar with philosophy though not with medicine, the en-
63
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
gincer J. Popper, who published his Phantasien cines Realister
under the name of Lynkeus.2*
Among Popper's engineering achievements was his work on
the transmutation of electrical power and his development of
the turbine. He had written on many topics and was interested
in the furtherance of the humanitarian ideal and the institution
of social reform. In Freud’s essay “My Contact with Josef
Popper-Lynkeus,” he writes that after he had discovered Pop-
per’s treatment of dream distortion, he read all of his works.
He says, “A special feeling of sympathy drew me to him, since
he too had clearly had painful experience of the bitterness of
the life of a Jew and of the hollowness of the ideals of present-
day civilization.” *
Most interesting, however, is the final paragraph, in which
he identifies Popper as a Jew, identifies him with the scientific
tradition, and adds that part of his reluctance to approach him
was that Popper was a scientist. He says, in explanation of this
reluctance, “And after all Josef Popper had been a physicist:
he had been a friend of Ernest Mach. I was anxious that the
happy impression of our agreement upon the problem of
dream-distortion should not be spoilt.” In Popper-Lynkeus
we see the same combination of elements that we have seen
before: the ascription to a Jew of an essential feature of psy-
choanalysis, the identification with him as a Jew, and the
attraction to a person who combined the psychoanalytic and
scientific types of thought; although, as the last quotation
would indicate, he was in this case afraid of being rejected by
the scientific side of the man. Popper was thus in part identi-
64
RELATIONSHIP TO FLIESS AND JEWISH ASSOCIATES
fied by Freud as a person sympathetic to his views. Yet Popper
could not serve so well as a symbolized suspension of the scien-
tific superego. Freud felt that he was too closely allied to the
scientific tradition.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 8
1. A. A. Roback, Frewdiana (Cambridge, Mass.: Sci-Art Pub-
lishers, 1957), p. 27.
2. W. Aron, “Farzeichnungen wegen opshtam fun Sigmund
Freud un wegen sein Yiddishkeit” [Notes concerning the
genalogy of Sigmund Freud and concerning his Jewishness},
Yivo Bleter, 40, 166-174, p. 169.
3: Aron, p. 170.
4- Aron, p. 166.
5. Karol Widman, Franciszek Smolka (Lwow: 2. Drukarni In-
stytutu Stauropigianskiego, 1886), pp. 870-873.
6. Adams, p. 361.
7. Susan C. Bernfeld, “Freud and Archaeology,” American
Imago, 1951, 8, 107-128, p. 125.
8S. M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland,
trans, Friedlaender (3 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society of America, 1916), I, pp. 71, 83 93+
9: Meyer Waxman, A History of Jewish Literature (3 vols.;
New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1936), III, p. 400.
10. W. Aron, “Professor Dr. Michael Bernays—Renegade,” Jew-
ish Forum, 1450, 335 30-40.
11, Grunwald, p. 521.
12. C. P. Oberndorf (ed. and trans.), “Autobiography of Josef
Breuer (1842-1925),” Int. J. Psychoanalysis, 1953, 34 64-67.
This document is part of the collection at the library of the
New York Psychiatric Institute.
13. Freud, “The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis,”
Am. ]. of Psychology, 1910, 21, 181-218, p. 181. CE. p. 16, above.
65
BACKGROUND OF FREUD'S DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
- On the influence of Kabbala on Christianity, see J. L. Blau,
The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).
. Fritz Wittels, Sigmund Freud, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul
(New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1924), p. 140.
Freud, Origins, p. 3.
. Freud, Origins, p. 4.
. Freud, Origins, p. 11.
. Jones, I, p. 287.
Jones, I, p. 295.
. Jones, I, 298-299. This passage is not in the Origins. It is our
hope that someday the editors might be persuaded to release
all of Freud's correspondence with Fliess, Martha Bernays,
and others.
Freud, Origins, pp. 347-445.
» Wilhelm Fliess, Die Bezichungen zwischen Nase und weib-
lichen Geschlechtsorganen, in ihrer biologischen Bedeutung
dargestellt (Wien: Deuticke, 1897).
Fliess, p. 210.
. Freud, Origins, p. 14.
. CE. pp. 187 ff, below.
Freud, Col. Papers, I, p. 302.
Freud, Col. Papers, V, p. 30%.
. Freud, Col. Papers, V, p. 301.
Part II
The Milieu of Jewish Mysticism
Diprees ty Google
9
Early Kabbala
Jewish mysticism is an historically evolved tradition. To
better appreciate the character of Freud's participation in this
tradition, we pause to gain some conception of its evolution.
The beginning of an intellectual or spiritual movement cannot
be accurately dated. A live school of Jewish mysticism is al-
ready evident in the first century a.o. among the pupils of
Jochanan ben Zakkai, to whom, it will be recalled, Freud
makes reference in his letter to Josef Meitlis and in Moses and
Monotheism.' For the first thousand years of the Christian era
the tradition was maintained and continuously developed
among small groups of Jews, transmitted largely by word of
mouth from generation to generation. The central theme of
the early Jewish mystics is Merkabah (throne) mysticism. The
central theme of this early mysticism is the image of God sitting
on His throne, surrounded by the heavenly beings. The major
source for the content of this image is the vision of Ezekiel.*
The term Kabbala, as such, appears in written form for the
first time in the eleventh century,’ in the writings of Ibn
Gabirol. Among the earliest Kabbalistic texts is the Sefer
6
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
Yetzirah [The Book of Formation]. Waite refers to it as “the
primitive text of accepted Kabbalistic doctrine in Israel.”* It is
referred to in the Talmud. According to legend it was written
by Abraham. It may have been available as early as 850 in
France! Evidently Gabirol knew of it!
One meaning of the word Kabbala is tradition in a way
which connotes an oral transmission. Another meaning is ac-
ceptance as the mystics are accepted before God. A third mean-
ing of the term is that which is received, suggesting its
revelatory character. The Kabbala is sometimes referred to as
the Secret Wisdom (chochmah nistarah) to indicate that it is
comprehensible only to the initiated and that it is hidden in
the Scriptures in ways to be extracted only by those who know
its mysteries.”
Kabbala has always had about it an aura of danger, perhaps
for good reason. In the light of the later psychoanalytical de-
velopments, this danger may be best understood as that as-
sociated with bringing repressed material to consciousness. The
warning in connection with Jewish secret doctrine is expressed
as early as the Book of Sirach, Ill, 20-24:
Neither search the things that are above thy strength,
But what is commanded thee, think thereon with reverence,
For it is not needful for thee to see with thine eyes the
things that are secret.
Be not curious in unnecessary matters;
For more things are showed unto thee than men understand.
We find the same warning in the Talmud tractate Chagigah,
Seek not things that are too hard for thee and search not things
that are hidden from thee. The things that have been permitted
70
EARLY KABBALA
thee, think thereupon; thou hast no business with the things
that are secret®
In the Sefer ha-Gematria of Jehudah ha-Chassid, it is said
that “Ben Sira wanted to study the Sefer Yezirah when an
heavenly voice came out and said, ‘Thou canst not do it alone.’
So he went to his father Jeremiah . . . and they studied it.”*
In another version of the same episode “Jeremiah began to
study the Sefer Yezirah, when a heavenly voice came forth and
said: ‘Get thee an associate.’ He accordingly went to his son
Sira, and they studied the Sefer Yezirah together.” '*
Recalling our earlier discussion of the friendship between
Freud and Fliess,"' Kabbalistic tradition provides a further hint
concerning the nature of the relationship. In his psychoanalyt-
ical werk, which we maintain is Kabbalistic, Freud needed an
“associate,” because the burden of the Kabbalistic thought is
too difficult for anyone to bear in independent study. The
breach that took place eventually between Freud and Fliess
was perhaps made possible only because Freud found other
“associates” in connection with psychoanalysis.
The tradition is one pervaded by a sense of secrecy. The
substance of Kabbala was transmitted by word of mouth, be-
cause this presumed that a judgment of eligibility was made of
the hearer. Even when transmitted by word of mouth, the
technique of allusion was used, rather than direct expression,
partly to allow the individual to work out his own interpreta-
tion, and partly because only those who were ready to receive
the tradition would be able to appreciate the allusion.”
The Kabbalists were endowed with mystery and power. At
various times they have been referred to in different ways, indi-
n
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
cating the complexity of mood associated with the tradition.
They have been called Yod’e chen (those who know the grace
of God; the word chen, which means “grace,” is also an ab-
breviation of chochman nistarah, meaning “secret wisdom”).
They have been called Ba’ale ha-Sod (bearers or masters of the
secret), Chochme ha-Tushiah (students of profound knowl-
edge), Yod'im (gnostics or knowers), Anshe maasch (men
who are able to do things).”* In the later period of Jewish
mysticism, from about the sixteenth century onward, the title
Ba’al Shem came into use.* This means “Master of the (Holy)
Name,” and refers to the ability of these men to perform mira-
cles by using the varieties of God’s name as they are known
in Kabbalistic lore.
In a passage of his Moses and Monotheism, after Freud has
made the identification of Aton with Adonai," he says hesi-
tatingly “Moreover, we shall have to come back to the problems
of the divine name,” and later he suggests the interpretation
that the plurality of God's name is a sign of an earlier poly-
theism.'” Perhaps Freud is here betraying a sense of the im-
plicit paganism in the Kabbalistic diffusion of God's name, and
its tendency to turn from a strict monotheism.*
* The interested reader is referred to Nandor Fodor, “A Personal Analytic Ap-
proach to the Problem of the Holy Name,” Psychoanal. Rev., 1944, 3%, 165-180.
In this paper, which is both psychoanalync and manifestly Kabbalistic, Fodor says,
“The meaning of the four letter word, the Tetragrammaton, is as fresh a challenge
to the human mind as it was in remote ages."—p. 165. He ends the paper as
+++ am used by my dream mind for a lesson in religious mysticism the
sweep of which is rather staggering. Zsiga [of the dream which he interprets)
is an abbreviation for Zsigmond (Sigmond), a name which I am tempted to
resolve into the German Sieg (victory) and Mond (world). Vietory over the
world would be secured by any man who possessed the Shem [God's ineffable
np
EARLY KABBALA
NOTES TO CHAPTER 9
1. Cf. pp. 48-49, above.
2. Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (3d
ed.; New York: Schocken Books, 1954), pp. 44 ff.
3. Ernst Miller, History of Jewish Mysticism (Oxford: East and
West Library, 1946), p. 6.
4. A. E. Waite, The Holy Kabbalah (London: Williams and
Norgate, 1929).
Waite, p. 43-
Isaac Meyer, Qabbalah (Philadelphia: MacCalla and Co,
1888), p. 159. The Jewish Encyclopedia, XM, p. 605, says
“there is nothing to disprove that the book was written in the
sixth century.”
Christian D. Ginsburg, The Kabbalah (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1955), p- 86. This book first appeared in
1865,
8. Milller, pp. 6263,
. Miiller, p. 63.
10. Miller, p. 63.
11. Cf. pp. 58 ff, above.
12. Scholem, pp. 119 ff.
13. Miller, pp. 67-68.
14. The first person to have borne this name was Elijah of Chelm,
who lived about 1500. The Jewish Encyclopedia lists cleven
Sy ay
°
name]. But the way of Zsiga C. is the way of Satan who showed Jesus the
richness of the world from the top of a mountain. [Cf. p. 175] There is a
better way. It will be found when we shall no more seck union with the divine
in fantasied returns to the womb [Ci. p. 312] im the hope of recapturing the
fetal sensation of omnipotence, but when we shall attain the consciousness of
the Shem within us and will control the power of the Golem to regenerate
the worid."—p. 180.
‘The Golem i» a legendary Frankenstein's monster, energized by the Shem, who
fought against the encnnies of the Jews. He was sometimes referred to as Joseph,
and would scem to partake of some of the characteristics of the Messiah ben Joseph.
CE pp. 171
B
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
such persons, which is an “approximately” complete list —The
Jewish Encyclopedia, Il, p. 383.
15. CE. pp. 248-249, below.
16. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 28.
17. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 47.
74
10
Modern Kabbala
‘We may date modern Kabbala from about the year 1200.
The “Golden Age of Kabbalism” was at the turn from the
thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries.’ The major document
of the Kabbalistic tradition, the Zohar, was made known (writ-
ten or uncovered) by Moses de Leon at about the end of the
thirteenth century. “Its place in the history of Kabbalism can
be gauged from the fact that alone among the whole post-
Talmudic rabbinical literature it became a canonical text, which
for a period of several centuries actually ranked with the Bible
and the Talmud.” *
A figure of particular interest in modern Kabbala is Abra-
ham ben Samuel Abulafia. The significance of Abulafia in-
heres in the fact that he developed a method which is
amazingly close to the psychoanalytic method of free associa-
tion.
Abulafia was born in Spain in 1240. He spent his youth with
his father in the study of Torah, commentary, Mishnah, and
Talmud. He studied Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed,
to which he gave a Kabbalistic interpretation,’ and immersed
himself in the Kabbala, particularly the Sefer Yetzirah.
75
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
At the age of thirty-one, Abulafia was overcome by the
prophetic spirit, and is presumed to have obtained knowledge
of God’s true name. In this period he was accompanied by
“Satan to his right,” evidently to confuse him. It was not until
he was forty years old that he felt himself to be writing dis-
tinctly prophetic works.
In the year 1280 Abulafia picked himself up and went to
Rome to discuss the problems of the Jews with the Pope. This
was evidently motivated by his Messianic tendencies, in con-
firmation of a widely circulated prediction that when the
Messiah would come he would go to the Pope and ask for the
liberation of the Jews.*
As we will see later, the fortieth year, Rome, Messianism,
and the Devil have significance with respect to Freud's biog-
raphy. For the present, let us simply indicate that this pattern
in Abulafia is essentially repeated in Freud.
The psychological objective that Abulafia had was to “unseal
the soul, to untie the knots which bind it.”* This was based on
the view that the inner forces of man are bound in as a result
of his ordinary, daily activity. In Abulafia’s writing there is
the view that there is a value in these knots in that they keep
the individual from being overwhelmed by the stream of the
cosmos. However, if the individual is to make contact with
the divine stream, it is necessary that the knots be untied.
As will become increasingly evident in what follows, a theory
of repression and the role of the ego in repression are already
germinally here. Abulafia has essentially two methods of medi-
tation in order to achieve the desired release of the soul. The
first of these is an interpretative method based on taking liber-
6
MODERN KABBALA
ties with the letters of the alphabet. In meditating, the letters
are separated and combined; new themes arise by recombining
and separating them. Abulafia had a profound sense of the
“mystical logic” of letters. The arrangements of the letters
were not arbitrary, but were rather in accordance with some
higher principles; and from the results of these movements
of the letters one could get a greater insight into the nature
of the divine realms.®
Thus we see in Abulafia the germ of the conviction that this
kind of language product is not simply whimsical, but corre-
sponds rather to another “logic”—for Abulafia, the logic of
God's real world, which to Freud becomes the “logic” of the
unconscious.
The second important method for which the first is but a
preparation is called “jumping and skipping.” Scholem de-
scribes Abulafia’s conception as follows:
«+ «the modern reader of these writings will be most astonished
to find a detailed description of a method which Abulafia and
his followers call dillug and kefitsah, “jumping” or “skipping”
viz., from one conception to another. In fact this is nothing
else than a very remarkable method of using associations as a
way of meditation. It is not wholly the “free play of associa-
tion” as known to psychoanalysis; rather it is the way of pass-
ing from one association to another determined by certain
rules * which are, however, sufficiently lax. Every “jump” opens
a new sphere, defined by certain formal, mot material, charac-
teristics. Within this sphere, the mind may freely associate.
The “jumping” unites, therefore, elements of free and guided
association and is said to assure quite extraordinary results as
‘* Freud would probably differ with Scholem’s suggestion that free association
is without rules. CL, eg, The Int. of Dreams, p. 101 of pp. 522-523.
7
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
far as the “widening of consciousness” of the initiate is con-
cerned. The “jumping” brings to light hidden processes of the
mind, “it liberates us from the prison of the natural sphere and
leads us to the boundaries of the divine sphere.” All the other,
more simple methods of meditation serve only as a preparation
for this highest grade which contains and supersedes all the
others.
Scholem offers in translation a set of instructions from
Abulafia:
Be prepared for thy God, oh Israelite! Make thyself ready to
direct thy heart to God alone. Cleanse the body and choose a
lonely house where none shall hear thy voice. Sit there in thy
closet and do not reveal thy secret to any man. If thou canst,
do it by day in the house, but it is best if thou completest it
during the night. In the hour when thou preparest thyself to
speak with the Creator and thou wishest Him to reveal His
might to thee, then be careful to abstract all thy thought from
the vanities of this world. Cover thyself with thy prayer shawl
and put Tefillin on thy head and hands that thou mayest be
filled with awe of the Shekhinah * which is near thee. Cleanse
thy clothes, and, if possible, let all thy garments be white, for
all this is helpful in leading the heart towards the fear of God
and the love of God. If it be night, kindle many lights, until
all be bright. Then take ink, pen and a table to thy hand + and
remember that thou art about to serve God in joy of the glad-
ness of heart. Now begin to combine a few or many letters, to
permute and combine them until thy heart be warm. Then be
mindful of their movements and of what thou canst bring forth
by moving them. And when thou feclest that thy heart is al-
ready warm and when thou seest that by combination of letters
thou canst grasp new things which by human tradition or by
thyself thou wouldst not be able to know and when thou art
thus prepared to receive the influx of divine power which flows
+ Freud used writing im his self-analysis—The Int. of Dreams, p. 103.
78
MODERN KABBALA
into thee, then turn all thy true thought to imagine the Name
and His exalted angels in thy heart as if they were human be-
ings sitting or standing about thee. And feel thyself like an
envoy whom the king and his ministers are to send on a mis-
sion, and he is waiting to hear something about his mission
from their lips, be it from the king himself, be it from his
servants. Having imagined this very vividly, turn thy whole
mind to understand with thy thoughts the many things which
will come into thy heart through the letters imagined. Ponder
them as a whole and in all their detail, like one to whom a
parable or a dream is being related, or who meditates on a
deep problem in a scientific book, and try thus to interpret
what thou shalt hear that it may as far as possible accord with
thy reason. ... And all this will happen to thee after having
flung away tablet and quill or after they will have dropped
from thee because of the intensity of thy thought. And know,
the stronger the intellectual influx within thee, the weaker will
become thy outer and thy inner parts. Thy whole body will
be seized by an extremely strong trembling, so that thou wilt
think that surely thou art about to die, because thy soul, over-
joyed with its knowledge, will leave thy body. And be thou
ready at this moment consciously to choose death, and then
thou shalt know that thou hast come far enough to receive the
influx. And then wishing to honor the glorious Name by serv-
ing it with the life of body and soul, veil thy face and be afraid
to look at God. Then return to the matters of the body, rise
and cat and drink a little, or refresh thyself with a pleasant
odor, and restore thy spirit to its sheath until another time, and
rejoice at thy lot and know that God loveth thee.®
Associated with such meditation is an intellectual esctasy
identifiable with psychoanalytic insight. This ecstasy, together
with its associated content in terms of cognition of the divine,
is the aim of Abulafia’s meditation. Abulafia is careful to
distinguish between this state and wilder states of emotional
79
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
excitement. As a matter of fact he believes that these other
states, which can be confused with the kind of ecstasy that he
is talking about, can actually be quite dangerous. In Abulafia’s
ecstasy it is the “light of the intellect” which comes in; and for
this careful preparation is required."
Furthermore, Abulafia regards the Kabbalistic teacher as ex-
tremely important, a harbinger of the idea of the transference.
‘There are required both a mover from the outside and a mover
from the inside, and the teacher plays the role of the former.
In the state of ecstasy a kind of identification with the teacher
takes place, which becomes an identification with God, and
paradoxically ends up with a transcendent self-identification.
In this state also the man and the Torah have become identi-
fied."*
Associated with this mode of thought is a tendency (though
one which is highly suppressed) to engage in autobiographical
and introspective analysis. For example, we have an account
of a student of Abulafia translated by Scholem.’* A noteworthy
feature of this account is the described relationship of Kabbala
to the natural sciences. This student writes that it is necessary
in the Kabbalistic ascent to cleanse oneself from the effects
of the natural
to block the divine stream from entering the soul.'*
The similarity between this kind of thinking and the method
of free association is striking. The question whether Freud
could have come in contact with it remains to be answered.
As we have already indicated, Freud’s family, as well as large
numbers of Jews in Vienna, had migrated from Galicia, which
had been saturated with Jewish mysticism. A direct scholarly
80
sciences, since the effect of the sciences is
MODERN KABBALA
contact may have been made through the figure of Adolf
Jelinek.
In the ninetcenth century a small group of Jewish European
scholars undertook to study the nature of the Kabbala in the
tradition of modern Western scholarship. Adolf Jellinek (1821-
1898) was one of the outstanding members of this group.
Among other achievements in connection with Kabbala, Jel-
linek published extensively on Abulafia in German."*
Jellinek was the most popular Jewish preacher in the city of
Vienna of his day. It is said that when Jellinek spoke on the
week end the Jews of Vienna would discuss what he said for
the whole succeeding week. Jellinek preached in Vienna over
several generations from 1856 to 1893. “Through the lips of
Jellinek spoke the genius of the Jewish people. The spark of
Sinaitic fire seemed to flash from his eyes. Whoever heard him
was stirred to enthusiastic recognition of the underlying great-
ness of Judaism, its spiritual uniqueness and its glorious his
tory,” says Grunwald, who was Jellinek’s successor and
himself personally acquainted with Freud."* According to Kur-
rim, who wrote the article on Jellinek in The Jewish Encyclo-
pedia, he was “the greatest, most gifted Jewish preacher that
modern Judaism has produced.”
It is difficult to imagine that a person whose primary associa-
tions were Jewish could have avoided coming into contact with
Jelinek either directly or indirectly.
8r
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
NOTES TO CHAPTER 10
x. Scholem, p. 119.
2. Scholem, p. 156.
3 Cf. Strauss’s interpretation of Maimonides, p. 36, above.
4. Scholem, p. 128.
5. Scholem, p. 131.
6. Scholem, p. 134.
7. Scholem, pp. 135-136.
8, Sce pp. 273 ff, below, on the Shekinah.
9. Scholem, pp. 136-137.
10. Scholem, p. 138.
11, Scholem, pp. 139 ff.
12, Scholem, pp. 147-155-
13, Scholem, p. 154.
14. Scholem, p. 124, p. 429.
15, Grunwald, History of the Jews in Vienna, pp. 360-36.
16, Grunwald, “Zichronos un Briev,” Yivo Bleter, 1952, 36 241-
351.
17. The Jewish Encyclopedia, V1, p. 93
82
11
The Zohar
The most important document in the Kabbalistic tradition is
the Zohar.’ It is ostensibly the work of Simeon ben Yohai in
the first half of the second century. The major part of the
Zohar consists of a lengthy commentary on passages from the
Torah. Besides, various other writings are included within it.
Scholem enumerates the contents of the Zohar under twenty
headings in addition to the main one.* The work was first
brought to light by Moses de Leon in the latter years of the
thirteenth century. There has been much speculation about
the problem of its authorship. Scholem believes that it was
written in its entirety by Moses de Leon.’ For about two cen-
turies the work remained relatively obscure, but then its influ-
ence flowered. It became one of the most significant writings
in Jewish thought, an expression of the deepest currents in
the history of Judaism. Not only was it an expression of the
thought and emotions of the Jewish community, but it became
the supporting document for some of the most far-reaching
social developments among the Jews of Eastern Europe.
The spirit of the Zohar is markedly different from the writ-
83
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
ings of Abulafia. The Zohar lacks the intense personalism and
emphasis on individual mystical experience which is present in
Abulafia. Instead, the Zohar casts its religious messages in
terms of the intimate idiom of family and sexual relationships.
Scholem contrasts Abulafia’s Kabbalism with Kabbala as rep-
resented by the Zohar. The former, he declares, is more aristo-
cratic. The latter was closer to the normal emotions and fears
of the people, and as a consequence, was more successful as an
expression of the people.
Besides its singular emphasis on sexual and family relation-
ships, the Zohar shares with Freud's psychoanalytic writings
the following characteristics: views on anti-Semitism, the con-
ception of man as bisexual, a theory of sexual-social develop-
ment, and, perhaps most important, a set of techniques for the
interpretation of linguistic productions. The latter, in the pat-
tern of the Midrash, but quite exaggerated, is used in the
Zohar on Biblical quotations, and in Freud on human expres-
sions.
We will postpone further consideration of the content of the
Zohar* to make room for a discussion of the social conse-
quences which it supported since it came to be both an intel-
lectual tradition and a social-revolutionary force.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IT
1. The Zohar, trans. H. Sperling, M. Simon, and P. P. Levertoft
(5 vols.; London: Soncino Press, 1931-1934)-
2. Scholem, pp. 160-162.
3. Scholem, Fifth Lecture, particularly pp. 190 ff.
4. Scholem, p. 205.
5. CE. pp. 246 ff.
84
12
The Chmielnicki Period
In the year 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain. From
that time onward we see a growth in the concern with exile
and redemption in the thought of the Jews. Owing largely
to the influence of Isaac Luria (1522-1570) and his foliower
Hayim Vital (1543-1620), the Kabbalistic doctrines played an
important role in the development of these ideas. After about
1630 the Lurianic doctrine spread widely. It was strongly
supernaturalistic and superstitious in content. It promised re-
demption soon, and the coming of the Messiah. It became
integrated into the thought, feeling, and religious rituals of
practically all the Jews living in the diaspora.
The blackest part of the history of the Jews in Spain was the
last decade of the fifteenth century. In the year 1648 the worst
persecution of the Jews in history, excepting only that under
Hitler in our own century, took place in eastern Europe. The
mood of the Jew of the last three hundred years may be largely
traced to the middle decade of the seventeenth century, the
period of the Cossack pogroms under the leadership of the
eminently talented and ruthless Bogdan Chmielnicki.’ The
85,
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
atrocities which were committed, facilitated by an ostensibly
righteous cause, can only be matched by those committed
under Hitler. We read, for example, of the Cossacks opening
up Jewish women and sewing in live cats. Estimates of the
number of Jewish deaths in the years 1648 and 1649 run to
about 300,000. It is ironic that the Kabbala had predicted the
coming of the Messiah in 1648.7
In the period prior to 1648, many Jews played the role of
agents, administrators, and tax collectors for the Polish nobility.
During those years a number of colonies composed of runaway
serfs, criminals, and adventurers had been founded along the
lower Dnieper River and the northern shore of the Black Sea.
One of these groups was the Cossacks, which means “warriors”
or “light riders.” They lived on the great steppes where the
Dnieper and the Dniester Rivers empty into the Black Sea, and
existed almost exclusively by plunder and hunting. They
would attack the Tartars or go by small boat and pillage
Turkish towns along the Black Sea. Actually, the Cossacks
served as a kind of “border patrol” for the Polish nobility
against the Turks and the Tartars. In return for this service
they were freed from many responsibilities, particularly in con-
nection with taxation.
The Polish nobility were Catholics. The Cossacks and the
other colonists were Greek Orthodox. Under the influence of
the Jesuits, efforts were made to bring these people into the
Catholic Church, and failing this, to have them at least recog-
nize the spiritual leadership of the Pope. The hostility between
the Poles and Jesuits on the one hand and the Greek Orthodox
86
THE CHMIELNICKI PERIOD
on the other grew in acuity for both religious and economic
reasons.
The Jews, as agents for the Polish nobility, were obviously
the most ready object for the hostility of the non-Catholic
groups. Irksome devices had been established, such as having
the Jewish tax collector keep the keys of the church and the
official garments of the Greek Orthodox clergymen, in order
to enforce the collection of taxes.
Under the leadership of Bogdan Chmielnicki, the Cossacks
rebelled. Chmielnicki was an intelligent, well-educated, and
wealthy man, who was schooled in the art of warfare. His per-
sonal venom had been stimulated by an event in which his son
had been mortally wounded by flogging and his wife seized
and carried away, presumably at the instigation of a Jew in the
employ of a Polish nobleman. Chmielnicki organized the
Cossacks, made an alliance with the Khan of Crimea, which
gave him protection on the east as well as large numbers of
auxiliary Tartar troops, and attacked many of the Polish and
Jewish communities. He cut a path of violence and destruc-
tion the like of which had never been scen in Poland. Jews
were massacred by the thousands. It is estimated, for example,
that a substantial portion of the 10,000 Jews in Nemirov were
killed. Approximately 200 Jewish communities were destroyed.
In the years following the massacres of 1648 there continued
to be sporadic attacks. It is estimated that another 100,000 Jews
were killed in the succeeding decade. Following this period a
black cloud of fear and anguish settled upon the Jews of Eu-
rope.
The Poles, having suffered at the hands of the Cossacks, for
87
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
psychological reasons which are readily understandable now,
turned their hostility towards the Jews, applying the lessons in
Jew-killing they had learned from the Cossacks. Although
there was some attempt on the part of the higher Polish nobil-
ity to rectify the wrongs done to the Jews, there were many
counterforces, in which the Jesuits played no small role. It
was not unusual for groups of students of the Christian colleges
to riot and invade the Jewish quarters and cause many deaths.
Thus in 1664 the students of the Cathedral School and Jesuit
Academy of Lemberg stormed the Jewish quarter, killed about
100 Jews, demolished a number of houses, and desecrated the
synagogues. Charges were regularly brought against Jews for
killing Christian children to obtain their blood for ritual pur-
poses. The executions which ensued were barbarous. In one
instance it was decreed that an Italian-born Jewish apothecary
living in Cracow by the name of Mattathiah Calahara be ex-
ecuted for having committed blasphemy. He was killed by
cutting off first his lips, then his hands and then his tongue;
finally his body was burned at the stake, and the ashes loaded
into a cannon and discharged into the air.
We have recited some of these events because they occasioned
among the Jews of Eastern Europe a readiness to accept the
Kabbalistic spirit, especially the ideas of the significance of the
exile and redemption through the Messiah. The persecutions
from the outside forced a weakening of the social structure
within, and stimulated among the Jews some gross social
movements in the direction of self-modification.
THE CHMIELNICKI PERIOD
NOTES TO CHAPTER I2
1. The Chmiclnicki episode constituted one of the great shocks
for the Jews of eastern Europe. Details are recounted in gen-
eral Jewish histories, and detailed documentation is not given
here.
2, The Zohar, Ill, p. 29.
13
Jewish Self-Government
In our attempt to understand Freud we will show that a sub-
stantial part of his work, particularly his writings on religion,
participate in the ideological and social struggles which began
to take place following the Chmielnicki period. Prior to the
devastations which began in 1648, the Jews vigorously pursued
the ways of life associated with the Torah, the Talmud, and the
highly detailed and legalistic interpretations thereof. With
the seemingly endless persecution from the outside, the hold
of the Talmudic way of life weakened, and the people turned
to Kabbala, with its Messianic spirit, as a source of hope.
Two major currents run through the history of the Jews.
One, which we have been discussing, is the mystical. The
other, associated with the characteristic pattern of Jewish self-
government, is the rabbinic. In terms of written documents,
the Zohar was the most important support of the mystical cur-
rent, and the Talmud was the most important support for the
rabbinic current. The mystical mood has tended to verge on
apostasy and heresy especially in face of persecution. Among
other things, by making the relationship between man and God
go
JEWISH SELF-GOVERNMENT
more intimate, it fostered some threat to the theocratic form
of government and encouraged more personal liberty than was
usual under rabbinic administration. Further, it later ad-
vocated or implied a doctrine of the value of evil as part of
God’s world, and held out an exaggerated hope for the coming
of the Messiah and the redemption.
Up to the seventeenth century Judaism was sufficiently
strong and elastic to contain these contradictory forces without
any great threat to the social structure. The rabbinic temper
was the dominant one, and certainly the Kabbalists did not
interpret their doctrines in terms of any political consequences.
Frequently the same persons were both Talmudists and Kab-
balists. There is reason to believe that the esoteric quality of
the doctrines of Kabbala was partly motivated by the faith of
the earlier Kabbalists in the Talmud and its associated way
of life, and their concern with its protection.
But as life grew darker for the Jews of Eastern Europe in the
seventeenth century, the conflict between mysticism and rab-
binism grew. The doctrines might be interpreted as two strate-
gies for coping with the prevailing political problems and with
God. Ideologically, both accepted the essential idea of the
Covenant between God and Israel. The critical question was,
of course, why God should so abuse His chosen people. The
rabbinic answer to this question was that the Jews had defected
from the Law and were being punished. The ideological and
social strategy was to close ranks and redouble the communal
effort to follow the commandments and their proper interpreta-
tion as laid out in the Talmud. It led to the most critical
gr
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
self-examination of acts and thoughts to make sure that the
Covenant would be carried out to the last letter of the fine
print of the Torah.
Although the mystics agreed that the Jews had defected from
the Covenant, they felt that it was not because of lack of
conscientiousness, but rather because of lack of appropriate
understanding. The Torah was but the outward form of the
Covenant, and deeper forms of interpretation were required.
Thus Kabbala, and in particular the Zohar, showed the way
by which the underlying meaning of the Torah could be under-
stood. The Torah was taken as a grand cryptogram to be
deciphered by a variety of semi-rationalistic and mystical-intui-
tive devices.
The Jews in Poland had early been organized as a separate
estate, conducting their own affairs under the authority of the
rabbinic Kahals. The pattern of Jewish government and its
relations to the state were well established by the middle of the
sixteenth century. According to a charter issued by King Sigis-
mund Augustus in 1551, the Jews were entitled to elect their
own leaders. They were not under the jurisdiction of the
civil law courts as far as their internal affairs were con-
cerned. The rabbinical Kahal administration was the legal
authority under which the Jews lived as well as the agency
responsible to the government. The authority which the Kahal
exercised was inordinately large, extending to every act in
which the Jew engaged. The permission of the Kahal was
required to live in the community, to own land, or to borrow
money from non-Jews, and it was the exclusive agency for col-
lecting taxes among the Jews.
92
JEWISH SELF-GOVERNMENT
Leadership and prestige in the Jewish community was based
primarily on scholarship in the Talmud and rabbinical litera-
ture, though considerations of family and wealth also entered.
Education was an inalienable right and responsibility for every
Jewish child. Friedlaender says,
The authority of the official religious leader, profoundly re-
vered though he was, was frequently assisted, equalled, and
even surpassed by the influence of the Lamden, or lay-scholar.
Perhaps one might say, employing the phrascology of Carlyle,
that Polish Jewry was a ‘heroarchy,’ a government by the Hero
who dominated the ideals and aspirations of his fellow-men,
the Hero being represented by the Man of Letters, clad in the
robe of the Polish-Jewish Lamden?
The lower classes had little influence in the selection of the
members of the Kahal, and sometimes the actions of the Kahal
were in the service of the upper classes rather than the com-
munity at large. With the massacres of 1648 the hold of the
rabbis on the community in the old tradition began to deterior-
ate. In 1676, for example, the leaders of the community found
it necessary to issue the following appeal:
Gravely have we sinned before the Lord. ‘The unrest grows
from day to day. It becomes more and more difficult to live.
Our people has no standing whatsoever among the nations. In-
deed it is a miracle that in spite of all misfortunes we are still
alive. The only thing left for us to do is to unite ourselves in
one league, held together by the spirit of strict obedience to the
commandments of God and to the precepts of our pious teach
ers and leaders?
3
THE MILIEU OF )EWISH MYSTICISM
NOTES TO CHAPTER 13
1. Israel Friedlaender, The Jews of Russia and Poland (New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915), p. 181.
2. Dubnow, Vol. I, p. 188.
14
The Sabbatian Episode
From time to time events occur in which a vast variety of
social forces come to a focal point, and the meaning and im-
plications of these events are active for centuries afterward.
The appearance of Sabbatai Zevi was such an event. The set of
events which surrounded the personality and acts of Sabbatai
Zevi, the “false Messiah,” was of the deepest moment for the
psychological and emotional patterns of the Jews in the modern
period. Sabbatai Zevi may have been psychotic, as Scholem
suggests.’ He may have been a homosexual and a confirmed
egoist as is suggested by Kastein.? The fact remains that to the
Jews of the world, he was for a time the Messiah.
The Kabbala, it will be recalled, had prophesied that the year
1648 would begin the Messianic era. It was also the year of the
great Chmielnicki pogrom. With the pre-existence among the
Jews of a strong Kabbalistic ideology, particularly of the Luri-
anic type with its intense Messianism, the suffering and the
devastation of that year were interpreted paradoxically as con-
firmation of the coming of the Messiah. The pogroms were,
presumably, the cleansing in preparation. Towards the end of
95
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
1648, Sabbatai Zevi carried out the single action which
would draw attention to him as the Messiah. Rising in the
synagogue, he uttered the mystical full name of God. Pre-
sumably only the Messiah would have so dared.
Sabbatai Zevi was a descendant of the Spanish Jews who had
been expelled in 1492. He lived in the Jewish community of
Smyrna in Turkey. Evidently, he was talented enough to have
been given the title Chakam when he was still quite young.
By the time he was eighteen he was teaching Kabbala to groups
of young men and was given a certain amount of recognition
for his evident profundity and knowledge. He had immersed
himself in the study of Kabbala and manifested an extraordi-
nary imagination in providing interpretations along Kabbalistic
lines. From the very beginning of his career the charismatic
features of his personality were evident. The possibility of some
sexual aberration in him is evidenced by the fact that he suf-
fered two marriage annulments because of his inability or lack
of desire to engage in sexual consummation of the marriages.
His third wife, Sarah, was a prostitute who traveled about the
world in search of the Messiah, whose bride she had declared
herself destined to be. Although Jewish, she had been raised in
a Christian convent. She openly declared that since she could
not marry until she had been received by the Messiah, God had
authorized her to satisfy her passions as she could until the
Messiah arrived. Sabbatai Zevi married her after she had thus
presented herself to him, and presumably she continued to
have sexual relations after the marriage with various of his
youthful followers.’
Following his utterance of God's name in the synagogue, a
6
‘THE SABBATIAN EPISODE
ban was pronounced against Sabbatai Zevi by the rabbis of
Smyrna. The ban was partly motivated by his large popular-
ity among the lower classes and the fact that his presence
seemed to lead them to acts of insubordination. He left
Smyrna and traveled very widely: Constantinople, Salonika,
Cairo, Gaza, Aleppo, and Jerusalem. He struck poses of var-
ious kinds which were consistent with his conception of him-
self as the Messiah. In Salonika he requested that his marriage
with the Torah be celebrated. In Constantinople he carried a
fish in a baby basket and indicated that the redemption would
come under the zodiacal sign of Pisces. Wherever he went his
charismatic personality attracted people and convinced them
that he was indeed the Messiah.
In the years from 1648 to 1665 various rumors and legends
grew up around his personality. When he returned to Smyrna
in 1665, he was received by large numbers of people with great
demonstration. Masses fell into religious ecstasies. By and
large, the Jews of Smyrna were now ready to receive him as
the Messiah. During the Chmielnicki episode many Jews had
surrendered to the Tartars to avoid falling prey to the Cossacks.
The Tartars had sold them for ransom to the Turkish Jews.
Kabbalism had always had its adherents in Turkey. But now,
news of their coreligionists in Poland caused a swelling of the
Messianic mood among them. The Jews in the diaspora had
always maintained an amazing homogeneity of spirit and cul-
ture, Communications of some kind were always kept up.
Thus news of Sabbatai Zevi and the spirit generated by him
traveled through Europe as a fire across a plain. Since the year
1648 had failed to produce the redemption, Sabbatai Zevi
7
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
placed his faith on another year which, paradoxically, had a
source quite different from Jewish Kabbala. Sabbatai Zevi had
heard from his father, who was an agent for an English firm,
that some Christian calculation, based on the Book of Revela-
tion, had assigned 1666 as the beginning of the Millennium.
The year 1666 was now the redemption year.
The Jews of Poland responded with great hope, especially
after the great persecutions to which they had been subjected.
‘The Jews—says the contemporary Ukrainian writer Galatovski
—triumphed. Some abandoned their houses and property, re-
fusing to do any work and claiming that the Messiah would
soon arrive and carry them on a cloud to Jerusalem. Others
fasted for days, denying food even to their little ones, and dur-
ing that severe winter bathed in ice-holes, at the same time
reciting a recently-composed prayer. Fainthearted and desti-
tute Christians, hearing the stories of the miracles performed
by the false Messiah and beholding the boundless arrogance of
the Jews, began to doubt Christ.*
Sabbatai Zevi was to begin his work of redemption by de-
throning the Sultan of Turkey, who at that time ruled over
the Holy Land. Two days before the beginning of the year
1666 he departed for Constantinople where he was to do his
Messianic work. On his arrival there he was imprisoned and
then sent to the fortress of Abydos in Gallipoli. But the
strength of his support was so great that the prison was trans-
formed into a royal residence to which Jews from all over the
world flocked bearing gifts. He had become the spiritual
leader of hundreds of thousands of people.
The Turks struck on a plan, suggested, interestingly enough,
by a Jewish advisor to the Sultan, to make the Sabbatian move-
8
THE SABBATIAN EPISODE
ment ineffective. They confronted Sabbatai Zevi with the op-
tion of death or public conversion to Islam. He was told he
could go through the motions of conversion as a pretense, but
the action must be public. In November 1666, towards the end
of the year for which the redemption was scheduled, Sabbatai
Zevi became a Moslem in full pomp and ceremony. He was
given a Moslem name, Mchmet Effendi, and appointed a
chamberlain to the Sultan with a handsome salary.
The immensity of this spiritual upheaval, which lasted from
1665 to 1666, cannot be overestimated. It manifested itself in
the most extreme forms of penance. The Messiah was about
to arrive and one had to be ready to receive him. The people
were overcome with emotion. The long-awaited redemption
was about to come. What had been a hope and a dream was
about to become a reality. The proof that the thousands of
years of suffering which the Jews had experienced had not
been in vain was soon to be revealed.*
Sabbatianism did not pass away with the conversion of Sab-
batai Zevi, however. Among some it led to a kind of spiritual
nausea that persisted for centuries, based on the sense of
having been trifled with and betrayed. Other groups followed
the lead of Sabbatai Zevi and became Moslems. Large num-
bers of Jews sought the traditional safety of orthodox Juda-
ism, redoubling their efforts to satisfy every demand to the
last letter in the rabbinic mood. But most important, it repre-
sented a turn of the mystical impulse from an esoteric
study to a large scale movement, with important polit-
ical, social, and economic consequences. There is little doubt
but that it was revolutionary, that it made cracks in the old
99
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
system of rabbinical rule, and that the disruption which was
experienced had to be countered by the Jewish community for
centuries afterward. According to Scholem, Sabbatianism was
largely responsible for the creation of the atmosphere which
eventually led to the Jewish reform movement in the nineteenth
century.”
Sabbatianism continued to propagate itself as a sect in spite of
strenuous efforts to blot it out. The orthodox rabbis persecuted
the Sabbatians and invoked the herem (excommunication)
against them. Groups of Jews clung to the idea that Sab-
batai Zevi was the Messiah and continued to worship him. A
Lithuanian Jew by the name of Zadok prophesied that 1695
would be the date of the coming of the Messiah. A Kabbalist,
Hayim Malakh, preached that Sabbatai Zevi was really the
Messiah, but as with Moses who kept the Jews from entering
the Holy Land for forty years, forty years would have to elapse
between 1666 and 1706 before the redemption would come. In
1700 Hayim Malakh together with Judah Hasid led a trek of
about 1300 people to the Holy Land to be ready for the ap-
pearance of the Messiah in 1706. About a thousand survived
the arduous journey. In their disillusioned wait, some became
Christians, some Moslems, some returned to Poland to spread
fantastic mystical tales, while others stayed and developed
strange rites among which, it is alleged, was a dance about a
wooden image of Sabbatai Zevi.
Sabbatianism presented the first translation of Kabbalistic
doctrines into a major social movement. Its failure produced
a deep distrust of Messianism, and profound shame. With em-
inent conscientiousness all forms of Sabbatian literature and
100
THE SABBATIAN EPISODE
Sabbatian associations were destroyed. It became characteristic
to say that the movement had been only a minor one, and
that only a small number of people were involved. It also be-
came characteristic to overlook the degree to which Sabbatian-
ism had taken hold even among the most orthodox. People
who had descended from Sabbatian families took pains to con-
ceal this fact."
Scholem advances an interesting hypothesis which is partic-
ularly relevant to our interest in Freud. Scholem holds that
Sabbatianism, encountering the emancipation of the Jews in
the nineteenth century, passes into a rationalism which tends to
conceal its Sabbatian origins.® After the French Revolution,
it was the Sabbatian groups still within the Jewish fold that
fostered the movements toward reform, liberalism, and the en-
lightenment.” Sabbatianism articulated with rationalism in
several ways. For one thing, although Sabbatianism had its
own collection of myths, it was opposed to the myths of ortho-
doxy. For another, the Sabbatians held to a doctrine of the
necessity of the descent into evil in order to attain spiritual
liberation, a doctrine which was to be endowed with specific
sexual reference by the Frankists, discussed below. The “holi-
ness” of participating in all things, evil or non-evil, already
contains a harbinger of the more enlightened view of pursuing
truth no matter where it might lead, with full confidence that
“truth” must lead to good. But perhaps most important is the
fact that Sabbatianism, as a form of mysticism, shares with
rationalism the conviction that the world of reality, all reality,
may be apprehended by, and encompassed in, thought. And
101
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
as for our relating this to Freud, Sabbatianism encouraged con-
cern with the forbidden areas of human experience.
In such a movement toward the world of Western civiliza-
tion, Sabbatianism lent itself as a rationalization of apostasy.
Although the failure of a Messianic prediction may have the
effect of disillusionment, it may also act paradoxically to make
the original conviction even stronger. This is what took place
in the instance of Sabbatianism.
One of the more important supports to Sabbatianism came
from the Marrano Jews who had migrated from Spain into
other parts of Europe. During the great persecution of the
Spanish Jews in the fifteenth century, many permitted them-
selves to be baptized, behaving outwardly as Christians. In
secret, they managed to maintain their Jewish identity and
some of the Jewish practices. It is a phenomenal fact that they
were able to work out a system of religious duplicity which
could be maintained for generations. In the seventeenth cen-
tury many of these Jews fled from Spain to other parts of Eu-
rope and quickly reasserted their Judaism. Nevertheless, guilt
feeling over their apostasy was still very strong, and this made
the figure of Sabbatai Zevi extremely attractive, especially and
paradoxically because of his apostasy.
The fact that the Messiah should have been an apostate
served to reinforce the Marrano acceptance of him. They
themselves had been apostates and suffered guilt because of it.
The image of a Messiah who had, like themselves, been forced
into the violation of the critical commandment not to worship
strange gods, served the function of relieving them from their
deep sense of guilt. Scholem believes that this psychological
102
THE SABBATIAN EPISODE
condition was one of the important factors associated with the
disintegration of the ghetto.’®
It should be evident that the movement of the Jew from the
world of the ghetto to the larger world of Western civilization
cannot be conceived of as a simple instance of cultural diffu-
sion. The usual idea is that the Jews migrated into Western
civilization at large, the children were sent to Western schools,
and thus the larger culture simply placed its stamp on them.
Sometimes, in discussions of this kind, it is added that the
Jews had a long tradition of scholarship, and they transferred
their attitudes toward the Torah to secular studies. This view,
though not in itself false, is extremely oversimplified. It would
be more correct to say that Western enlightenment was seized
upon by the Jews as an ally to one party of the desperate strug-
gle within Judaism between Sabbatianism and orthodoxy. The
entrance of the Jews into Western civilization is complex and
dynamic, and the motives must be sought among the many
strands of history, and particularly in the religious life of the
participants.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 14
1. Scholem, p. 290.
2. J. Kastein, History and Destiny of the Jew’, trans. H. Paterson
(New York: Viking Press, 1933), pp. 334-335
3. J. Kastein, The Messiah of Ismir: Sabatai Zevi, trans. H. Pat-
erson (New York: Viking Press, 1931), p. 117.
4- Dubnow, I, p. 205.
5. CE. the fictionized account of the events in one Jewish village:
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Satan in Goray, trans. Jacob Sloan
(New York: Noonday Press, 1955).
103
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
6. Scholem, p. 299.
7. Scholem, pp. 300-30%.
8. Scholem, p. 301.
9. Scholem, p. 304.
10. Scholem, pp. 309-310.
104
15
The Frankist Episode
It is one of the more important characteristics of psycho-
analysis that it views evil as a distortion of love. This paradox-
ical identification of good with evil pervades all of Freud’s
writings so that their classical polarity is virtually obliterated.
In order to appreciate the historical antecedents of this as-
pect of Freud, we turn to a development which took place
within the Sabbatian movement under the leadership of Jacob
Frank, and the doctrines which came into prominence with
it, in particular, the doctrine of the Holiness of Sin.
Jacob Frank was born in 1726 in Korolovka on the frontiers
of Podolia and Wallachia. His father was a Sabbatian who
had been expelled from the community where he had been a
rabbi or a preacher. He was raised in an atmosphere filled with
the Sabbatian ideas, fancies, and superstitions. Although he
was a man of little learning, an am-Aaoretz, an ignoramus, as
far as rabbinic studies were concerned, he evidently spent a
considerable amount of time dipping into the Kabbalistic liter-
ature, particularly the Zohar. He was gifted with great phys-
ical strength and a rich fantasy.
105
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
‘The tales which have come down to us indicate that he was
what we would today call a psychopathic personality, a person
without any strong superego formation. He wandered about
as an itinerant salesman, preaching Kabbala, posing as a healer,
and ministering mystical and medical aid. He is said to have
engaged in highway robbery with his followers, to have cut up
the parchment of a Torah for footgear for his friends, and to
have stolen a shofar from a synagogue, which he taught a
group of Gentile boys to blow. He peddled silks and trinkets
to the harems of the Turkish pashas and boasted of having
intimate relations with the Turkish women.*
He regarded himself as the incarnation of Sabbatai Zevi, and
restimulated the Sabbatian movement. In 1755 Frank appeared
in Podolia and reorganized and reawakened the disintegrating
Sabbatian groups. In his new Sabbatian doctrine he asserted
the idea of the Holy Trinity. He distinguished between God
as having become incarnate in Sabbatai Zevi, and a female
counterpart, the Shekinah ? or Matronita, and assigned the role
of Messiah to himself. He cast aside the Talmudic injunctions
and declared that only the Zohar was sacred. The idea of a
male-female God became the occasion for sexual religious prac-
tices. The Law, he declared, was dead. The yoke of the old
Torah had been broken. The yoke of the Law was valid only
for a world which was not yet redeemed, to which the Messiah
had not yet come. The new redemption, and the revelation
that came with it, were such that everything, including evil,
was now sanctified.
As Scholem puts it in his general characterization of Jewish
mysticism,
106
THE FRANKIST EPISODE
+ +.the mystic does not even recoil before the inference that in
a higher sense there is a root of evil even in God. ... Every
attribute [of the Divine realm] represents a given stage, in-
cluding the attribute of severity and stern judgment, which
mystical speculation has connected with the source of evil in
God?
The doctrine of evil was given support by the thesis that the
Holy Sparks had been scattered, and it was necessary for men
to hand themselves into sin in order to regather them. The
idea of the Holy Sin became prominent. Through sin, salva-
tion would come. From the great sinning would emerge a
world in which there would no longer be sin. Frank had de-
clared, “I have come to rid the world of all the laws and stat-
utes which have been in existence hitherto.”
The doctrine is expressed by Buber with respect to the
Messiah:
. «the conception of the Messiah as he who must enter com-
pletely into the “Klipah,” the daemonic power of the shells,
that he may liberate the holiness there held fast, and who in
doing thus fulfills the purpose of the exile of Israel, and re-
deems Israel and the world in one. But even that is not enough.
The holy sin becomes a pattern, men must hurl themselves into
sin in order to tear from it the holy sparks; and soon there is
no sin any longer, with the fulfilment of the meaning of the
new, messianic acon the yoke of the old Torah has been broken;
it was only valid for the unredeemed world, and now the new
revelation has come; the revelation which allows all and sanc-
tifies all is here
Sexuality as the locus for the expression of personal freedom
has, of course, deep roots. In the Zohar the sexual metaphor
is used very freely. The orthodox tradition sharply restricted
107
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
sexual expression, perhaps, as has been suggested by some writ-
ers,* as a result of the effort of the Jews to dissociate themselves
from religious practices involving sexual rites. The sexual is
also a temptation which is ever-present and sometimes press-
ingly so; and it offers the most accessible sins. Perhaps the
most important reason for the sexual excesses among the
Frankists is to be found in the contribution of Freud himself,
that sexuality is at the core of human personality.
Jacob Frank followed the lead of Sabbatai Zevi into the
paradox of apostasy. The movement grew into a violent polit-
ical threat to the orthodox theocracy, and measures and coun-
termeasures were taken by both sides. The Frankists were
placed under the Aerem (excommunication), and the Frankists
replied by an attack upon the Talmud, arguing that it was false
and harmful. The Frankists even charged that the Talmud
made the use of Christian blood obligatory, and they lent tes-
timony that the Jews engaged in ritual murder. The climax
of Frank's career came when he and all of his followers were
converted to Catholicism with great pomp and ceremony. The
members of the Polish nobility acted as sponsors, and the newly
baptized Jews assumed their family names. Numbers of them
thus came into the Polish nobility. Jacob Frank himself had
King Augustus III as his godfather and became a Catholic in
the presence of the royal family and the court dignitaries in
November 1759, less than one hundred years after the apostasy
CE eg. A.C. Kinsey et al, Sexual Behacror in the Human Female (Phila-
delphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1953). “Many of the Talmudic condemnations were
based on the fact that such [sexually perverse] activities represented the way of
the Canaanite, the way of the Chaldean, the way of the pagan, and they were orig-
inally condemned as a form of idolatry rather than sexual crime"—p. 482.
108
THE FRANKIST EPISODE
of Sabbatai Zevi and less than one hundred years before the
birth of Sigmund Freud. It is of interest that Frank took
Joseph as his baptismal name. The Messianic associations of
the name Joseph we will discuss later when we deal with
Freud and the significance of this name to him.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 15
1. G. Bader, Dreisig doros Yiddin in Polin (Thirty generations
of the Jews in Poland] (New York: Oriom Press, 1927), pp.
351 ff.
. CE. pp. 273 ff, below.
Scholem, p. 13.
Martin Buber, Hasidism (New York: Philosophical Library),
pp. 78.
5. CE. pp. 171, and footnote on p. 153, below.
Sep
16
Chassidism
In Chassidism we find the dialectical synthesis of Sabbatian-
ism and rabbinic Judaism. It integrated the deep emotional
quickening of the Sabbatian movement with the law and dis-
cipline of orthodoxy. The founder of Chassidism was Israel
Baal Shem Tov, sometimes referred to as the Baal Shem Tov
(the good Master of the Name [of God]), or the Baal Shem,
or simply Besht, an abbreviation based on the first letters of
Baal, Shem, and Tov.
The Baal Shem Tov was born about 1700—like Jacob Frank,
on the border between Podolia and Wallachia. The legends
of his birth contain the usual involvements. In one version,"
his parents are an old lonely couple who are attacked by rob-
bers. Since they have no money or possessions, the robbers
take them captive. The old woman escapes but Reb Elieser,
the Baal Shem Tov’s father, is sold as a slave in a faraway
country. There the story seems to take off from the Biblical
Joseph story. He lives an inordinately righteous life, pleases
his master greatly, and wins certain privileges such as the op-
portunity to observe the Sabbath. He soon finds his way into
110
(CHASSIDISM.
the service of the king, is made the chief commander of the
king’s armies, and is provided with a wife by the king. The
woman whom he thus marries is passionately in love with him,
but he remains pure and stays aloof. She becomes ill with her
unrequited love. He finally takes her into his confidence and
tells her that he is really a Jew. Upon discovering this, she is
almost maddened by anguish at the thought that her relation-
ship with him will never be consummated. Nevertheless, her
love for him overpowers everything and she helps him to re-
turn. On the way home he is met by Elijah the prophet, who
tells him that he will have a son who will enlighten the eyes
of the congregation of Israel. He returns to his home and finds
his old wife. Then, reminiscent of the Abraham and Sarah
story, when they are both almost a hundred years old, their
son Isracl, the Baal Shem Toy, is born.
Israel soon becomes an orphan. The Jewish community
sends him to cheder, the Jewish school, to study. But he would
rather play truant. He spends his time wandering about in the
woods lost in thought. When he is grown, he works in seem-
ingly desultory fashion as a synagogue beadle and as a behel-
fer, an assistant at the school for the children. To the world
he presents the picture of an unambitious, lazy, dull, and harm-
less kind of person. In the dead of night, however, when
everyone else is asleep, he arises to pray and read Kabbalistic
books.
For years, the Baal Shem Tov is in all eyes simply a boorish,
uneducated, am-haoretz, an ignoramus. We find him engaging
in miscellaneous occupations. Now he is an operator of an
inn, now he digs clay in the mountains, etc.
peed
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
In his thirty-sixth year, which is the mystical number, the
Baal Shem Toy throws off the shabby cloak in which he has
wandered up to that time and reveals himself to the world in
all his splendor.
He is a Baal Shem, master of the Name (of God), perform-
ing miracles through its uses. The practice of healing by the
appropriate use of the name of God had become fairly wide-
spread. Somewhere around the year 1700 the class of Baale’
Shem wonder workers became relatively numerous. They are
healers, using quack remedies, medicines, amulets, and the
name of God. They are in serious competition with physi-
cians, and hostility between the two groups prevails. They use
whatever medical knowledge they can acquire besides the Kab-
balistic tools. The following is a prayer of one of these Masters
of the Name:
Preserve me from enmity and quarrels; and may envy between
me and others disappear. Let, on the contrary, friendship,
peace and harmony prevail between me and the physicians, . . .
that I may be respected in their opinion, . . . that they may not
speak evil of me or of my actions.”
Israel Baal Shem Tov lives a life of great personal piety and
saintliness. He performs miracles of healing and telepathy,
and foretells the future. He opens the Zohar at random and
on the basis of what he sees there utters truths and advice that
fill the listeners with awe and ecstasy. Chassidim* gather
around him. The masses fall in love with him and his fame
spreads far and wide.
A new synthesis between rabbinism and mysticism begins
* As the Chassidic followers are called.
112
CHASSIDISM.
to emerge. The rabbinic forms are accepted, but are infused
with a glorified emotionality. If in his acts the individual is
completely pious, he can study Kabbala, protected, as it were,
from the commission of outrage by the actual purity and piety
of his real life. Thus, Kabbala would be characteristically de-
layed until the man had reached maturity, usually some time
after his thirtieth birthday. For a young person to study Kab-
bala was regarded as dangerous and treacherous. He might
die, and his soul might then wander homelessly in an
eternal galuth, exile Particularly was it desirable that the
passions be somewhat abated before the study of Kabbala was
undertaken, because of its emotionally releasing content.
The Baal Shem Tov tempered the extravagances of the Sab-
batians but yet achieved a loosening of the severe and rigid
bonds imposed by the rabbinic stream of thought in Judaism.
He achieved what is perhaps one of the profoundest revolu-
tions in the history of Judaism. Chassidism was, in a sense, a
new form of Judaism. It did not move into apostasy, as had
Sabbatai Zevi and Jacob Frank. Yet it overhauled Jewish
thought and life so as to make it possible for the Jews to catch
up with the great developments which were taking place in
the rest of the world.
According to Waxman, the Modern Period in Jewish history
can be regarded as being about two hundred and fifty years
behind the development of the analogous modern period in
+ This is the idea of the Dybbuk, which has received magnificent dramatic ren-
dering in S. Ansky, The Dybbuk: A Play mm Four Acts, trans. H. G. Alsberg and
W. Katzin (New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 1926). The Dybbuk, as a spirit
that wanders and can find no home anywhere, is very likely a projection of the
general homeless fecling of the diaspora Jew. Cf. Freud's dream after seeing Herzl's
Das newe Ghetto, discussed on pp. 173 ff.
113
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
general history.” In a sense, then, the Jews of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries entering the main stream of Western
civilization had to transcend a relatively medieval culture.
Chassidism served as a religious bridge between medievalism
and modern times in the same way that the Haskalah * served
asa cultural bridge between the Jews and other peoples of the
world.
Chassidism provided historical continuity for the mystical
movement within Judaism from the middle of the eighteenth
century to the very end of the nineteenth century. The early
Sabbatianism which became transformed into the Jewish re-
form movement and liberalism * opened the way for carly pas-
sage of Jews from the ghetto and shtetl world into the wider
currents of Western civilization. This early passage was made,
following our metaphor, without baggage. It was achieved
by a rapid and dramatic severance of Jews from their ancient
traditions and from their Jewish identification. With Chas-
sidism the passage was slower and more even and permitted
integration of the Jewish tradition with Western civilization.
Chassidism emphasized the pleasurable aspects of life, albeit
in a religious context. Joy in life was regarded as an ultimate
blessing. Chassidism thawed the medieval Jewish mind by
‘opening new possibilities for happiness and satisfaction as con-
trasted with the old resignation and deprivation. Thus the
Baal Shem Tov violated the sensibilities of the community by
encouraging school children to sing on the way to school. It
is perhaps not a mere coincidence that Freud’s surname may
be translated as Simchah, a not uncommon Jewish name which
* The Jewish enlightenment.
114
(CHASSIDISM
means “joy.” Chassidism runs a close parallel to Romanticism
as a way of bringing medieval Man into the modern world.
As legend depicts, the Baal Shem Tov seeks freedom from the
restrictions of the community and wanders about the woods
and fields in a Rousseauan fashion. The Reformation, by sepa-
rating man from the central medieval institution, the Catholic
Church, led to severe self-discipline. Personal freedom found
its ideological reaffirmation eventually in Romanticism, which
involved the same idealization of sexual expressiveness as the
Jewish mystical movements.
The Chassidic concept of personal freedom is illustrated in
the following parable, presumably told by the Baal Shem Tov:
Once there was a great king. Not wanting to be disturbed,
the king built for himself a great magical palace filled with
many misleading magical illusions. At the entrances the king
placed pots of gold, silver, and precious stones to make the
people tarry there and not try to enter. But one of the king’s
ministers, who felt that it was wrong that the king should so
deny himself to his people, could no longer contain the secret
within himself, and he addressed the people: “You cannot enter
only because you are blinded by the king’s magic. Walk
straight through and be not afraid. The walls are only magical
illusions. If you would but decide to enter there is nothing that
can prevent you from coming into His Presence.”
Freud, we believe, participated in the historical continuity
provided by Chassidism. However, the Sabbatian elements
were still present in Chassidism, even if in latent form. The
encounter of the Jews with Western civilization tended to re-
arouse these dim Sabbatian elements. As we will sce, Freud
115
THE MILIEU OF JEWISH MYSTICISM
had strong heretical tendencies, yet he would not relinquish
his self-identification as a Jew. His quarrel with religion was
with the older orthodox forms of Judaism. He felt he could
still maintain his Jewish identity, despite the violation of or-
thodoxy.
We will close this section with two quotations from modern
thinkers on the significance of mysticism. Sperling, to whom
we are indebted for his part in the translation of the Zohar,
writes:
«+ the law regulates life, and keeps it in proper balance. Mys-
ticism, on the other hand, is a free lance, it possesses inordinate
inquisitiveness; the bare and natural sense of the scriptural text
does not suffice it; it delves and digs and pierces into the inner
and most hidden sense. The Law, indeed, gains thereby in
reverence and awe, since it is seen to be founded not upon sim-
ple human considerations, but upon eternal verities. Neverthe-
less, the mystic is exposed to the two-fold danger of lawless
mysticism and rigid rationalism; since in the mind there is no
clear-cut division between religious meditation and philosoph-
ical speculation. The mystic, in trying tracks unbeaten and
ways untrodden, acquires a mental independence, either on the
side of pure feeling and emotion, or on that of pure reason.
In an essay entitled “The Two Centres of the Jewish Soul,”
Martin Buber, one of the outstanding modern representatives
of Jewish mysticism, writes:
My point of view with regard to this subject [the Law] di-
verges widely from that which has been handed down to us;
it is not without its basis of law, but neither is it entirely based
on law. For this reason I should neither attempt to present
tradition, nor substitute my own personal standpoint for the
information you have desired of me. Besides the problem of
116
CHASSIDISM.
the Law does not seem to belong at all to the subject with
which I have to deal. It would be a different matter were it
my duty to present to you the teaching of Judaism. For the
teaching of Judaism comes from Sinai; it is a teaching of Moses.
But the soul of Judaism was before Sinai, and there received
what it did receive; it is older than Moses; it is of the patriarchs,
a soul of Abraham, or, more truly, as it concerns the product
of a primordial age, it is a soul of Jacob. The Law joined it-
self to it, and it cannot henceforth ever again be understood
outside of it, but it itself is not of the Law. If one wants to
speak of it, one must consider all its transformations down the
ages until this day, but never forget that on all its stages, it is
still always it itself which is on its way?
NOTES TO CHAPTER 16
1. 8, H, Setzer, Reb Israel BaalShem-Tov (In Yiddish; New
York: Verlag Feierberg, 1919).
2. The Jewish Encyclopedia, Ul, p. 383. From Toledot Adam
(Zolkiev, 1720).
3. Waxman, III, p. 9.
4. Scholem, p. 304.
5. H. Sperling, “Jewish Mysticism,” in L. Simon (ed.), Aspects
of the Hebrew Genius (London: George Routledge and Sons,
1910), Chap. VI, pp. 145-176.
6. Martin Buber, Mame: Essays in Religion, trans. Greta Hort
(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1946), pp. 18-19.
17
Diprees ty Google
Part III
The Moses Theme in the Thought
of Freud
Diprees ty Google
17
The Moses of Michelangelo
Earlier in this essay, some considerations were set forth
pointing to an identification of Freud’s thought with the de-
velopments in Jewish mysticism. We have sketched some
features of Jewish history which we believe can help us to il-
luminate Freud's contributions. The line-up within Jewish
history was that of the mystical versus the orthodox, the for-
mer advancing varieties of approaches against the domination
of thought and life associated with the classical disciplined ap-
proach of the latter. We believe that viewing Freud’s works in
the light of this classical struggle increases their intelligibility.
We hope, in addition, to illuminate some of the seemingly
more bizarre aspects of Freud's productions by drawing upon
this history.
We believe that the primary key to the understanding of
Freud is contained in his concern with Moses. In his autobi-
ography Freud tells us, “My early familiarity with the Bible
story (at a time almost before I had learnt the art of reading)
had, as I recognized much later, an enduring effect upon the
direction of my interest.”* We have two essays on Moses by
121
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
Freud. One of these is “The Moses of Michelangelo,”* a dis-
cussion of Michelangelo’s famous statue, and the other the
book, Moses and Monotheism. That there may be something
especially significant in connection with these two essays is
indicated by the fact that in both instances Freud hesitated to
reyeal his identity as their author.* “The Moses of Michel-
angelo” was published anonymously. It appeared in Imago in
1914 and contained the strange editorial note which we have
previously cited.*
After writing it in the days between the Christmas of 1913
and New Year’s Day of 1914, he decided against its publica-
tion. He finally allowed it to appear, but anonymously, saying,
“Why disgrace Moses by putting my name to it? It is a joke,
but perhaps not a bad one.” He offered three reasons for pub-
lishing the essay anonymously, which, says Jones, seem rather
thin. These were that it was a joke, that he was ashamed of
its anti-Jewish character, and “Lastly because my doubt about
my conclusion is stronger than usual; it is only because of edi-
torial pressure (Rank and Sachs) that I have consented to
publish at all.” *
Jones points out that the essay was written at the time of
Freud’s deep concern with Jung's defection. Jung, as we have
seen,” was extremely important to Freud, for in Jung he saw a
bridge to the Gentile world. Jung was the only important
member of the early group of psychoanalysts whom Freud re-
garded as being able to command respect from the outside
world, in view of the fact that he was a Gentile. In “On the
History of the Psychoanalytic Movement,” which he wrote at
See p. 39, above.
122
THE MOSES OF MICHELANGELO
about the same time as “The Moses of Michelangelo,” he
writes bitterly of Jung that he “seemed ready to enter into a
friendly relationship with me and for my sake to give up cer-
tain prejudices in regard to race which he had previously per-
mitted himself.” ® It is clear that “The Moses of Michelangelo”
was written at a time when Freud was in the throes of con-
siderations regarding the lot of the Jews.
Jones is well aware of the significance of the essay. He says,
“This essay is of special interest to students of Freud’s person-
ality. The fact alone that this statue moved him more deeply
than any other of the many works of art with which he was
familiar gives his essay on it a peculiar significance.”* In it
Freud writes:
For no piece of statuary has ever made a stronger impression
‘on me than this. How often have I mounted the steep steps
of the unlovely Corso Cavour to the lonely place where the
deserted church stands, and have essayed to support the angry
scorn of the hero's glance! Sometimes I have crept cautiously
cout of the half-gloom of the interior as though I myself be-
longed to the mob upon whom his eye is turned—the mob
which can hold fast no conviction, which has neither faith nor
patience and which rejoices when it has regained its illusory
idols,
But why do I call this statue inscrutable? There is not the
slightest doubt that it represents Moses, the Law-giver of the
Jews, holding the Tables of the Ten Commandments. That
much is certain, but that is all.
Those who knew Freud were evidently aware of his deep
feeling regarding Moses. Jones says:
There is every reason to suppose that the grand figure of Moses
himself, from Freud’s early Biblical studies to the last book he
123
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
ever wrote, was one of tremendous significance to him. Did
he represent the formidable Father-Image or did Freud identify
himself with him? Apparently both, at different periods.®
And Sachs writes: :
It is as if Freud walked intuitively and unknowingly in the
footsteps of his ancestors, and followed one of the oldest Jew-
ish traditions: this is the belief that all Jews, born and unborn
alike, were present on Mount Sinai and have there taken on
themselves “the yoke of the Law.” #®
Some measure of the significance of the essay and the statue
to Freud is indicated by his letter to its Italian translator.
My feeling for this piece of work is rather like that towards a
love-child. For three lonely September weeks in 1913 1 stood
every day in the church in front of the statue, studied it, meas-
ured it, sketched it, until I captured the understanding for it
which I ventured to express in the essay only anonymously.
Only much later did I legitimatize this non-analytical child.!*
The essay itself is, in a sense, hardly the kind that one might
ordinarily expect from Freud. It is not a psychoanalytic in-
vestigation of the mind of Michelangelo, the creator of the
statue. Instead, the essay gives its attention to the statue itself
and to the Moses figure it represents. It attempts only a super-
ficial analysis of Michelangelo to determine what he may have
intended by the statue. At the close of the essay, Freud indi-
cates that he may, after all, have just been projecting. He
writes:
But what if we both [Freud and a critic, Lloyd] strayed on to
a wrong path? What if we have taken too serious and pro-
found a view of details which were nothing to the artist, de-
tails which he had introduced quite arbitrarily or for some
purely formal reasons with no hidden intention behind? What
124
‘THE MOSES OF MICHELANGELO
i we have shared the fate of so many interpreters who have
sought to see quite clearly things which the artist did not in-
tend either consciously or unconsciously? I cannot tell.!#
This is hardly the Freud who argued so cogently that no hu-
man production is whimsical or arbitrary. He does not plumb
the nature of Michelangelo's motivation. Rather, he simply
uses the statue as an occasion for the clarification of his own
problem with respect to Moses.
Freud engages in laborious analysis of the statue. He con-
cludes that the statue does not represent Moses about to rise in
anger. Instead, he argues, what is represented is restrained an-
ger, anger which will never materialize in a hostile acti
‘The figure of Moses, therefore, cannot be supposed to be spring-
ing to his feet; he must be allowed to remain as he is in sub-
lime repose like the other figures and like the proposed statue
of the Pope (which was not, however, executed by Michel-
angelo himself). But then the statue we see before us cannot be
that of a man filled with wrath, of Moses when he came down
from Mount Sinai and found his people faithless and threw
down the Holy Tables so that they were broken. And, indeed,
I can recollect my own disillusionment when, during my first
visits to the church, I used to sit down in front of the statue
in the expectation that I should now see how it would start up
on its raised foot, hurl the Tables of the Law to the ground
and let fly its wrath, Nothing of the kind happened. Instead,
the stone image became more and more transfixed, an almost
oppressively solemn calm emanated from it, and I was obliged
to realize that something was represented here that could stay
without change; that this Moses would remain sitting like this
in his wrath for ever.
The picture we get is that of Freud sitting for weeks at the
tomb of Pope Julius II in Rome gazing at the statue of Moses.
125
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
He sits in fear of the wrath of Moses, feeling this statue to be
Moses himself, about to strike at the Jews for their defection.
Slowly the image is converted into one of restrained anger.
In his initial reaction to the statue he identifies with the “mob
which can hold fast no conviction,” with those who danced
about the golden calf, who returned to pagan forms of wor-
ship when Moses was gone, and, we might add, forms of wor-
ship rekindled in the Sabbatian period. But his fear exerts
itself as the creation of a counterimage.
What we sce before us is not the inception of a violent action
but the remains of a movement that has already taken place.
In his first transport of fury, Moses desired to act, to spring
up and take vengeance and forget the Tables; but he has over-
‘come the temptation, and he will now remain scated and still
in his frozen wrath and in his pain mingled with contempt.*
In the essay Freud quotes the relevant passage from the Bi-
ble (Exodus 32:7-35). However, in doing this he leaves out
verses 21-29. These deleted passages describe how Moses ground
up the golden calf and forced the children of Israel to drink
of it, and how the sons of Levi went through the camp killing
the defectors, That Freud deletes these passages is indeed an-
other way of making his point: the punishment for defection
will not ensue. He writes:
But Michelangelo has placed a different Moses on the tomb of
the Pope, one superior to the historical or traditional Moses.
He has modified the theme of the broken Tables; he does not
let Moses break them in his wrath, but makes him be influ-
enced by the danger that they will be broken and calm that
wrath, or at any rate prevent it from becoming an act. In this
way he has added something new and more than human to the
126
THE MOSES OF MICHELANGELO
figure of Moses; so that the giant frame with its tremendous
physical power becomes only a concrete expression of the high-
est mental achievement that is possible in a man, that of strug-
gling successfully against an inward passion for the sake of a
cause to which he has devoted himself."*
Jones provides an interpretation of this essay in terms of
Freud’s positive identification with Moses. Jung had defected,
and Freud had to find a way to control the deep anger that
this defection produced in him. We would certainly agree
with Jones regarding this identification, but we believe that
its significance is hardly probed. If Freud conceives of himself
as the new Lawgiver, then the new Lawgiver must at one and
the same time be like unto Moses, the previous Lawgiver,
whose place he must preempt, and must be destructive of
Moses. The new Lawgiver must revoke the older Law. The
identification with Moses turns into its opposite, the destruc-
tion of Moses. Therefore Freud is also part of the mob, upon
whom Moses’ “eye is turned—the mob which can hold fast no
conviction, which has neither faith nor patience and which
rejoices when it has regained its illusory idols.”
Freud suggests in the essay that his view of a tempered, re-
strained Moses is perhaps a reproach against the strong-mind-
edness of Pope Julius II, who
«attempted to realize great and mighty ends, especially de-
signs on a large scale. He was a man of action and he had a
definite purpose, which was to unite Italy under the Papal su-
premacy. He desired to bring about single-handed what was
not to happen for several centuries, and then only through the
conjunction of many alien forces; and he worked alone, with
impatience, in the short span of sovereignty allowed him, and
used violent means.!®
127
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
In Moses and Monotheism, Freud characterizes Moses in much
the same way.!” The reproach against the Pope which he at-
tributes to Michelangelo may be interpreted as the reproach of
Freud against Moses also.
Moses’ most important characteristic is as the Lawgiver of
the Jews. It was Moses who imposed the “yoke of the Law”
upon the Jews. Moses is the image which embodies the whole
brunt of Jewish orthodoxy. The Talmud and the other rab-
binical writings constitute an elaboration of dicta of the Mosaic
code, which the orthodox Jew takes upon himself to guide his
life at every moment and in connection with every action. In
a word, Moses is representative of the superego, the force gen-
erated within the individual to keep him from “instinctual
gratification.” The force which maintains renunciation of in-
stinctual gratification is the fear of punishment. In the allegory
of the discussion of a statue Freud is saying that the feared
punishment will never eventuate. The superego is restrained.
The superego will withhold its wrath, and will not strike. In
this new view of Moses, Freud has turned him into a stone
image, one which will not kill those who dance around the
golden calf, those who do not accept, but violate the command-
ments upheld by the rabbinic tradition. Freud’s essay on Moses
is a symbolic Sabbatian assertion of freedom against the severe
restrictions of thought and action which had been the life
strategy of the Eastern European Jews.
Yet Freud was never quite able to extricate himself from the
Mosaic dicta. This is exemplified by the thesis which he ad-
vanced in Totem and Taboo and reaffirmed in Moses and
Monotheism, that the acquired sense of guilt is transmitted
128
‘THE MOSES OF MICHELANGELO
hereditarily. This “peculiarity” of Freud, as it has been re-
garded by many, is made clear by his involvement with the
Mosaic dicta. His supposition “that the sense of guilt for an
action has persisted for many thousands of years and has re-
mained operative in generations which can have no knowledge
of that action” * is a simple version of the Mosaic threat that
God visits “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and
upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth
generation.” * That Freud should have permitted himself to
accept an essentially bizarre hypothesis, despite his awareness
of its peculiarity, lends weight to our hypothesis that he was
consciously or unconsciously obscuring the cultural origins of
the problems with which he was coping.
‘We may summarize our addition to Jones's interpretation of
the significance of Freud's essay as follows: Moses is the sym-
bol of orthodoxy, the author of the Law, the figure responsible
for imposing its heavy yoke. In the Sabbatian tradition Freud
opposed himself to the Law. In his interpretation the excess
of the Mosaic-type Law made for neurosis and was generally
inappropriate for modern living. He was echoing the message
of Jacob Frank, who had asserted that the Law was useful
only for an unredeemed world. The devices for living adopted
earlier by the Jews, the stern and forbidding adherence to
every detail of the Law, was rendered inappropriate by the
enlightenment and the new freedom of the Western world.
Freud then goes to Rome, which has its own significance in
the tradition of Messianic Judaism,” and sits for weeks before
the imposing statue of Moses. He is filled with guilt for the
defection from orthodoxy and expects the drastic punishment
129
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
which the Mosaic dicta threaten. He identifies himself with
the mob as the object of Moses’ wrath. By a tortuous analysis
of the statue, hardly differentiating Moses from the statue, he
finds small details for making a case that Moses will not pun-
ish. He takes advantage of the fact that Moses is cast in stone,
and, paradoxically, “worships” a graven image in the cita-
del of Christianity. He paralyzes the Mosaic image, asserting
that Moses “will now remain seated and still in his frozen
wrath,” ** “that this Moses would remain sitting like this in
his wrath for ever.” *
NOTES TO CHAPTER 17
1. Freud, Autobiographical Study, p. 13-
2. Freud, Col. Papers, 1V, pp. 251-287.
3. CE. his reluctance to publish Totem and Taboo, p. 295, below.
4: C£. the discussion of this essay, Jones, Il, pp. 363-367.
5. Cf. p. 58, above.
6. Freud, Col. Papers, I, p. 329-
7- Jones, II, pp. 363-364.
8. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, 259-260.
9. Jones, II, 364-365.
10. Sachs, p. 152.
11. Jones, I, p. 367.
12. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 286.
13. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 269.
14. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 279.
15. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 283.
16. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 284.
17. Cf. pp. 154-155, below.
18. Freud, Totem and Taboo, trans. James Strachey (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950), p. 158.
350.
THE MOSES OF MICHELANGELO
19. Exodus 34:7.
20. Cf. pp. 173 ff. below
au. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 279.
22. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 269.
131
18
Some Relevant Biographical Items
We might at this point pause briefly to consider two items
in Freud’s biography which seems to be relevant here as sub-
stantiation of our thesis concerning Freud's Sabbatian tenden-
cies. There is, of course, a sense in which these items are trifles
in the life of an eminently great man. And yet in view of what
Freud has taught us about the significance of trifles, we are
pressed to bring them to bear in our analysis for the weight
that they lend to the argument.
The first of these has to do with the nature of Freud’s inter-
est in law. In the Jewish tradition, law and orthodoxy were
practically identical. It is not an exaggeration to say that the
rabbi was essentially a teacher of Jewish law and a judge.
Leadership in the Jewish community was based primarily on
the person’s knowledge and wisdom with respect to law. The
rabbi governed the community; he rendered decisions in con-
nection with civil disputes; he was consulted in all matters
where there was a question of whether a given act was or was
not permitted according to the law.
We know that Freud’s own initial intellectual interest was
132
SOME RELEVANT BIOGRAPHICAL ITEMS
law.* If he had followed this initial pursuit, one could regard
him as having fulfilled, in secular form, the traditional young
Jewish scholar’s quest of becoming a rabbi in the orthodox
community.t
Jones relates an event in Freud's life which cannot, perhaps,
be regarded as trivial in this connection. Jones tells us, “It is
a curious fact that the only examination in his life at which
he failed was in medical jurisprudence,” upon which Jones
comments that “deep impulses were driving him in another
direction.” * What Jones calls a “curious fact” is quite com-
prehensible if we accept the idea that Freud was manifesting
in his abandonment of legal interests and failure in medical
jurisprudence his impulses against orthodox Judaism with its
strong legalistic orientation.
It might be pointed out, parenthetically, that this attitude
concerning law was not unique with Freud among the young
Jewish men in Vienna. The fact that Freud had discovered
an acceptable secular way of reacting to the orthodox Jewish
tradition was probably one of the reasons he was able to find
adherents among the Jews of Vienna. We see the same phe-
nomenon in Hanns Sachs, who describes himself before he had
read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams as “a young man who
was supposedly studying law but not living up to the supposi-
"Freud, Autobiographical Study, p. 13. It is of interest, in terms of our thesis,
that he tells us this immediately after he tells us of the effect of the Bible on him:
“My early familiarity with the Bible story (at a time almost before I had learnt the
art of reading) had, as I recognized much later, an enduring effect upon the di-
rection of my interest. Under the influence of a school friendship with a boy
rather my senior who grew up to be a well-known politician I developed a wish
to study law like him and to engage in social activities” (pp. 13-14).
the commonly expressed wish of the Jewish mother that her son might be-
come “a doctor or a lawyer” a reflection uf the traditional roles of healer and rabbi?
133
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
tion—a type common enough among the middle class in
Vienna at the turn of the century.”*
‘The sccond item of note in this connection is Freud’s pen-
chant for collecting idols. The commandment reads:
Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make
unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any
thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down
unto them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jeal-
ous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me;
and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them
that love Me and keep My commandments®
An enlightened person in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies could hardly violate this commandment in its literal
sense. We have seen, however, that the violation of this com-
mandment was characteristic of the Sabbatians, who went so
far as to worship a wooden image of Sabbatai Zevi. Opposition
to a god who can be identified with an actual thing was basic
to the Jewish religion associated with the image of Moses.
Freud's deep emotional involvement with God in the statue of
Moses is itself a sign of his tendency to violate the command-
ment, and the fact that it took place in a Catholic Church only
adds to the irony.
In his rooms Freud surrounded himself with every heathen
god he could find. As if in sheer spite * he pursued “idols”
and their associated trappings with a deep fascination. His
study and consulting room bulged with them. Sachs tells of
the carly meetings at Freud’s quarters, how “under the silent
*A common Yiddish expression is meshamed uf telochos, “an apostate out of
134
SOME RELEVANT “BIOGRAPHICAL ITEMS
stare of idols and animal-shaped gods, we listened to some new
article by Freud or read and discussed our own products or
just talked about things that interested us.” * He tells us how
“Freud had the habit of taking one or another piece of his
collection from its place, and of examining it by sight and
touch while he was talking.”* In a letter to Fliess, Freud
writes, “The ancient gods still exist, for I have bought one or
two lately, among them a stone Janus, who looks down on me
with his two faces in very superior fashion”; * and a few days
later he writes, “My grubby old gods, of whom you think so
little, take part in my work as paper-weights.”* Susan Bern-
feld describes his collection:
First he had chosen some bronze statuettes and terra cotta fig-
urines from Rome and Greece, with an occasional Egyptian
piece. ... The little statues found a place on his desk, until
his treatment room and the adjoining library were filled with
the large collection. Glass cases held innumerable vases, bowls
and statuettes from Pompeian and Etruscan tombs, and irides-
cent glasses, occhiales and earthen lamps from Rome. The per-
manently open doors to the library were flanked by Egyptian
stone reliefs that stood on the floor. On the small table that was
before his eyes when he sat in the large chair behind the couch
was the Chinese jade bowl that he had bought in America, at
Tiffany's in 1909. On one wall hung the portrait of an Egyp-
tian female mummy—'with a nice Jewish face,’ as Freud occa-
sionally commented. Over the couch hung an etching of the
great temple of Karnak, and next to it a plaster copy of the
marble relief of Gradiva, on the ledge of which he kept for
many years a bundle of dry papyrus leaves.*
Susan Bernfeld interprets this interest of Freud as follows:
“He fell in love with archaeology and therefore gained the
135
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
strength to live in mental security without religion.”* This
interpretation can be given further specification: The hostility
which he had towards religion was not to religion as such. It
has, for example, been quite appropriately argued that Freud's
whole psychoanalytic contribution shares many of the char-
acteristics which we generally subsume under the rubric of
religion. Rather, what Freud opposes is religion in the Mosaic
tradition, most fully expressed in Jewish orthodoxy. His resist-
ance to law and his tendency towards the violation of the com-
mandment against idolatry, as manifested in his jocular yet
passionate “having of other gods before” the Mosaic God, ex-
pressed his rebellion against orthodox Jewish religion, The
“grubby old gods” lessened Moses’ magic power.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 18
1. Jones, I, p. 27.
2. Sachs, p. 3.
3- Exodus, 20:37. The version is that of The Holy Scripture,
According to the Masoretic Text (Philadelphia: The Jewish
Publication Society of America, 2 vols, 1955).
Sachs, p. 82.
Sachs, pp. tor-102.
Freud, Origins, p. 286.
Freud, Origins, p. 288.
Susan C. Bernfeld, pp. 109-110,
Susan C. Bernfeld, p. 123.
Ser aye
136
19
Moses and Monotheism—A Book of
Double Content
We turn now to what we consider Freud’s most revelatory
work with respect to our hypothesis. This is his book, Moses
and Monotheism. It was the last book Freud wrote and, in
our opinion, expresses some of his deepest impulses, impulses
which were operative throughout his life. The book is the only
one written by Freud which directs itself avowedly to the prob-
lem of Judaism and the meaning of being Jewish.
Let us first consider this book, so to speak, on the face of it.
It is, by any of the usual criteria used to evaluate books, in-
credibly bad. Some of the followers of Freud have tended to
dismiss it; and by some, it is regarded as the product of senility,
with the suggestion, perhaps, that respect to Freud’s genius is
best paid by ignoring it. If this book had not come from the
hand of Sigmund Freud, one would seriously doubt whether
it would ever have seen the light of day. Morris Raphael
Cohen, who was, we know, more interested in Talmud than
the Jewish mystical currents, wrote of it:
137
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
If anyone else had written this book, we should have been jus-
tified in dismissing it as the work of an opinionated crank who
is more interested in his tortuous speculation than in getting at
the verifiable facts. Freud, however, is the discoverer of an
extensively used method of mental therapeutics and the in-
ventor of what is claimed to be the science of psychoanalysis,
which has swept over our popular literature and the conversa-
tion of those who call themselves sophisticated. A very large
number thus regard him as the infallible source of profound
and even scientific truth. Morever, he not only possesses an
extraordinary gift for making the most fanciful hypotheses
seem plausible, but admits the inadequacy of the evidence to
support his conclusion. Nevertheless, he docs claim certainty
for propositions for which there is no evidence at all—for in-
stance, that Moses introduced circumcision. He unhesitatingly
dismisses the identification of the Habiru of the Amarna tab-
lets with the Hebrew invaders of Palestine and also waves aside
the sole known Egyptian reference to Israel, because they do
not fit into his chronologic scheme. He is certain that the
Priestly Code did not adopt any new tendencies, that religion
is a neurosis and only thus can it be understood, that all chil-
dren and primitive people are neurotic, and (contrary to all
experience) that tradition is less subject to distortion in time
than a written text. While, therefore, no careful student of the
subject is likely to be misled by a work which has so little
sound foundation, the general public is likely to get the im-
pression that a new and substantial contribution to the under-
standing of Jewish history has been made on the basis of
psychoanalysis?
The evidence which Freud cites for his assertions are dubious
and do not support his conclusions. His argument, for exam-
ple, that Moses was an Egyptian and not a Jew resides in part
on dubious etymological evidence concerning Moses’ name,
which Freud himself does not consider decisive, and on com-
138
MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
parison between the Moses legend and other legends. Freud
is actually his own most severe critic on the idea that Moses
was an Egyptian. After making the assertion he says,
We have seen that the first argument, that of his name, has not
been considered decisive. We have to be prepared for the new
reasoning—the analysis of the exposure myth—not faring any
better. The objection is likely to be that the circumstances of
the origin and transformation of legends are too obscure to
allow of such a conclusion as the preceding one, and that all
efforts to extract the kernel of historical truth must be doomed
to failure in the face of the incoherence and contradictions
clustering around the heroic person of Moses and the unmis-
takable signs of tendentious distortion and stratification accu-
mulated through many centuries. I myself do not share this
negative attitude, but 1 am not in a position to confute it?
Besides the general weakness of the argument the book man-
ifests other striking characteristics. As we have seen, there is
the evident hesitation and ambivalence with respect to its pub-
lication; and throughout the book there is repetition in various
ways that the book should not be taken too seriously.
Towards the end of the first section of the book, immediately
after the passage quoted above, he writes,
If there was no more certainty than this to be attained, why
have I brought this inquiry to the notice of a wider public?
I regret that even my justification has to restrict itself to hints?
At the very end of the first section he again expresses the
same sentiment:
Even if one were to accept it as historical that Moses was Egyp-
tian, we should want at least one other fixed point so as to
protect the many emerging possibilities from the reproach of
139
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
their being products of imagination and too far removed from
reality. An objective proof of the period into which the life
of Moses, and with it the exodus from Egypt, fall would per-
haps have sufficed, But this has not been forthcoming, and
therefore it will be better to suppress any inferences that might
follow our view that Moses was an Egyptian.
Yet the very next words in the book, the title of the second
part, are “If Moses Was an Egyptian ...”* Early in this sec-
tion he repeats his hesitation to publish,
At the end of my essay I said that important and far-reaching
conclusions could be drawn from the suggestion that Moses
was an Egyptian; but I was not prepared to uphold them pub-
licly, since they were based only on psychological probabilities
and lacked objective proof. The more significant the po:
bilities thus discerned, the more cautious is one about exposing
them to the critical attack of the outside world without any
secure foundation—like an iron monument with feet of clay.
No probability, however seductive, can protect us from error;
even if all parts of a problem seem to fit together like the pieces
of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that the probable need
not necessarily be the truth, and the truth not always probable.
And lastly, it is not attractive to be classed with the scholastics
and Talmudists who are satisfied to exercise their ingenuity,
unconcerned how far removed their conclusions may be from
the truth.®
Besides his remark about not wanting to be classed with the
Talmudists, in this passage Freud criticizes the work which
he is presenting in a fundamental way. The last sentence, in-
teresting in its own right because of what it says regarding the
Talmudists, suggests Cohen’s criticism.
Later on Freud says,
140
MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
Iam quite prepared to hear anew the reproach that I have put
forward my reconstruction of the early history of the tribe of
Israel with undue and unjustified certitude. I shall not fee! this
criticism to be too harsh, since it finds an echo in my own judg-
ment.”
H¢ has two prefaces to the third part of the essay. The first
one indicates that because he is living in a “Catholic country
under the protection of that Church” he will withhold it from
publication.® Yet ambivalence is clearly present, because this
preface, which ends with an assertion that he will not publish
the essay, begins with
With the audacity of one who has little or nothing to lose I pro-
pose to break a well-founded resolution for the second time and
to follow up my two essays on Moses . .. [contained as the first
two parts of the book] with the final part, till now withheld®
He makes the point that he is an old man and old men lose
their creative faculties. He even enters into a minor quarrel
with George Bernard Shaw on the question of the value of con-
tributions by old men.’°
The second preface, written in London, asserts that he had
had “inner misgivings as well as external hindrances”" in
connection with the essay. Because of changed political con-
ditions, he says, “I dare now to make public the last part of
my essay.” "* Towards the end of this second preface he writes,
“To my critical faculties this treatise, proceeding from a study
of the man Moses, seems like a dancer balancing on one toe.” **
He protests his right to be arbitrary with the work of others
in a discussion of the work of Robertson Smith. “Above all,
however,” he says, “I am not an ethnologist, but a psycho-
14
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
analyst. It was my good right to select from ethnological data
what would serve me for my analytic work.” *
Remarks such as these in the essay indeed make us wonder
whether this work by Freud is meant to be taken at its face
value, We can bring to bear upon this essay the consideration
which Leo Strauss makes about books written under conditions
of persecution. Strauss says,
If a master of the art of writing commits such blunders as
would shame an intelligent high school boy, it is reasonable to
assume that they are intentional, especially if the author dis-
cusses, however incidentally, the possibility of intentional blun-
ders in writing.”®
Freud was certainly a “master of the art of writing,” the
book is a bad book, and no one has told us more about the
intent of blunders than he has. The book is replete with in-
dications of hesitancy, with indications that what is really being
said is but hinted at, and with arguments which are cuttingly
criticized by the author himself.
To what conclusions do these considerations lead us? The
most parsimonious and the most cogent is that the book must
be considered in a typically Freudian manner, as having a mani-
fest and a latent content; and Freud himself has told us some-
thing of the ways by which to determine the latent from the
manifest content. Making this assumption, an assumption
strongly suggested in various ways by the book itself, let us
attempt to win an understanding of this book, a book that
cannot, under any circumstances, be considered, as Cohen sug-
gested, the work of an “opinionated crank.”
As psychologists are aware, it is easier to determine the na-
142
MOSES AND MONOTHEISM
ture of a motive than it is to decide whether the motive is
conscious or unconscious. Since our culture associates con-
sciouness with responsibility, and Freud was evidently aware
of the hostility the book might generate, we can suspect that
part of his motivation was to generate the impression of un-
conscious intent. As his communications with Meitlis showed,
he was afraid that the book would anger the Jews,"® and he
opens the book with a sentence which strongly suggests that
the book was in some sense hostile to the Jews—in our inter-
pretation, the orthodox Jews. The first sentence of the book
reads “To deny a people the man whom it praises as the great-
est of its sons is not a deed to be undertaken lightheartedly—
especially by one belonging to that people.” 7 He also sensed
that the book would elicit hostility from the Catholics. Thus,
that the book should have been written with a certain amount
of deliberate obscurity is, at the very least, a real possibility.
The option that we have is either to dismiss the book or to
find a way of understanding it which will do justice to Freud's
genius. In the suggestion that the book is one which is perhaps
deliberately obscure, and that it has a double content, we can
reconcile our knowledge of Freud’s profundity with the fact
that he did write the Moses and Monotheism. If the book is
one which is in the Kabbalistic tradition, and if it was written
under the sense of persecution, that it should be deliberately
obscure is completely understandable.
143
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
NOTES TO CHAPTER I9
. Morris R. Cohen, Reflections of a Wondering Jew (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1950), pp. 139-140. Chapter 15, pp. 139-146, is a
review of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism.
2. Freud, Moses and Monothetsm, p. 14.
3. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 14.
4 Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 15.
5. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 16.
6. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, pp. 16-17.
7. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, pp. 49-50.
8. CE. pp. 39 ff, above.
9. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 66.
10, Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 66.
11. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 69.
12, Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 70.
13, Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 7%.
14. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 169.
15. Strauss, p. 30.
16. CE. p. 49, above.
17. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p.
20
Moses as an Egyptian
What significance shall we ascribe to Freud’s thesis that
Moses was an Egyptian? From the point of view of all evident
tradition Moses was both an Egyptian and a Jew. The well-
known Biblical story has it that he was born a Jew, but was
taken into and brought up in the royal houschold of Egypt.
Josephus, the historian, tells us that Moses was a general for
Egypt who fought against the Ethiopians, as Freud knew."
The Zohar, too, asserts that Moses was an Egyptian, (al-
though not in a way to exclude his Jewishness) on the basis of
the Biblical passage which relates that when Moses ran away
from Egypt in fear of being apprehended for having killed an
Egyptian, the daughters of Reuel reported to their father “An
Egyptian delivered us... .”* The Zohar even suggests the
relationship between the sun (in Freud, Aton) and Moses
which Freud asserts. “Moses is dead, and the sun is gathered
in and the time has come for the moon to rule.” *
But the fact remains that in spite of all Egyptian associations,
Moses is still taken as a Jew. Freud’s point is that Moses was
genetically an Egyptian. Actually, whether Freud's thesis is
valid is a question of little moment for our purposes.
145
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
As we have already scen, Freud starts his book with a
“denial” of Moses; that is, if Moses is genetically a Gentile, he
is thereby necessarily “denied.” It is interesting to note a
psychoanalyst, M. Wulff, quite astutely pointing out that “the
whole question as to the national origin of Moses does not
appear to be of decisive importance for Freud’s main problem,
the origin and development of monotheism.” * It is actually
quite conceivable that the whole book, as an essay on the psy-
chology of the Jews, could have been written without imputing
genetic Gentilism to Moses. On the presumption of a Gen-
tile Moses, Freud argues an association of Moses with the
Egyptian Aton religion, a point that he could easily have made
simply on the basis of the Biblical story that Moses was raised
in the royal household.
As the internal evidence of Freud’s book indicates, he regards
the idea of Moses-as-a-Gentile as critically important. Yet the
logic of his manifest presentation does not require it. As we
have seen, he recognizes that his arguments for the assertion
are tenuous and that his “justification has to restrict itself to
hints.” Thus we are indeed pressed to plumb the latent psy-
chological significance of the Moses-as-a-Gentile theme. On
the basis of Freudian theory, turning Moses into a Gentile-
Egyptian would seem to be a wish-fulfillment on Freud's part.
In the same paragraph in which Freud says “it is not attrac-
tive to be classed with the scholastics and Talmudists,” he
writes “Moses was an Egyptian whom a people needed to
make into a Jew.” *
In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud describes the process
146
MOSES AS AN EGYPTIAN
by which dream-thoughts may be turned into their opposites.
He writes:
There is yet another alternative way in which the dream-work
can deal with affects in the dream-thoughts, in addition to al-
lowing them through or reducing them to nothing. It can turn
them into their opposite. We have already become acquainted
with the interpretative rule according to which every element
in a dream can, for purposes of interpretation, stand for its
opposite just as casily as for itself. ... We can never tell before-
hand whether it stands for the one or for the other; only the
context can decide.®
Nor does Freud limit these considerations to dreams. In the
same paragraph he goes on to tell how this technique of resolv-
ing elements into their opposites is also used in social dissimula-
tion!"
If, following Freud, the context tends to bear out the
interpretation by opposites, as it seems to in this instance, then
Freud's assertion that “Moses... was an Egyptian whom a peo-
ple needed to make into a Jew” can more meaningfully be
formulated as Moses was a Jew whom Freud needed to make
into a Gentile.
Several mutually clarifying interpretations suggest them-
selves as to why Freud should be thus motivated, beyond the
requirements of logic, to show Moses to be a Gentile.
A. THE SABBATIAN FULFILLMENT
We have already indicated the role of Sabbatianism in the
movement of the Jews into the main streams of Western civili-
zation. Sabbatianism sometimes reached out greedily and des-
147
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
perately to catch at some kind of positive identification with
the non-Jewish elements in Western culture. We have seen
that even the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi and Jacob Frank had
paradoxically supported the hold of Sabbatianism in certain
groups.
In Moses and Monotheism, Freud brings the Sabbatian im-
pulse to its dramatic climax. Sabbatai Zevi became a Gentile.
Jacob Frank became a Gentile. The ultimate fulfillment of the
theme of Sabbatianism, is to have Moses, the most profound
Messianic figure of Judaism and the image of all other Mes-
siahs, already be a Gentile.
For Freud, a modern product of the enlightenment, an
avowed and ritualistic act of conversion was essentially too
trivial to have any deep emotional significance. By converting
Moses into a Gentile, Freud committed his psychological act
of apostasy. If, as we have seen, Freud strongly identified him-
self with Moses, then his preoccupation with the Moses of
Michelangelo, who sits petrified in a church in Rome and
graces the tomb of a Pope, and his turning Moses into a
Gentile, can be understood as Freud’s own realization of the
Sabbatian act of apostasy. Through the image of Moses, as he
develops it in his Moses and Monotheism, Freud becomes a
Gentile psychologically as he makes a Gentile of Moses.
B. THE FANTASY OF THE ‘FAMILY ROMANCE”
In his attempt to demonstrate that Moses was an Egyptian,
Freud draws upon the idea of the family romance,* which he
had developed in a paper bearing the title Family Romances.
148
MOSES AS AN EGYPTIAN
He cites Rank’s book, Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden,
to confirm his point. Freud writes,
[Rank’s book] . .. deals with the fact “that almost all important
civilized peoples have early woven myths around and glorified
in poetry their heroes, mythical kings and princes, founders of
religions, of dynasties, empires and cities—in short, their na-
tional heroes. Especially the history of their birth and of their
early years is furnished with phantastic traits...”
He argues that in the “average myth,” the hero is born into a
noble and royal family, but grows up in a humble and de-
graded family. Then he points out that the myth of Moses is
quite different. Moses is born of the Jewish Levites but is
raised in the royal house. On the basis of this divergence,
Freud infers that Moses was an Egyptian by birth.
That Freud, who was well aware of the tendentious char-
acter of myth, should attempt to go back to the actual facts
associated with Moses through myth is most strange. If he had
limited himself to inferences concerning an original myth of
which the Biblical myth is a distortion, he would be on sounder
ground. But inferences as to presumptive facts on the basis of
the logic of myth cannot be made.
Freud says clearly in Moses and Monotheism that the idea
of a person born into nobility is mythical and grounded in
psychological needs.
The inner source of the myth is the so-called ‘family romance’
of the child, in which the son reacts to the change in his inner
relationship to his parents, especially that to his father. The
child’s first years are governed by grandiose over-estimation of
his father; kings and queens in dreams and fairytales always
represent, accordingly, the parents. Later on, under the influ-
149
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
ence of rivalry and real disappointments, the release from the
parents and a critical attitude towards the father set in.’*
And then Freud tells us:
‘The Moses myth as we know it today lags sadly behind its
secret motives. If Moses is not of royal lineage our legend can-
not make him into a hero; if he remains a Jew it has done
nothing to raise his status.!*
By conceiving of Moses as an Egyptian nobleman Freud is,
in effect, completing the Moses myth in a way which had never
been done in the history of the Jews. The Jews have “lagged
behind” because they have not added the critical element to
the myth, that Moses was born of nobility, and this Freud is
doing by writing this book. Cogent evidence that such is in-
deed the case is provided by Freud’s use of the term “family
romance.” For in his essay on the family romance Freud points
out that the child develops the idea that he is “a step-child or an
adopted child.” But the theme of the Jews having been adopted
by Moses is exactly what Freud’s book is about!
Freud tells us that the family romance myth is due to the
child's discovery that his father is not what he had previously
conceived him to be. The disillusionment from his infantile
overestimation of him expresses itself as the family romance
fantasy, that he was adopted. Freud, similarly, disillusioned
from his infantile overestimation of Moses, creates the family
romance fantasy that the Jews were adopted.
We now see the significance of the genetic emphasis for
Freud. It is, in part, self-aggrandizing. By creating a Gentile
Moses of high position and royal lineage, he overcomes his
sense of the Jew as a person of low social status. Freud, as we
150
MOSES AS AN EGYPTIAN
know from various biographical items, felt very sensitive about
the low social position to which his Jewishness held him.
Freud’s myth that the Jews were adopted by a Gentile of high
nobility overcomes the sense of degradation associated with his
feelings of being a Jew. And in this he repeats in thought
what the Sabbatians did in action: Sabbatai Zevi was taken
into the Sultan's court; Jacob Frank was sponsored by King
Augustus III when he was baptized; and the Frankists as a
group were sponsored by the Polish nobility in their baptism.
By developing the myth of Moses as a member of the Egyp-
tian royal household, Freud is reforming it to fit the pattern
of the usual myth. Thus it becomes a candidate for the kind
of psychoanalytic scrutiny Rank engaged in in his book. It was
necessary for Freud to refashion the myth, so that its merely
mythical character would be revealed. This brings us to our
next point, the Moses-as-a-Gentile image as a device for coping
with anti-Semitism.
C. MOSES AND ANTI-SEMITISM
We know that throughout his life Freud suffered from a
deep sense of being discriminated against as a Jew. The Moses-
as-a-Gentile fantasy may be understood as a desperate and bril-
liant attempt to ward off anti-Semitism. The book was written
in the throes of the greatest anti-Semitic disaster the Jews had
ever experienced. Part of it was written in Vienna when the
shadow of Hitler loomed over all of Austria, and part of it in
London, where Freud had been displaced by Hitler. There can
be little doubt that this book, which is Freud’s most intense
151
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
expression of his concern with the problem of Judaism, must
in some sense have been a response to the outward events of his
life. To say that Freud wrote this book as a reaction to his
experience of the force of anti-Semitism must hit at the truth in
some way.
The book contains among other contributions, a most inter-
esting set of ideas concerning anti-Semitism. One of these ideas
which Freud voices, with the announcement that it will appear
incredible, is indeed a reflection of a theory of anti-Semitism
which appears in the Zohar. Freud writes:
The deeper motives of anti-Semitism have their roots in times
long past; they come from the unconscious, and I am quite pre-
pared to hear that what I am going to say will at first appear
incredible. I venture to assert that the jealousy which the Jews
evoked in other peoples by maintaining that they were the first-
born, favourite child of God the Father has not yet been over-
come by those others, just as if the latter had given credence to
the assumption.!®
This “incredible” theory of anti-Semitism is set out in the
Zohar as follows:
And it is because God holds Israel in affection and draws them
near to himself that all the idolatrous nations hate Israel; for
they sce themselves kept at a distance whilst Israel are brought
near. Similarly it was by reason of the love that Jacob showed
towards Joseph above all his other sons that they conspired to
slay him, though he was their own brother. How much greater,
then, must be the enmity of the idolatrous nations toward Israel!
Observe the consequences that followed the excessive love
shown to Joseph by his father: he was exiled from his father,
and his father joined him in exile, and along with them . . .
the Shekinah also went into exile. It is true that the exile was
152
MOSES AS AN EGYPTIAN
really the consequence of a divine decree; yet the proximate
cause was the coat of many colours which he made for him
specially.*
Now how does the idea of a Gentile Moses work to soften
the force of anti-Semitism? Freud says explicitly that it is to
Moses that the Jewish people owes “much of the hostility
which it has met and is meeting still.” ** As we have just seen,
Freud believed that the basis of anti-Semitism is to be found
in the Jewish idea of the “chosen people.” To this Freud
counterposes the thesis that the Jews are not God's “chosen
people,” but rather the “chosen people” of Moses. He says,
Sometimes, it is true, we hear of a people adopting another
god, but never of a god choosing a new people. Perhaps we
approach an understanding of this unique happening when we
reflect on the connection between Moses and the Jewish people.
Moses had stooped to the Jews, had made them his people; they
were his “chosen people.” *
The characteristics that make the Jew obnoxious to the Gen-
tile are, according to Freud, not at all uniquely Jewish, but
rather of Gentile origins. He writes
that... the man Moses created their character by giving to
them a religion which heightened their self-confidence to such
a degree that they believed themselves to be superior to all other
peoples. They survived by keeping aloof from the others."*
*Zohur, il, 0. 198. It should be noted. parenthetically, that this passage in the
Zohar occurs in the discusion of Joseph as an interpreter of dreams. We know
that Freud, the dream interpreter, identified with the Biblical Joseph: “It will be no-
ticed that the name Josef plays a great part in my dreams. ... My own ego finds it
very easy to hide itself behind people of that name, since Joseph was the name of
‘a man famous in the Bible as an interpreter of dreams"—Int. of Dreams, p. 484.
Had Freud read the Zohar these passages would have been of particular interest
to him. Or, if associates were to have pointed out the Zohur to him, they would very
likely have pointed out the Joseph passages.
153
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
The circumcision, which in the Jewish tradition is taken as the
sign of the Covenant—the word for the circumcision ceremony,
Brith, means Covenant—is, according to Freud, merely an
Egyptian custom imposed on the Jews, and the Jews have been
the objects of anti-Semitic attack because of it.
The possibility that the Jews in Egypt adopted the usage of
circumcision in any other way than in connection with the reli-
gion Moses gave them may be rejected as quite untenable."
But,
«+. among the customs through which the Jews marked off
their aloof position, that of circumcision made a disagreeable,
uncanny impression on others.*
The idea of Moses-as-Gentile makes the Jews the buffoons
of history! As buffoons they are of course to be laughed at and
scorned but not attacked. In Freud’s account, Moses is pre-
sented as a man of great knowledge and extremely strong per-
sonality, who could take advantage of the innocence of the
children of Israel living under tyranny.
Without doubt it must have been a tremendous father imago
that stooped in the person of Moses to tell the poor Jewish
labourers that they were his dear children. And the conception
of a unique, eternal, omnipotent God could not have been less
overwhelming for them; he who thought them worthy to make
a bond with him promised to take care of them if only they
remained faithful to his worship. Probably they did not find
it easy to separate the image of the man Moses from that of his
Freud, Moser and Monotheism, p. 116. Freud's emphasis on the castration fear
may be given a somewhat Kabbalistic interpretation as a fear that the sign of the
Covenant, worn on the penis in the form of the mark of cimcumcision, will be
taken away; ic. fear that God will break the Covenant, that love will be with-
drawn and punishment will ensue.
154
MOSES AS AN EGYPTIAN
God, and their instinct was right in this, since Moses might very
well have incorporated into the character of his God some of
his own traits, such as his irascibility and implacability.'*
At times, when faced with persecution, the Jews have
been brought into doubt about the genuineness of the Cove-
nant. In Sabbatianism particularly we have seen the tendency
of the Jews to abandon their faith in this God, to regard the
religion which they received from Moses as appropriate for an
earlier day, but contemporarily inappropriate. We recall in
this connection Jacob Frank’s assertion that the Law, the
Torah, was dead. Freud renews the breach of faith in the
Mosaic God, by the identification of this God with the all-
human image of Moses, who had thus seduced the Jews into
several thousands of years of deception. This Moses, who was
not even a Jew himself, turned their heads with a glamorous
idea of having a special relationship to God; and they, rather
than face up to the humiliation of the seduction, retain only
this grand image of themselves painted by their seducer.
If, as Jacques Barzun says, the modern mind fears most be-
ing wrong, being ridiculous, and being taken in,’® then Freud,
were he fulfilling the Sabbatian mood in modern dress, could
not have expressed himself better. For what he is essentially
saying is that the Jews believed Moses was a Jew and he was
not; they have been made ridiculous and have persisted in be-
ing ridiculous; all of the pain they have suffered over the cen-
turies because they have embraced the Torah was due to an
historical imposition by a Gentile-Egyptian. That he was Egyp-
tian, the classical enemy and the classical oppressor, makes the
situation so ironic, that Freud’s message, if taken seriously,
155
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
should produce a most anguished burst of tears and laughter.
And most important, Freud's assertions make the Jews the butt
of the greatest joke in history; and thereby achieve for them
also the greatest gain in history, freedom from persecution. It
converts them from threatening to comical and stupid char-
acters.
D. THE DISSOCIATION OF MOSES FROM THE JEWS
Freud clung to the Lamarckian idea of genetic transmission
of cultural characteristics throughout his life. He makes the
point in Totem and Taboo, and reaffirms it in Moses and
Monotheism. When challenged by Joseph Wortis on the con-
cept of the inheritance of acquired characteristics to the effect
that it was inconsistent with what most biologists believed, he
said, “But we can’t bother with the biologists. We have our
own science.” And then he added, “We must go our own
way.” *
The idea of the cultural continuity of a people through ge-
netic transmission sharpens the significance of Freud’s assertion
that Moses was genetically a Gentile. If the set of beliefs as-
sociated with Moses are the reasons for anti-Semitism, and if
Moses was not a Jew, then anti-Semitism is properly directed
against Moses, not the Jews.
It is characteristically maintained that the Jewish contribu-
tion to Western civilization is its strong ethical orientation, and
this is reaffirmed by Freud. The effect of Moses was to make
the Jews accept “instinctual renunciation.” The Jews took upon
themselves the “yoke of the Law,” and through them it was
156
MOSES AS AN EGYPTIAN
transmitted to Christianity. Freud indicates that one of the
reasons for anti-Semitism is exactly this, that the Jew is sym-
bolic of the superego. Anti-Semitism, says Freud, is most acute
in those people who have newly taken upon themselves the
burden of Mosaic morality.
We must not forget that all the peoples who now excel in the
practice of anti-Semitism became Christians only in relatively
recent times, sometimes forced to it by bloody compulsion. One
might say they all are “badly christened”; under the thin veneer
of Christianity they have remained what their ancestors were,
barbarically polytheistic. They have not yet overcome their
grudge against the new religion which was forced on them,
and they have projected it on to the source from which Chris-
tianity came to them. The facts that the Gospels tell a story
which is enacted among Jews, and in truth treats only of Jews,
has facilitated such a projection. The hatred for Judaism is at
bottom hatred for Christianity, and it is not surprising that in
the German National Socialist revolution this close connection
of the two monotheistic religions finds such clear expression in
the hostile treatment of both2*
This theme of Freud's, that anti-Semitism is at bottom an
attack upon the Mosaic superego, has been taken up and de-
veloped by other psychoanalysts. Thus Ernst Simmel writes
that the “anti-Semitic crowd man” is one who finds in the
mechanism of anti-Semitism
+ +. a temporary solution of his latent ambivalent conflict with
the parent. Through participation in the collective ego of the
crowd, he can split in two the re-externalized parental power:
into the leader whom he loves and into the Jew whom he hates.
. «in choosing the Jew as the object of his hatred, his ego
takes upon itself the privilege of attacking this super-ego, to
punish it, instead of being punished by it. It will therefore not
157
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
evoke surprise if we assert that the Jew, as the object of anti-
Semitic represents the bad conscience of Christian civiliza-
tion.
As the evidence indicates, Freud was aware of these dy-
namics of anti-Semitism, as a reaction of the “badly christened”
to the repressive forces of the Mosaic code. To ward off anti-
Semitism, he would wish to separate the Mosaic characteristics
from the image of the Jew. Moses, he therefore says, was not
a Jew and hence the Jews should not be blamed for the Mosaic
“yoke.” In effect, he casts Moses from the Jewish fold, and says
to the world, “Why do you blame me for the impositions of
the superego when the one who was responsible for it was not
even a Jew?”
It is appropriate at this point to show in what sense the whole
burden of psychoanalysis may be regarded as fulfillment of the
Sabbatian ethos. For a variety of reasons the modern ego has
been forced to surrender the various devices for coping with
guilt that have been developed historically in association with
a set of supernaturalistic religious ideas. In our century it has
often been pointed out that modern science and psychoanalysis
have seemed to “take the place of” *religion. Modern psycho-
analysis plays a “religious” role in people’s lives, especially with
respect to their “sins” as sins are defined by the Mosaic code.
The deepest violations of the Mosaic code—aggression, murder,
sexuality, incest, etc—are the very subject matter of psycho-
analysis. The psychoanalyst stands first as a representative of
the superego, as Freud so well recognized when he discussed
the transference relationship; and second as a nonpunishing
superego. In the course of psychoanalysis the patient learns
158
‘MOSES AS AN EGYPTIAN
that the expected punishment will not materialize. The trans-
ference is essential; for unless the patient identifies the figure
of the psychoanalyst with the superego, then the permissiveness
is essentially ineffectual. The psychoanalyst listens to the pa-
tient’s discussion of his deepest “sins” and does not blame. As
a matter of fact, if there is any blame which is implicitly or
explicitly contained within the psychoanalytic mood, it is di-
rected against the parents of the patient in their treatment of
him when he was an infant and a child. The psychoanalyst
presents himself as a better—a more indulgent and more for-
giving—parent, in the patient's struggle with the “other” par-
ent.
Freud’s repeated affirmation of his Jewish identity becomes
illuminated through the Moses and Monotheism. If it is the
Jew who carries the burden of the historical superego, then it
it only a Jew who can really remove the sense of sin. We re-
call in this connection Freud's assertion that psychoanalysis
could only have been created by a Jew;* and that in a letter
to Oskar Pfister he wrote, “. . . by the way, how comes it that
none of the godly ever devised psychoanalysis and that one
had to wait for a godless Jew?”** If the Jews represent the
authority of the Law, only a Jew can declare the Law is dead.
Psychoanalysis, in this larger cultural sense, may be viewed as
a fundamental effort to modify the classical image of the Jew.
The Jew no longer stands in the shadow of Moses insisting
upon rigid adherence to the letter of the Law, for example,
Shakespeare's Shylock, but rather as a father figure, patient and
forgiving, tolerant and understanding of violations of the
Mosaic code. Such a role can be accomplished by Freud only
159
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
through his full identification of himself as a Jew who is,
morcover, dissociated from the figure of Moses. In his pre-
sumptive position of authority he can rescind the Law, declare
the Law invalid. Thus Freud plays the role of a new Moses
who comes down with a new Law dedicated to personal psy-
chological liberty.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 20
Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 32.
Zohar, I, p. 27; Exodus 2:19.
Zohar, Il, p. 368.
M. Wulff (ed.), Max Eitingon: In Memoriam (Jerusalem:
Israel Psycho-Analytical Society, 1950). M. Wulff, An appreci-
ation of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, pp. 124-142.
5. Freud, Moses and Monothersm, p. 16.
6. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 471.
7. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 471.
8. Freud, Moses and Monothetsm, p. 9.
9. Freud, Col. Papers, V, pp. 74-78.
10. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 7.
11, Freud, Moses and Monotheism, pp. 9-10.
12, Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 12.
13, Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 116.
14. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 136.
15, Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 55.
16. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 158.
17. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 30.
18, Freud, Moses and Monotheism, pp. 140-141.
19. Jacques Barzun, Romanticism and the Modern Ego, (Boston:
Little, Brown and Co,, 1944), p. 163.
20, Joseph Wortis, Fragments of an Analysis with Freud (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), p. 84.
a1. Freud, Moses and Monothcism, pp. 115-117.
160
fepn
‘MOSES AS AN EGYPTIAN
22. Ernst Simmel (ed.), Anti-Semitism: a Social Disease (New
York: International Press, 1946), Chap. III, Anti-Semitism
and Mass Psychopathology, pp. 33-78 P- 50.
23. CE. pp. 42-43.
24. Jones, II, p. 458.
161
21
Moses Was Killed By the Jews
We have suggested that in Moses and Monotheism Freud is
fashioning a myth which would be more appropriate for the
Jews of the modern world. In so doing he was fulfilling a force
in the history of the Jews that may be traced to Kabbala and
the Sabbatian episode. We turn our attention now to another
major clement in this myth, Freud's supposition that the Jews
killed Moses.
If the theme of Moses-as-Gentile invites a deeper interpreta-
tion, so must the theme of the murder of Moses. Freud's argu-
ments on this point are less tortuous than those he uses in
connection with the Moses-as-Gentile idea. The murdered
father theme was already present in his Totem and Taboo in
the notion of the totem feast; and he uncritically accepts the
idea of a murdered Moses from Sellin’s Biblical analysis. Even
with respect to Sellin’s work, however, Freud admits that he
has chosen what suits him.
Sellin thinks that Shittim in the land east of the Jordan is indi-
cated as the scene of the violent deed. We shall see, however,
that the choice of this locality does not accord with our argu-
ment!
162
MOSES WAS KILLED BY THE JEWS
Later, when he discusses the refutation of Robertson Smith’s
theories by other ethnologists he blithely announces his right
to be arbitrary.”
In the section immediately following his introduction of the
Moses-murder idea, Freud includes a passage which appears to
deal with the way in which historical distortion takes place.
This passage invites a reflexive interpretation, that is, an inter-
pretation of the passage by its own message.
Freud is discussing the writing of Biblical text:
The text, however, as we find it today tells us enough about its
own history. Two distinct forces, diametrically opposed to each
other, have left their traces on it. On the one hand, certain trans-
formations got to work on it, falsifying the text in accord with
secret tendencies, maiming and extending it until it was turned
into its opposite. On the other hand, an indulgent piety reigned
over it; anxious to keep everything as it stood, indifferent to
whether the details fitted together or nullified one another.
Thus almost everywhere there can be found striking omissions,
disturbing repetitions, palpable contradictions, signs of things
the communication of which was never intended. The distor-
tion of a text is not unlike a murder* The difficulty lies not in
the execution of the deed but in doing away with the traces.
One could wish to give the word “distortion” the double mean-
ing to which it has a right, although it is no longer used in this
sense, It should mean not only “to change the appearance of,”
but also “to wrench apart,” “to put in another place.” ‘That is
why in so many textual distortions we may count on finding
the suppressed and abnegated material hidden away somewhere,
though in an altered shape and torn out of its original connec-
tion. Only it is not always easy to recognize it?
Our italics.
163
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
The passage applies, presumably, to the processes involved in
bringing the Bible to its present form. But let us suppose that
it is a kind of verbal ambiguity, such as Freud compared to
dreams, and discussed in The Interpretation of Dreams, in
which the “indefatigable” dream-work or “joke work”* has
succeeded in making the same assertion not only about the
Bible, but about Freud's Moses and Monotheism itself. Thus,
for example, the italicized sentence in particular could well
have been written as a pointed description of Moses and Mono-
theism itself. Freud’s book is itself about a murder, the murder
of Moses, and constitutes just such a distortion of text as he
describes here in detail.
What is really of moment, however, is that the murder of
Moses is Freud’s own doing! Moses and Monotheism is indeed
one of the grossest distortions of the Biblical text committed in
modern times by a reputable scholar. The fantasy of the
murder of Moses is a current one, one that Freud engages in at
the very moment of writing. The actual evidence for the
murder of Moses is very tenuous, but the murder of Moses is
something which Freud must assert as fact. What he is doing
is projecting a current fantasy onto a past situation, which is
what is done in all mythmaking. Is is Freud who wishes that
Moses were murdered; and by this, of course, we must mean
he wishes that the current repressive and oppressive forces
associated with the Mosaic image would be killed. What Jacob
Frank did literally when he cut up the Torah to make shoes of
the parchment for his friends, Freud does in his own way
through myth. And Jacob Frank’s assertion that the Torah
164
MOSES WAS KILLED BY THE JEWS
was dead, Freud repeats with psychoanalytic sophistication.
In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud writes,
The sanctity which we attribute to the rules laid down in the
Decalogue has, I think, blunted our powers of perceiving the
real facts. We seem scarcely to venture to observe that the ma-
jority of mankind disobey the Fifth Commandment?
In the Moses and Monotheism, he refers to the murder of
Moses as “the murder of the Father.”* To say, however, that
the theme of the Moses murder is but an expression of Freud's
own Oedipus complex is to treat Freud much too lightly.
In his writing, Freud frequently did refer to the significance
of his own Oedipus complex. Furthermore, he made the infan-
tile relationship of the child to his parents the critical feature
in the analysis of human personality. Besides this we find fre-
quent identifications in Freud’s writings of father and God,
father and Moses, and father and superego. He refers to
Oedipus as that mythical law-breaker’ Evidently Freud con-
ceives of the Oedipal crime as prototypal of all law breaking.®
The technical problem presented to us by Freud's writings
is whether to consider as primary the infantile experiences
with his actual father, or the larger social forces captured in
the idiom of the psychology of the child. We hesitate to an-
swer this question too quickly because of the disparity between
the information which we have concerning Freud’s actual
* Freud's concept has an interesting parallel in the Talmud. In discussing the
sins that were committed by the idolatrous Amon, “R. Johanan and R. Eleazor
{dispute therein]: One maintained, He burnt the Torah; the other, he dishonoured
his mother. His mother remonstrated with him: ‘Hast thou then any pleasure in
the place whence thou didst issue?” He replied: ‘Do I do this for any other purpose
than to provoke my Creator!" "The Babylonian Talmud. Sanhedrin Il (Seder
Nezikin) (Soncino, 1935), p. 703.
165
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
father and the image of the father in Freud’s paradigm.
Freud’s actual father does not seem to have been the strong-
minded, stern, quick to wrath, deeply emotional, castration-
threatening personality of Freud’s paradigmatic father. Indeed,
in The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud writes of his disap-
pointment in his father for having yielded without a struggle
after being accosted by a Gentile. Jones tells us that Jakob
Freud was of gentle disposition and that Freud described his
father in “rather Micawber-like terms as being ‘always hope-
fully expecting something to turn up.’”* We hear about his
father’s illness and get an impression of a gentle and ineffectual
personality, one which is at considerable variance with the
father image of Freud’s discussions. This suggests that it is the
social-religious father who is projected upon the real father,
rather than the reverse.
Under any circumstances we believe that the murder of
Moses is Freud’s allegorical attempt to destroy the restrictive
hold of rabbinism on the Jews and on himself, as well as the
parallels to such rabbinism in Western civilization at large.
In the details of the processes by which children are accul-
turated, and particularly in the prescriptions and prohibitions
with respect to sexuality, he recognized the significance of the
Mosaic code. In Moses and Monotheism he implicitly defends
his characteristic identification of the development of the
neurosis of the individual with the development of society.
The figure of Moses is the link between the prevailing
conditions of contemporary society and history, for the moral
ethos of the whole Judaeo-Christian tradition, in its restrictive
aspects at least, may be traced to the Moses image. Moses
166
MOSES WAS KILLED BY THE JEWS
plays a double role as an historical figure and contemporary
image of the variety of forces which Freud asserted to be the
root of neurotic conflict. In Freud’s avowal and acceptance of
the Oedipus complex he attempted to rewrite the Law of
Moses in a way which would be more compatible with the
prevailing spirit of liberty. He was trying to remake and re-
work our conceptions of morality in a way which would make
it possible for the individual to live a richer and less hampered
existence, freed from the taboos which Judaism had imposed
upon itself for its survival and which had been accepted by the
Christian world as a way of life.
Hence it is necessary for Freud to kill Moses. Not that the
real Moses has not been dead for several thousands of years,
and not that the real Moses would not have been dead whether
killed or not. But the Moses of Freud’s murder is the Moses
each person carries about with him. And in this too Freud
identifies himself with all Jewry. For in his fantasy he is not
alone in the murder. The myth he fashions is not of one per-
son murdering Moses. It is a murder which is committed col-
lectively by all the Jews.
There is one final point to be made in connection with the
theme of the murder of Moses, bringing into consideration
again the Moses-as-Gentile theme. The commission of heresy,
which Freud allegorically portrays as a murder, must neces-
sarily invoke the guilt associated with the Oepidal crime. In-
deed Freud saw the murder of Moses by the Jews as a necessary
explanation of their genetic burden of guilt, which he as a Jew
consciously felt. If it is necessary to kill Moses, however, then
the idea that Moses was an Egyptian serves to take some of the
167
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
edge off the guilt. In a sense, the Moses-as-an-Egyptian myth
is a countermyth to that of the murdered Moses. By making
Moses an Egyptian, Freud absolves himself and the Jews of the
guilt associated with the murder-thought. Killing Moses-as-an-
Egyptian is simply killing a member of the group which first
persecuted the Jews.* Killing an Egyptian Moses is not the
complete patricide it seems to be. Freud is killing the classical
enemy of the Jew, and moreover, a stepfather at best. In the
myth Freud fashions he kills someone in the belief that he is
his father, which in “reality” he is not, but rather, in this
metaphorical sense, the enemy of his father, an Egyptian.
Thus by writing this book, Freud becomes a Jewish hero in
the history of the Jews. He performs the traditional Messianic
function of relieving guilt, the very same function he ascribes
to Jesus. The full role of positive Messianism in Freud’s de-
velopment is indicated in the next chapter.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 21
. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 43.
CE. pp. 141-142, above.
Freud, Moses and Monotheism, pp. 51-52.
Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 356.
“Honor thy father and thy mother . .
Dreams, p. 256.
Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 109.
Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 383.
Jones, I, p. 2. The pattern of the dominant mother-submissive
father family constellation was not at all uncommon among
Eastern European Jews.
3 Freud, The Int. of
SYA YEeeye
This is, paradoxically, also in imitation of the Moses-as-a-Jew who had killed
an Egyptian for smiung a Hebrew—Exodus 2:12.
168
22
Freud’s Messianic Identification
We recall Jones's query about the significance of the Moses
image to Freud:
‘There is every reason to suppose that the grand figure of Moses
himself, from Freud's early Biblical studies to the last book he
ever wrote, was one of tremendous significance to him. Did he
represent the formidable Father-image or did Freud identify
himself with him? Apparently both, at different periods.
We have learned from Freud that the hostility of the child to
the father is due to the child’s desire to preempt the father's
place, to be the father. Indeed Freud's idea of the totem con-
tains a literal urge to incorporate the father.
‘That is to say, they not merely hated and feared their father,
but also honoured him as an example to follow; in fact, each
‘son wanted to place himself in his father’s position. The can-
nibalistic act thus becomes comprehensible as an attempt to
assure one’s identification with the father by incorporating a
part of him?
Furthermore, Freud maintains that the image of Moses is the
prototypal image of the Messiah. In his discussion of Jesus
Christ he says,
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THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
If Moses was this first Messiah, Christ became his substitute
and successor... There is some historical truth in the rebirth
of Christ, for he was the resurrected Moses and the returned
primeval father of the primitive horde as well—only trans-
figured, and as a Son in the place of his Father?
Moses and Monotheism is an attack upon the Moses figure
as embodying the stern wrath and harsh judgment and re-
strictions of personal liberty in our culture. But an Oedipal
attack on Moses must be a preemption, in Freud's own terms,
of the Messianic role. One of the critical features of Messian-
ism is its goal of leading people out of slavery and oppression.
Thus Freud's whole effort at the creation of psychoanalysis
may be viewed as Messianic in this respect. The aim of psycho-
analytic thought is the production of greater freedom for the
individual, releasing him from the tyranny of the unconscious,
which is, in Freud’s view, the result of social oppression.
That psychoanalysis should have grown up in the context of
the healing of the sick who were incurable by orthodox medi-
cal means accords with the Messianic quality of the psycho-
analytic movement. For Messianism characteristically proves
itself first by miraculously healing the sick. Thereafter it
reaches out to large-scale social reform. So Freud's psycho-
analysis reached out from the healing of individuals to the
healing of society.
The view that Freud conceived of himself as a Messiah in the
spirit of Jewish mysticism is supported by otherwise puzzling
biographical facts in Freud’s life. It is important to note in this
connection that in the course of Jewish history, there arose not
‘one, but two, conceptions of the Messiah. On the one hand we
170
FREUD'S MESSIANIC IDENTIFICATION
find the idea of a spiritual Messiah. The spiritual Messiah does
not actively engage in producing a new way of life for the peo-
ple. This Messiah is the one who will rule after the redemp-
tion has taken place. He is characteristically referred to as the
Messiah-ben-David.® On the other hand, there also developed
in Jewish history the idea of a Messiah who would be a war-
rior, a military hero in the fullest sense,* and who would even-
tually be killed. This Messiah, when he arose, would with great
might vanquish all enemies and prepare the way for the Mes-
siah-ben-David. The concept of a military Messiah was evi-
dently a reaction to the Roman persecution. “The unhappy
people, robbed of freedom, persecuted and afflicted to the point
of death by the Romans, longed for vengeance on their enemies
and for political independence.” * In the Jewish tradition three
names are associated with him: Messiah-ben-Joseph, Messiah-
ben-Ephraim, and Messiah-ben-Manasseh, Ephraim and
Manasseh having been the sons of Joseph.
The military cast of this Messiah stems from the interpreta-
tion of the following Biblical passage, the blessing Moses gave
before his death:
‘And for the precious things of the earth and the fullness thereof,
And the good will of him that dwelt in the bush;
Let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph,
And upon the crown of the head of him that is prince among
his brethren.
His firstling bullock, majesty is his;
And his horns are the horns of the wild-ox;
With them he shall gore the peoples all of them, even the ends
of the earth;
* Ben means “son of.”
171
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
‘And they are the ten thousands of Ephraim,
And they are the thousands of Manasseh®
Tradition equips this military Messiah with horns (Miche-
angelo's Moses is horned!) with which he will strike in all
directions and slay the enemy.
If Freud identified himself with the Messiah, it was, we
believe, primarily with this military Messiah. Freud once
wrote,
I have often felt as if I had inherited all the passion of our an-
cestors when they defended their Temple, as if I could joyfully
cast away my life in a great cause.”
And Jones writes of Freud,
In his letters there is an account of bow he bravely stood up to
a crowd of anti-Semitic opponents on his return journey from
Leipzig*
In his youth, Jones tells us,
Freud went through an unmistakable militaristic phase. . . «
One of the first books that fell into his childish hands after he
had learned to read was Thiers’ Consulate and Empire. He tells
us how he pasted onto the backs of his wooden soldiers little
labels bearing the names of Napoleon's marshals. His favorite
one was Massena, usually believed to be a Jew; he was aided in
his hero worship by the circumstance that they were both born
on the same date, a hundred years apart. The Franco-Prussian
War, which broke out when he was fourteen, aroused his keen
interest. His sister relates how he kept a large map on his writ-
ing desk and followed the campaign in detail by means of small
flags. He would discourse to his sisters about the war in general
and the importance of the various moves of the combatants. His
dreams of becoming a great general himself, however, gradu-
ally faded. ..
ip
FREUD'S MESSIANIC IDENTIFICATION
We might hesitate to identify the name Massena with the
Messiah-ben-Manasseh, and to assert that this is evidence of
Freud’s identification, had Freud not himself made the transi-
tion for us. In The Interpretation of Dreams, where Freud
discusses his military interest, he writes,
And at the time my declared favourite was already Massena
(or to give the name its Jewish form, Manasseh).!°
Freud, as we know, identified himself with the name of
Joseph."' He certainly followed in the footsteps of Joseph as
an interpreter of dreams. In addition, however, we believe that
he followed the fuller significance attached to the name of
Joseph as the warrior Messiah who would redeem the Jews.
But perhaps the most cogent evidence for our hypothesis re-
garding Freud’s Messianic feeling is to be found in his preoccu-
pation with Rome. According to Jewish tradition, Rome is the
legendary dwelling place of the Messiah, and the place where
the Messiah will reveal himself."? The Messiah is supposed to
dwell in concealment at the gates of Rome. We recall in this
connection Abulafia’s strange visit to the Pope to discuss the
problem of the Jews.’*
In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud tells us of one of his
dreams in which he actually sees a gateway in association with
Rome:
On account of certain events which had occurred in the city of
Rome, it had become necessary to remove the children to safety,
and this was done. The scene was then in front of a gateway,
double doors in the ancient style (the “Porta Romana” at Siena,
as I was aware during the dream itself). I was sitting on the
edge of a fountain and was greatly depressed and almost in
173
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
tears. A female figure—an attendant or 2 nun—brought two
boys out and handed them over to their father, who was not
myself. The elder of the two was clearly my eldest son; I did
not sce the other one’s face. The woman who brought out the
boy asked him to kiss her good-bye. She was noticeable for hav-
ing a red nose. The boy refused to kiss her, but holding out his
hand in farewell, said “Auf Geseres” to her, and then “Auf
Ungeseres” to the two of us (or to one of us). 1 had a notion
that this last phrase denoted a preference.
He then goes on to tell us the association with anti-Semitism
which is involved:
This dream was constructed on a tangle of thoughts provoked
by a play which I had seen, called Das newe Ghetto [The New
Ghetto]."* The Jewish problem, concern about the future of
one’s children, to whom one cannot give a country of their own,
concern about educating them in such a way that they can move
freely across frontiers {our italics}—all of this was easily recog-
nizable among the relevant dream thoughts.
“By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept.” ® Siena,
like Rome, is famous for its beautiful fountains. If Rome oc-
curred in one of my dreams it was necessary for me to find a
* Doubtless a reference to the 137th Psalm:
By the rivers of Babylon,
‘There we sat down, yea, we wept,
‘When we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst thereof
We hanged up our harps.
For there they that led us captive asked us words of song,
And our tormentors asked of us mirth:
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
How shall we sing the Lord's song
In a foreign land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
Let my right band forget her cunning.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my moth,
If 1 remember thee not;
If T set not Jerusalem
‘Above my chiefest joy. . . «
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FREUD'S MESSIANIC IDENTIFICATION
substitute for it from some locality known to me... Near the
Porta Romana in Siena we had seen a large and brightly lighted
building. We learned that it was the Manicomio, the insane
asylum. Shortly before I had the dream I had heard that a man
of the same religious persuasion as myself had been obliged to
resign the position which he had painfully achieved in a State
asylum.
He tells us that Geseres and Ungeseres are not German
words, but come from the Hebrew meaning “imposed suffer-
ing” or “doom,” that also it suggests “leavened-unleavened”
[gesduert-ungesduert] and that,
In their fight out of Egypt the Children of Israel had not time
to allow their dough to rise and in memory of this, they eat un-
leavened bread to this day at Easter."
In the following dream that Freud reports, Messianism is
clearly evident:
Another time someone led me to the top of a hill and showed
me Rome half-shrouded in mist; it was so far away that I was
surprised at my view of it being so clear. There was more in
the content of this dream than I feel prepared to detail; but
the theme of ‘the promised land from afar’ was obvious in it.*
The following footnotes that Freud added in later editions
indicate that he had to overcome great resistance to visit Rome,
and that it was a deeply cherished wish:
*Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 194, with our italics, “And Moses went up
from the plains of Moab unto mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over
against Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land, even Gilead as far as
Dan; and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and the Plain, even the valley of
Jericho the city of palm-trees, as far as Zoar. And the Lord said unto him: “This
is the land which 1 swore unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying: I will
sive it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thow shalt
‘not go over thither.’ "Deuteronomy 34:1-5.
175
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
[Footnote added 1909] I discovered long since that it only needs
a little courage to fulfill wishes which till then have been re-
garded as unattainable; [added 125] and thereafter became a
constant pilgrim to Rome.”
He says of a dream which he cites as “warding off a threat-
ened interruption of my sleep. . . .
One morning at the height of summer, while I was staying at a
mountain resort in the Tyrol, I woke up knowing I had had a
dream that the Pope was dead.t 1 failed to interpret this dream
—a non-visual one—and only remembered as part of its basis
that I had read in a newspaper a short time before that his Holi-
ness was suffering from a slight indisposition. ¢
Several significant references to his strong emotional involve-
ment with Rome are found in his letters to Fliess. In spite of
his evident involvement, he does not mention Rome until
November 1897,"* ten years after the inception of his corre-
spondence with Fliess.* One tradition has it that the days of
the Messiah will be forty years, to correspond to the forty years
that the Jews spent in the desert. It may well be that only
with the passage of Freud’s fortieth year, which occurred on
May 6, 1896, could he bring himself to talk openly of his feel-
ings about Rome. It is also of interest in this connection that
he carefully dates the revelation of the “secret of dreams,” as
two months into his fortieth year. He writes to Fliess,
Do you suppose that some day a marble tablet will be placed
‘on the house, inscribed with these words: ‘In this house on July
+ Freud's italics
tFreud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 232. When Abulafia came to Rome to confer
with the Pope, “in the name of Jewry,” he learned, as he entered the city gate,
that the Pope, Nicholas Ill, had died suddenly during the aight—Scholem, p. 128.
There is, of course, the possibility that he may have mentioned Rome earlier
jim the unpublished parts of the letters,
176
FREUD'S MESSIANIC IDENTIFICATION
2gth, 1895, the Secret of Dreams was revealed to Dr. Sigmund
Freud.’ °
The dream that occurred that night, the one of Irma’s injection,
is the only dream which he dates in The Interpretation of
Dreams. Also it was in his thirty-ninth or fortieth year that
he made his Jewish identification a public and social thing by
joining the B'nai B'rith in Vienna.
He writes to Fliess on November 5, 1897,
Not long ago I was treated to a stimulating evening by my
friend Emanuel Lowy, who is professor of archaeology in Rome.
He has a fine and penetrating mind and is an excellent fellow.
He pays me a visit every year and keeps me up tll three o'clock
in the morning. He spends his autumn holiday in Vienna,
where his family lives. He tells me about Rome... 2
In December of that year he tells that he dreamt he was in
Rome, and
Incidentally my longing for Rome is deeply neurotic. It is con-
nected with my schoolboy hero-worship of the Semitic Hanni-
bal, and in fact this year I have no more reached Rome than he
did from Lake Trasimene2*
That Hannibal represented the Jewish opposition to Rome is
clearly indicated in his discussion in The Interpretation of
Dreams,* where he says,
To my youthful mind Hannibal and Rome symbolized the con-
flict between the tenacity of Jewry and the organization of the
Catholic church. And the increasing importance of the effects
of the anti-Semitic movement upon our emotional life helped
fix the thoughts and feelings of those carly days. Thus the wish
to go to Rome had become in my dream life a cloak and symbol
for a number of other passionate wishes.
17
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
In beginning a discussion of some of his problems in connec-
tion with his “dream book” he writes,
In any case I am not in a state to do anything else, except study
the topography of Rome, my longing for which becomes more
and more acute.”*
The secret dossier is getting thicker and thicker, as if it were
really looking forward to being opened at Easter. I am curious
myself about when Easter in Rome will be possible.
Discussing a possible change of occupation and residence, he
says, “It is a pity that these plans are just as fantastic as ‘Easter
in Rome.’"** “Rome is still far away; you know my Roman
dreams.” *
Discussing giving up of his lectures, he says
Also I have a secondary motive; the realization of a secret wish
which might mature at the same time as Rome, so, when Rome
becomes possible I shall throw up the lectureship. But, as I have
said, we are not in Rome yet.
What would you think of ten days in Rome at Easter (the
two of us, of course) if all goes well, if I can afford it and have
not been locked up, lynched or boycotted on account of the
Egyptian dream book? I have looked forward to it for so long.
Learning the eternal laws of life in the Eternal City would be
no bad combination.”
‘On the whole I am further away from Rome than at any
since we met, and the freshness of youth is notably declining.
‘The journey is long, the stations at which one can be thrown
out are very numerous, and it is still a matter of “if I can last
out.” *
If I closed with “Next Easter in Rome,” I should feel like a
pious Jew.
* Freud, Origins, p. 310. Doubtless a reference to a joke about a Jew who tried
to get to Karlsbad without paying his fare, and who is treated severely each time
the tickets are inspected. He tells a friend that he will get to Karlsbad “if my con-
stitution can stand it” Ch. The It. of Dreams, p. 195.
178
FREUD'S MESSIANIC IDENTIFICATION
The association of Jerusalem with Rome is here quite evi-
dent, since this is a play on “Next year in Jerusalem” with
which the Passover service is closed.
In the midst of this mental and material depression 1 am
haunted by the thought of spending Easter week in Rome this
year.**
“I shall no more get to Rome this Easter than you will,” he
writes, and then refers to a promise that Fliess made about
holding a “congress” with him on classical soil.*
In September rgor, after he finally succeeded in reaching
Rome, he writes to Fliess,
T ought to write to you about Rome, but it is difficult, It was an
overwhelming experience for me, and, as you know, the fulfill-
ment of a long-cherished wish. It was slightly disappointing, as
all such fulfillments are when one has waited for them too
Tong, + but it was a high-spot in my life all the same. But, while
I contemplated ancient Rome undisturbed (I could have wor-
shipped the humble and mutilated remnant of the Temple of
Minerva near the forum of Nerval) 2° found I could not freely
enjoy the second Rome [medieval Rome]; 1 was disturbed by
its meaning, and, being incapable of putting out of my mind my
own misery and all the other misery which I know to exist, I
found almost intolerable the lie of the salvation of mankind
which rears its head so proudly to heaven (our italics).°7
In March 1902 he writes to Fliess,
When I got back from Rome, my zest for life and work had
somewhat grown and my zest for martyrdom somewhat di-
minished.™*
ae italics. “Too long” because more than five years after his fortieth birth-
4
179
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
This implies, evidently, an earlier wish to martyr himself.
The idea that Freud had of himself as a military hero who
would die as a martyr, a fighter against anti-Semitism, an in-
terpreter of dreams, a dweller in Rome where he would realize
his deepest wish, all become intelligible if we assume that
Freud conceived of himself, at least to some degree, as the
military Messiah of the Jews, the Messiah-ben-Joseph, the Mes-
siah-ben-Ephraim, the Messiah-ben-Manassch.
Freud’s emotional identification with the military Messiah
of the Jews catches in metaphor several critical aspects of
Freud’s personality. The military Messiah, blessed by Moses,*®
can violate one of the strongest taboos among the Jews, the
commandment against killing, and the derivative taboo against
thoughts of aggression which might involve bloodshed. Thus
by participating in this image, Freud could feel free to indulge
in thoughts of killing oppressors in a way which would have
been otherwise traditionally closed. His ego could tolerate mur-
derous thoughts. We need only remind ourselves of the great
significance in Freud’s writings of death wishes directed against
others, particularly the father, and its formulation in the funda-
mental paradigm of the Oedipus complex. Furthermore, the
military ethos may well have been one of the primary sources
of his enormous energy.
Combining what we have already said about Freud’s Sabba-
tianism with the information we have concerning his identi-
fication with the military Messiah, Freud’s personality emerges
as militant-Sabbatian. Evidently Freud was prone to seize
upon the classical and supernatural figures as metaphorical
expressions of his own inclinations.
180
FREUD'S MESSIANIC IDENTIFICATION
Freud tended to see himself as protagonist in a grand his-
torical myth-drama, and not merely as a scientist or physician,
as the latter were understood in his culture. He early identified
himself with Hannibal, the Semitic hero who fought against
Roman culture in ancient times. He had the Jewish Messianic
lan of participating in the process by which the redemption
would come to pass. The medieval “Messiahs” had thus seen
themselves as playing the role of Messiah-ben-Joseph, regarding
the anguish that they experienced and witnessed as the birth
pangs of the creation of a new era.
As we might almost expect, the Devil also had his role to
play in Freud’s development. The Devil is an extremely com-
plex image. He is a Christian-legendary figure who can satisfy
the Sabbatian tendencies toward apostasy, When Satan appears
in Jewish legend, his function is largely to tempt the Jew to
apostasy. The Devil stands opposed to the Mosaic features in-
corporated in Christianity.
Freud once remarked to his associates,
Do you not know that I am the Devil? All my life I have had
to play the Devil, in order that others would be able to build
the most beautiful cathedral with the materials that I pro-
duced."
NOTES TO CHAPTER 22
1. Jones, II, pp. 364-365.
2. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 103.
3, Freud, Moses and Monothetsm, p. 114.
4, Joseph Klausner, The Messianic Idea in Israel, trans. from
Hebrew W. F. Stinespring (New York: Macmillan, 1955), pp-
483 ff.
181
THE MOSES THEME IN THE THOUGHT OF FREUD
5. Klausner, The Messianic Idea in Israel, p. 494.
6. Deuteronomy, 33:16-17.
7. Jones, I, p. 197.
8. Jones, I, p. 197.
9. Jones, I, p. 23.
10. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 197.
11. Cf. p. 153, above.
12. Cf. Sanhedrin, folio 98b.
13. CE. p. 176, above.
14. Written by Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. It is of
some interest that Jewish opponents of Herzl in Vienna some-
times derogatorily referred to him as the new Sabbatai Zevi.
15. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, pp. 441-442.
16. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 443.
17. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 194.
18. Freud, Origins, p. 229.
19. Sanhedrin II, p. 669. Soncino.
20. Freud, Origins, p. 322.
ar. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 107.
22, Jones, I, pp. 329-330. Jones simply says that Freud joined the
B'nai B'rith Society in 1895, and not whether it was before or
after May 6, since May 6, 1895, marked the end of his 39th
year and beginning of his goth.
23. Freud, Origins, p. 229. The remainder of this is deleted in the
published edition.
24. Freud, Origins, p. 236.
25. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, pp. 195-198.
26. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, pp. 196-197.
27. Freud, Origins, p. 269.
28. Freud, Origins, p. 276.
29. Freud, Origins, p. 276.
30. Freud, Origins, p. 279.
31. Freud, Origins, p. 280.
32. Freud, Origins, p. 294.
33. Freud, Origins, p. 317.
34. Freud, Origins, p. 327.
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FREUD'S MESSIANIC IDENTIFICATION
35. Freud, Origins, p. 328.
36. CE. pp. 134 ff., above.
37. Freud, Origins, pp. 335-336.
38. Freud, Origins, p. 342.
39. CE. pp. 171-172, above.
40. R. Laforgue, “Personliche Erinnerungen an Freud,” Lindauer
Psychotherapiewoche (1954), pp. 42-56: “Wissen Sie nicht, dass
ich der Teufel bin? Mein ganzes Leben habe ich den Teufel
spielen miissen, damit andere mit den Materielen die ich
herbeibrachte, die schdnsten Dome werden bauen kénnen”—
P. 49-
183
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Part IV
The Devil as Suspended Superego
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23
Introduction
In spite of the fact that we are centuries beyond the Middle
Ages when the Devil loomed as a critical figure in both
thought and social organization, the name Devil still carries
an uncanny association. As we shall see, the significance of
this image to Freud was extremely complex. If Freud played
the Devil, he yet conceived this role as being in the service of
the good, as the quotation cited at the end of Chapter 22 indi-
cates. There was enough precedent for this in the tradition
of Jewish mysticism. We recall the Frankists in this connec-
tion, who glorified sin as a way toward the redemption. In the
mystical dialectic the opposition of evil to good would result
in a world in which sin would no longer exist; and a concep-
tion of evil as a manifestation of the Divine was never to be
completely rejected.
‘A metaphor which illuminates and yet only hints is perhaps
the best that one can hope for in trying to catch the temper of
the mind which created psychoanalysis. In Part III an attempt
was made to understand the mind of Freud through the in-
spection of one metaphor, that of the Jewish hero Moses. Here
187
‘THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
we will try to do the same with another metaphor, that of the
Devil. As we hope we can demonstrate, in the same way that
the image of Moses was for Freud both a reality and a fiction,
so was the image of the Devil.
Before we embark on this task, an important methodological
consideration ought to be set out: One of the most important
contributions which Freud made to our understanding of hu-
man beings was explicating and rationalizing the bizarre, syn-
cretic, illogical, and seemingly accidental features of human
thought and behavior. From an historical point of view it
should be recognized that it was in the very opposition to such
modes of thought and behavior that modern science came into
being. The emerging science sought to eradicate these modes
of thought and to substitute system, logic, and discipline. In
a very fundamental sense, the developing scientific temper
recognized that if objectivity was to be realized, then a science
in which the immediate life concerns of the investigator do not
obtrude themselves would be required.
It was by virtue of such a position that classical science was
able to make the tremendous progress that it did, the fruits of
which we so eminently possess today. But the cost to classical
science of this advantage was that it had to put aside—today
we can add “temporarily”—whatever truths lay, however dis-
torted and veiled and misformulated, in the mumbo jumbo of
magic and religion.
The twist Freud gave to this situation was to point out that
mumbo jumbo did not tell us about the environmental world,
but about the psychological world; that, for example, though
a dream seemed to be about some state of affairs in the environ-
188
INTRODUCTION
mental world, its deeper meaning was in relation to the mind
which fashioned the dream. He turned his attention to the by-
products of human behavior: dreams, jokes, slips of the tongue.
As he once put it, psychoanalysis “. . . is accustomed to divine
secret and concealed things from unconsidered and unnoticed
details, from the rubbish heap, as it were, of our observa-
tions.” *
In order to achieve this it was necessary for him to do strange
things with his own mind. In some sense he had to let himself
descend into chaotic depths, to absorb them and fully appre-
ciate them. He had, so to speak, to enter into the madness of
man’s thoughts and to re-enact imaginatively the syncretism
involved in their generation, in order to apprehend their na-
ture rationally. Every psychological act which Freud described
as taking place unconsciously called for the conscious duplica-
tion of what ordinarily took place unconsciously. Thus it was
necessary for him to deliberately repeat the violations of logic
and good sense and morality which he discovered in the un-
conscious, to consciously consider opposites as the same, to
disregard logical and empirical objections, to overlook dis-
tinctions, to hold actively in mind an image of incest, etc. And
although frequently Freud was able to check himself in the
light of modern sobriety, there were times when the necessity
for fully appreciating the nature of this double role escaped
him.
It is in this way that the notion of the Devil played a role
in Freud’s thought. Of course Freud did not believe in the
Devil superstitiously as a real personage. He believed in the
189
‘THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
Devil rather in the profound way in which a great mind might
become immersed in metaphor.
Let us now consider one of the important problems with
which Freud’s biography presents us, the transition from the
role of neurophysiologist to psychoanalyst towards the end of
the fourth decade of his life.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 23
1. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 271.
24
The Transition
We have indicated earlier that the psychoanalytic contribu-
tion comes as a magnificent burst in a very short period
of time upon a life that, as Freud himself tells us when he dis-
cusses his medical education and activities, was essentially pre-
pared for other types of things. The hypothesis which we have
suggested, and which can be made more explicit now, is that
in the transition, Freud, so to speak, made contact with the
Jewish mystical tradition as it was part and parcel of his per-
sonality and culture.
The problem of how the transition was effected, what the
dynamics involved were, is still an open one. It is of course
axiomatic that each person draws upon his culture for the de-
termination of his social role. But in the case of an individual
who has one foot in one culture and the other foot in another
culture, the problem of why he should put his weight on one
foot rather than the other does not submit to solution very
readily. And even if we accept a simpler idea of cultural de-
termination, we have still to decide on the factors which make
for the particular adaptation of the cultural elements.
191
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
In terms of the facts, the following is a summary of some of
the main events in his professional career in the years which
preceded the shift to psychoanalysis. In 1882 when he was
twenty-six years old, he was advised to leave the physiology
laboratory by Briicke and he entered the general hospital.
Jones tells us that he imparted to Martha “what a wrench the
‘separation from science’ had been,” and “cheerfully added
‘but perhaps it is not a final one.’”* About his experiences in
this new course, Jones says,
He found no more interest in treating sick patients in the wards
than in studying their diseases. By now he must have been
more convinced than ever that he was not born to be a doctor.
What this aversion really signified is hard to determine. It
was assuredly no lack of respect for the profession of medicine,
as might perhaps be thought. On the contrary, there are signs
that he regarded it as a Promised Land—or, to be more accurate,
a Forbidden Land—into which for some reason he was not
destined to enter. Only a few years later, in August, 1888, in
reply to a friend’s advice to become a regular physician, he
wrote: “I entirely agree with you, but nevertheless I cannot do
what you recommend. ... I have not learned enough to be a
physician, In my medical development there is a rift which was
later painstakingly bridged. I could only learn enough to be-
come a neuropathologist. And now I lack, not youth, but time
and independence to make up for what I missed. Last winter I
was pretty busy; so I could just make ends meet with my big
family and had no time left for study.” In other words, there
was some sense of inferiority in the matter, which he ascribes—
not at all plausibly—to insufficient knowledge or even an in-
capacity to learn: he who could acquire knowledge so swiftly
and easily. Plainly it was a matter of inhibition rather than
incapacity. Perhaps from his remark, quoted earlier, about tor-
menting human beings, one should infer some inhibition in
192
‘THE TRANSITION
dealing with physical suffering and, as a doctor, sometimes even
having to add to it?
Jones's evidence of inhibition is certainly cogent, although
evidence for his explanation about Freud not being able to
witness physical suffering is wanting even if this is partially
true. Freud transferred to Meynert’s psychiatric clinic on May
1, 1883, The five months he stayed there essentially constituted
his only purely psychiatric experience. In October 1883 he
moved into the department of dermatology. On January 1,
1884, he entered the department of nervous diseases, “but as
often as not there were no nerve cases there.”* The superin-
tendent was not interested in such cases and released them as
soon as possible.
In September 1885 Freud was appointed Privatdocent in
neuropathology, almost exclusively on the basis of his “micro-
scopical-anatomical papers” as Briicke referred to them.
Briicke, in his report and recommendation, discussed Freud's
papers on “The Posterior Roots in Petromyzon” (1877-1878),
“The Nerve Cells in Crayfish” (1882), “A New Method for
Anatomical Preparations of the Central Nervous System”
(1879), “A Histological Method for the Study of Brain Tracts”
(1884), “A Case of Cerebral Hemmorrhage” (1884), and “On
Coca” (1884). He also mentioned the zoological paper on
eels (1877) and “Structure of the Elements of the Nervous
System” (1884). Freud’s trial lecture, which he had to de-
liver as part of the proceedings, was “The Medullary Tracts of
the Brain.” *
Because the superintendent did not want him in the depart-
ment of nervous diseases, he was transferred to the opthalmo-
193
‘THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
Jogical department in March 1885. On June 1, 1885, he
transferred to the dermatological department, but went to a
private mental hospital on June 7, evidently on leave from the
general hospital. Freud was in the meantime awarded a trav-
cling grant, and he severed his connection with the general hos-
pital at the end of August 1885. From October 13, 1885, till
February 28, 1886, Freud was visiting Charcot in Paris.
Just prior to his trip to Paris, Freud completed a series of
neurological papers on the medulla oblongata and the roots
and connections of the acoustic nerve, making observations on
the brains of kittens, puppies, embryos, and infants. In Paris,
Freud persisted in his neurological research, Charcot and
Guignon having provided him with infantile brains for the
purpose.
Te was in Paris that Freud began to think seriously about
leaving the field of neurology.
Freud found the laboratory conditions in the Salpétritre, which
were doubtless very different from what he had been accustomed
to, increasingly unsatisfactory, and on December 3 [1885] he
announced he had decided to abandon them. It was almost the
end of his work with the microscope; henceforth he was to
become a pure clinician. In the next letter he gave seven con-
vincing reasons for his decision, pleading, however, his intention
to resume anatomical researches in Vienna. This multiplicity
usually denotes the suppression of the fundamental reason [our
italics], and it might be assumed that this was a fascination for
psychopathology that Charcot had implanted in him, But there
was a more personal one besides, Within a year of his engage-
ment he had already felt a certain conflict between being en-
grossed in his “scientific work,” by which he always meant
laboratory work, and his love for Martha; he said that at times
194
THE TRANSITION
he felt the former was a dream and the latter a reality. Later
he assured her that anatomy of the brain was the only serious
rival she had ever had or was likely to have. Then from Paris
he wrote: “I have long known that my life cannot be entirely
given up to neuropathology, but that one can surrender it al-
together for a dear girl has only become clear to me here in
Paris; this was the weck before he withdrew from the
Salpétrigre laboratory. When announcing this decision he
added, “You may be sure that I have overcome my love for
science in so far as it came between us.” All of this had, of
course, its practical aspects as well as the emotional ones. Freud
knew very well that a married life could only mean clinical
work*
Earlier in this essay we recounted the conditions of anti-
Semitism in Vienna, especially around the time Freud was
separated from his institutional connection as a neurophysiol-
ogist.’ If, as has been indicated by psychoanalysts in line with
Freud's approach, the individual enters a “social contract” to
accept the values of his culture in return for acceptance by that
culture, then Freud was, in a sense, freed from his part of the
bargain with science and the Gentile world. He was told by
Briicke that his hoped-for rewards would not be forthcoming.
Perhaps in Freud's mind he was rejected by the scientific and
Gentile worlds. With a definite rejection because he was a
Jew, he was thrown back upon his original cultural identity.
Freud himself frequently felt that his Judaism provided him
with energy in the face of social rejection. But even here he
could not call upon classical Judaism, because, perhaps, he was
already too secular. The mystical current in Judaism contained,
however, a system of thought which provided opportunities of
195
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
intellectual advance in psychology which, perhaps, Freud was
one of the first to sense, consciously or unconsciously.
The role of his fiancée, Martha, in connection with the tran-
sition may also be quite critical. It is of particular interest that
Martha, as we recall, came from a family with mystical tend-
encies. Her grandfather was the mystically inclined Chief
Rabbi Isaac Bernays of Hamburg.* Isaac Bernays was related
to Heine, and Heine refers to him in his letters repeatedly.
Heine, it will be recalled, referred to baptism as the “admission
ticket” to European civilization. Martha’s uncle Michael had
actually been baptized and had thus achieved the position of
Professor of German at the University of Munich and Lehr-
Konsul to King Ludwig of Bavaria, a pattern which we have
already seen to be associated with Sabbatianism. That Martha
herself was a participant in the developing Romanticism of
the period is indicated by the fact that she had withdrawn
from an engagement into which she had almost entered be-
cause she was not in love, having on this ground been per-
suaded against the marriage by her brother Eli (who had
married Freud’s sister in 1883).
It may well be that Freud’s remark that “I have overcome
my love for science in so far as it came between us” has a
deeper significance in their relationship than the reason, given
by Jones, that only as a clinician could he make enough money
for them to marry and live on. From additional material pro-
vided by Jones, we know that Freud felt that the scientific role
was less attractive to Martha than the artistic. Freud was ex-
tremely jealous of two other suitors for Martha. One was a
196
THE TRANSITION
musician and the other an artist, “disgusting facts in them-
selves,” Jones adds.” Freud writes,
I think there is a general enmity between artists and those en-
gaged in the details of scientific work. We know that they
possess in their art a master key to open with case all female
hearts, whereas we stand helpless at the strange design of the
lock and have first to torment ourselves to discover a suitable
key to it?
There is a sense in which sex, Sabbatianism, Romanticism,
and art, when put in the same dimension, are at the opposite
pole from science and restrictive religion. In the former, per-
sonal freedom and individualism are important; in the latter
the stern discipline of the kind which we have discussed in
connection with Mosaism and rabbinism are important.
Freud’s engagement to Martha may have been psychologically
intertwined with the changes which were taking place in his
intellectual interests.
After returning to Vienna from Paris, Freud did very little
creative work. For five years, from 1886 to 1891, he published
no researches, with the exception of two slight papers.’* Pre-
sumably he was kept busy with his private practice and the
support of his growing family. He also busied himself with
translations of Charcot and Bernheim. In that period he was
evidently working on his essay, “On Aphasia,” which came out
in 1891. Early in this relatively uncreative five-year period, in
October 1886, he gave a paper “On Male Hysteria” which in-
volved an account of Charcot’s ideas. It was, he felt, badly
received." He was challenged to produce an appropriate case,
197
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
and he did so the next month. Freud’s account of this incident
indicates his bitterness.
This time I was applauded, but no further interest was taken
in me. The impression that the high authorities had rejected
my innovations remained unshaken; and, with my hysteria in
men and my production of hysterical paralyses by suggestion, I
found myself forced into the Opposition. As I was soon after-
wards excluded from the laboratory of cerebral anatomy and
for a whole session had nowhere to deliver my lectures, I with-
drew from academic life and ceased to attend the learned
societies. It is a whole generation since I have visited the
“Gesellschaft der Aerzte.” #
That this last assertion is not exactly true, as Jones points out,
only indicates all the more sharply the sense of rejection Freud
felt in this period, which preceded the development of psycho-
analysis.
For whatever weight it lends to our general argument,
Freud’s age at this period should be noted. The Jewish mysti-
cal tradition has always maintained that mystical concerns are
properly reserved for later life. The reason for this is that if
the person is too young he will misunderstand what he learns
and will fall into infidelity. Maimonides says,
I compare such a person to an infant fed with wheaten bread,
meat and wine; it will undoubtedly die, not because such food
is naturally unfit for the human body, but because of the weak-
ness of the child, who is unable to digest the food, and cannot
derive benefit from it.!*
In further discussing the teaching of the mysteries, Maimon-
ides says,
198
THE TRANSITION
Therefore it was considered inadvisable to teach it to young
men; nay, it is impossible for them to comprehend it, on ac-
count of the heat of their blood and the flame of youth, which
confuses their minds; that heat, which causes all the disorder,
must first disappear; they must have become moderate and set-
tled, humble in their hearts, and subdued in their temperament;
only then will they be able to arrive at the highest degree of the
perception of God, i.e, the study of Metaphysics, which is called
Ma’aseh Mercabah.*
Further on he says,
«+ « we also read the following passage: R. Jochanan said to
R. Elasar, “Come, I will teach you Ma‘aseh Mercabah.” The
reply was, “I am not yet old,” or in other words, I have not yet
become old, I still perceive in myself the hot blood and the
rashness of youth. You learn from this that, in addition to the
above named good qualities, a certain age is also required.*
There is some tradition that the year of transition is thirty-
six.t It was in his thirty-sixth year that the Baal Shem Tov is
said to have revealed himself to the world. And it is about this
time that Freud begins to show himself to the world, emerg-
ing from the “latency” of his previous years. Freud completed
his thirty-sixth year on May 6, 1892. Jones says,
Although he had a swift enough intuition, one which func-
tioned freely in his mature years, there is good reason to think
that in the years we have »0 far been considering, particularly
between 1875 and 1892, his development was slow and labori-
ous. ... The nineties, it ‘s true, once he got well under way,
* Maimonides, p. 48. The Ma‘aseh Mercabah, the work of the chariot of Ezekiel.
‘was the main Kabbalistic concern from the first to the tenth centuries. Cf. Scholem,
Second Lecture, pp. 40-79.
+ This number has other special mystical significance. According to legend
there are thirty-six men in the world at any given time for whose sake God docs
‘not destroy the world.
199
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
were otherwise, and one piece of insight after another followed
in rapid succession in what was his most creative period. There
moods and intuitions were added to arduous work and hard
thinking, and they even became more important than these.
A change in his personality, one of several in his life, seems to
have come over him in the carly nineties, and in the summer of
1895, three months after the Studies were published, we find
Breuer writing to their friend Fliess: “Freud's intellect is soar-
ing at its highest. I gaze after him as a hen at a hawk!"
That the significance of the thirty-sixth year may not have
been completely lost to Freud is indicated by the gift his father
gave him on his thirty-fifth birthday, iic., the beginning of his
thirty-sixth year—the Bible Freud had studied in his youth.'*
NOTES TO CHAPTER 24
1. Jones, I, p. 62.
2. Jones, I, p. 64.
3, Jones, I, p. 68.
4- Jones, I, p. 72.
5. Jones, I, p. 73-
6. Jones, I, p. 211.
7. CE. pp. 26 ff, above.
8. Cf. p. 57, above.
9. Jones, I, p. 111.
ro. Jones, I, p. 111.
11, Jones, I, p. 227.
12, Jones, I, p. 230.
13, Freud, Autobiographical Study, p. 26.
14. Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, p. 44.
15, Maimonides, p. 48.
16. Jones, I, pp. 241-242.
17. CE. p. 50, above.
200
25
The Hypnosis and Cocaine Episodes
During this transition period Freud seems to have moved
very quickly in his medical practice from the role of physician
to “healer.” He soon abandoned the traditional methods of
the physician and turned to the time-honored devices of the
“healer,” suggestion and hypnosis. Jones tells us that for the
eighteen months following December 1887, Freud used hyp-
notic suggestion extensively, and “this often brought gratify-
ing successes and replaced the feeling of helplessness by the
satisfaction of being admired as a magician.”*
In 1892, at the end of what we have called the “latency”
period, Freud published a paper entitled “A Case of Successful
Treatment by Hypnotism,” * which gives some interesting evi-
dence about what may be called the magician-healer motif in
Freud’s thought. Freud tells of a woman who could not nurse
her infants and who had difficulty in taking food herself.
Freud used hypnosis and direct suggestion when she had her
second child, and again when she had her third. The paper is
essentially lacking in any of the deep psychological insight of
Freud’s succeeding works. He argues for “antithetic ideas” or
201
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
a “counter-will” which serves to inhibit the volitional idea in
the person. Following the cccasion of his first successful treat-
ment of the woman, he says, he found it “annoying that no
reference was ever made to my remarkable achievement.” *
Besides this view of himself as able to do “remarkable” things,
this paper also indicates that he was concerned with such mat-
ters as casting out evil spirits. Thus, characterizing the nature
of such difficulties as the one he had cured, he says, “This emer-
gence of a counterwill is chiefly responsible for the characteris-
tic which often gives to hysterics the appearance almost of
being possessed by an evil spirit. ..."*
Additional evidence for the existence of this magician-healer
motif is to be found in the set of events Jones dubs the “Co-
caine Episode.” Freud had ordered a quantity of cocaine and
took some himself. He was impressed with the effect that it
had upon his mood. He quickly gave some to his friend
Fleischl, who was already addicted to morphine—an action
which resulted, by the way, in hastening his friend’s death.
Cocaine was for him a “magical drug.” In a letter that men-
tions writing an essay about it, he. says,
Lipuoseen and “J
I take very small doses of it regularly against indigestion, and
with the most brilliant success.*
Jones says,
He sent some to Martha “to make her strong and give her
cheeks a red color,” he pressed it on his friends and colleagues,
both for themselves and their patients, he gave it to his sisters.
In short, looked at from the vantage point of our present knowl-
edge, he was rapidly becoming a public menace
202
ef fens Z,p.8/
>
WHY THIS Omreen.
THE HYPNOSIS AND COCAINE EPISODES
In his essay on cocaine he gave an account of the religi
Practices associated with it among South American Indians.
He even gave an account of the religious observances connected
with its use, and mentioned the mythical saga of how Manco
Capac, the Royal Son of the Sun-God, had sent it as “a gift from
the gods to satisfy the hungry, fortify the weary, and make the
unfortunate forget their sorrows.”
He ... narrated a number of self-observations in which he had
studied the effects on hunger, sleep, and fatigue. He wrote of
the “exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which in no way differs
from the normal euphoria of the healthy person. ... You per-
ceive an increase of self-control and possess more vitality and
capacity for work. ... In other words, you are simply normal,
and it is soon hard to believe that you are under the influence of
any drug. ... Long intensive mental or physical work is per-
formed without any fatigue. ... This result is enjoyed without
any of the unpleasant after-effects that follow exhilaration
brought about by alcohol... Absolutely no craving for the
further use of cocaine appears after the first, or even repeated,
taking of the drug; one feels rather a certain curious aversion
to i”?
These rather irresponsible activities in the quest for a “mag-
ical drug,” to achieve mood modification, are reminiscent of
the whole history of magic. As we shall see when we discuss
his essay on demoniacal possession," Freud cites overcoming
incapacity for work as a major motive for entering a pact with
the Devil. Thus his evident concern with finding a means for
increasing “vitality and capacity for work” may be taken as
indicative of a predilection for the sort of thing that such a
pact may represent, psychologically. It is also interesting that
he believed that his Jewishness was a source of energy.
Indeed, perhaps, one of the important reasons for the aver-
at)
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
sion to “magical drugs” is that they are reminiscent of black
magic. A major psychological feature of black magic is that
it provides immediate gains without immediate payment. The
payment is feared as “really” both deferred and excessive. Thus
deferred and excessive payment for immediate gain is charac-
teristically associated with pacts with the Devil. The aversion
towards usury, in current times as well as throughout the his-
tory of Christianity, is not completely coincidental. For usury
is exactly a social expression of the essential features of the
Satanic Pact, immediate gains and excessive deferred pay-
ment.*
NOTES TO CHAPTER 25
1. Jones, I, p. 235.
2. Freud, Col. Papers, V, pp. 33-46-
3. Freud, Col. Papers, V, p. 37.
4. Freud, Col. Papers, V, p. 44.
5. Jones, I, p. 81.
6. Jones, I, p. 81.
7. Jones, I, pp. 82:83.
8. Cf. pp. 214 ff, below.
"This is not, of course, the place to discuss the various psychological phenomena
associated with the use of drugs, but we believe that the historical demoniacal as-
sociations, such as that suggested, constitute important elements in this connection.
Freud's later aversion to drugs may be a hint of his psychological condition in his
old age.
26
The Discovery of the Transference
One of the most significant of Freud’s therapeutic discover-
ies was the transference. Freud recognized in the deeply af-
fective involvement of the patient with the therapist a major
wehicle for the cure of the patient.
The phenomenon of the transference had caused Breuer to
hesitate. Yet Freud had within his personality the means to
cope with and control its consequences. Perhaps it was his
apparently excellent marital relationship that made the temp-
tation of sex relations so remote that it was essentially an im-
personal event as far as his own libidinous experiences were
concerned. Furthermore, his desire to play magician, or healer,
or Devil may have made mastery of the transference phenom-
enon positively rewarding. And he was perhaps more con-
cerned with the fulfillment of the mythico-dramatic role than
with the usually associated rewards.
His readiness to permit himself to be involved in the pa-
tient’s psychosexual life was one of the essential elements of
his discovery of the transference. He tells us in “On the His-
tory of the Psychoanalytic Movement”:
205
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
Anyone who reads the history of Breuer’s case now in the light
of the knowledge gained in the last twenty years will at once
perceive the symbolism in it—the snake, the stiffening, the dis-
abling of the arm—and, on taking into account the situation at
the bedside of the sick father, will easily guess the real inter-
pretation of her symptom-formation; his opinion of the part
played by sexuality in the young woman's mental life will then
be very different from that of her physician. In his treatment of
her case, Breuer could make use of a very intense suggestible
rapport on the part of the patient, which may serve us as a
prototype of what we call “transference” today. Now I have
strong reasons for surmising that after all her symptoms had
been relieved Breuer must have discovered from further indica-
tions the sexual motivation of this transference, but the uni
versal nature of this unexpected phenomenon escaped him, with
the result that, as though confronted by an “untoward event,”
he broke off all further investigation. . .
Freud’s discovery of the significance of the transference is
not a “discovery” in the simple sense of that word. His facil-
ity at intellectualization played its part, no doubt, in enabling
him to cope with the phenomenon. But his intellectual power
is an insufficient explanation.
One day a patient suddenly flung her arms around his neck,
an unexpected contretemps fortunately remedied by the entrance
of a servant. From then on he understood that the peculiar
relationship so effective therapeutically had an erotic basis,
whether concealed or overt.*
In order to rationalize it as he did, something extremely un-
usual within himself was required.
In the transference relationship Freud discovered that which
he had yearned for in his earlier years, “a master key to open
with ease all female hearts,” and he no longer stood “helpless
206
THE DISCOVERY OF THE TRANSFERENCE
at the strange design of the lock,” forced to “torment” him-
self “to discover a suitable key to it.”*
This does not mean that Freud had ignoble motives in con-
nection with the transference; nor should what we are saying
here be interpreted as in any way a criticism of the role of the
transference in the therapy relationship. But that it did articu-
late with some of the deeper aspects of his personality cannot
be doubted. The “magic” involved was one of the features of
classical magic, the trick or art of making people fall in love.
By turning this magic into a therapeutic device Freud made
one of the great contributions to modern knowledge. Yet it
is important to note that this trick or art is historically asso-
ciated with the lore of the Devil. As an example, we may cite
the affair of Gaufridi, who was burnt at the stake in Aix-en-
Provence for having seduced one Magdelaine de la Palud with
the supposed aid of the Devil. The Pact that he presumably
concluded runs as follows:
I, Louys Gaufridi, renounce all those benefits, spiritual as much
as corporeal, which could in any way be conferred upon me by
God and the Virgin Mary and all the saints in Paradise, particu-
larly my patron saint, John Baptist, as also St. Peter, St. Paul,
and St. Francis, and I give my body and soul to Lucifer before
whom I stand, and all the goods that I shall ever have (save
always the benefit of the sacraments touching those who receive
them).
And thus do I sign and witness it.
After three days the Devil answered:
By virtue of thy breath, thou wilt inflame with love of thy-
self all the girls and women whom thou shalt desire to possess,
provided that this breath reaches their nostrils.*
207
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
However, as we will see shortly, when Freud discusses the
motives for the Satanic Pact he states specifically that the de-
sire for possession of women is hardly critical. Nonetheless,
it cannot be denied that the adility to inflame the hearts of
women at will is historically associated with Satanic powers.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 26
1. Freud, Col. Papers, I, pp. 292-293.
2. Jones, I, p. 242.
3. CE. p. 197, above.
4: M. Garcon and J. Vinchon, The Devil: an Historical, Critical,
and Medical Study, trans. S. H. Guest (New York: E. P. Dut-
ton and Co, 1930), pp. 67-68.
27
The “Flectere . . .” of the Interpretation
of Dreams
The following is an excerpt from The Dybbuk, a dramatic
presentation of the Chassidic mood, which is pertinent as indi-
cating the role of Satanic powers in the Jewish mystical at-
mosphere:
CHENNOCH:
CHANNON:
CHENNOCH:
CHANNON:
CHENNOCH:
‘CHANNON:
CHENNOCH:
CHANNON:
When you perform the ablutions, do you also use
spells and go through all the ceremonies prescribed
by the book of Roziel? *
Yes.
You aren't afraid to?
No.
‘And you fast from Sabbath to Sabbath—isn't that
hard for you?
I's harder for me to eat on the Sabbath than to fast
the whole week. [Pause.] I've lost all desire to eat.
[Inviting confidence.] What do you do all this
for? What do you expect to gain by it?
[As if t0 himself.) 1 wish . . . 1 wish to attain pos-
session of a clear and sparkling diamond, and melt
it down in tears and inhale it into my soul. I want
to attain to the rays of the third plane of beauty.
209
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
I want .. . [Suddenly in violent perturbation.]
Yes—there are still two barrels of golden pieces
which I must get, for him who can count only
gold pieces."
ciennocs: [Appalled.] Channon, be careful! You're om a
slippery road. No holy powers will help you to
achieve these things.
cuaNnon: [Challenging him.] And if the holy powers will
not, then?
cuennocu: [Terrified.] I’m afraid to talk to you! I'm afraid
to be near you! [He rushes out. Channon remains
behind, his face full of defiance... .]*
In this section we will try to indicate how and in what sense,
Freud’s major work, The Interpretation of Dreams, was asso-
ciated with the idea of a Satanic Pact. There is hardly any
question that this work of Freud represents his major break-
through into the psychoanalytic mode of thought.
On the title page of the book appears the motto: Flectere si
nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo, (“if the gods above are no
use to me, then I’ll move all hell”). This quotation is from the
Aeneid of Virgil, and the passage from which it is taken is
even more indicative.
Well, if my powers are not great enough, I shall not hesitate—
that’s sure—to ask help wherever help may be found. If the
gods above are no use to me, then I'll move all hell?
Freud cites this quotation again in discussing the way in
which the “suppressed material finds methods and means of
forcing its way into consciousness in dreams.” *
In order to understand how it is possible for the suppressed
"For the father of his beloved, so that be might marry her.
210
‘THE “FLECTERE ...” OF THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
material to rise to consciousness, let us consider how this is
conceived in the framework of psychoanalytical theory. The
reason for the suppression is the action of forces associated
with the superego. If God is identified with the superego,
then the corresponding antagonistic image is the Devil, who
dwells in hell. As we have indicated earlier, in the psycho-
analytic relationship the analyst is at one and the same time
the representative of the superego as well as a tolerant, under-
standing father figure. Now what is the Devil, psychologi-
cally? The answer is eminently simple, on one level. The
Devil is the suspended superego. He is the permissive super-
ego. The Devil is that part of the person which permits him
to violate the precepts of the superego. Roheim in his discus-
sion of Freud’s paper on demoniacal possession says:
The dream is a refutation or rebuttal of an attack made upon
the Ego by the Super-Ego!
The pact with the Devil is therefore really a pact with the
Super-Ego not to help human beings in getting these things
but to stop preventing them in doing so.*
In dreams then, following Freud, we have the beginning of
the rebellion against the superego. However, to strip the
dream of its disguise is an even more rebellious act. It is a
conscious rebellion against the superego, which is perhaps the
major reason for resistance against interpretation. In becoming
conscious, the person risks full punishment by the superego,
because the revolt is avowed. As Freud recognized in the idea
of the Oedipus complex, it is the hostile wish against the par-
ent that is suppressed.
211
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
Ic is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual im-
pulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first
murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us
that this is so [our italics]. King Oedipus, who slew his father
Laius and married his mother Jocasta merely shows us the
fulfillment of our childhood wishes. But, more fortunate than
he, we have meanwhile succeeded, in so far as we have not be-
come psychoneurotics, in detaching our sexual impulses from
our mothers and in forgetting our jealousy of our fathers. Here
is one in whom these primaeval wishes of our childhood have
been fulfilled, and we shrink back from him with the whole
force of the repression by which those wishes have since that
time been held down within us.?
That Freud was able to cognize this so fully must mean that
the forces of repression within him were weakened to such an
extent that the full meaning and content of the Oedipus com-
plex could emerge; and some device was necessary whereby
the repressive forces could be overcome. In some way the hold
of the superego must have been suspended.
Earlier in this essay we discussed the role of Fliess in Freud’s
psychological development, pointing out that Fliess, as far as
general science was concerned, could “play the Devil” for
Freud. We have indicated that Fliess had the power to sus-
pend the scientific superego for Freud. Earlier we have also
discussed the image of Moses as representing the superego, and
we pointed out some of the devices Freud used in order to
suspend the threatened punishment inherent in the Moses
image. If Moses was the superego, then the Devil was Freud’s
necessary ally in his fight against him. In our discussion of
hypnosis, cocaine, and the transference, indications of suspen-
sion of the superego were suggested. Our introduction of the
212
THE “FLECTERE ...” OF THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
Devil idea into this discussion rounds out the great drama
which was taking place in Freud’s mind in his creation of
psychoanalysis, a drama which combined the inevitability of
the Greek tradition and the moral struggle of the Jewish tra-
dition.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 27
There is the possibility that Abulafia's writings make up the
part of the Sefer Razael from folio 24 onward. Cf. Gershom
Scholem, Cithve Yad Haivrim Vol. 1, Kabbala (Jerusalem:
Hebrew University Press, 1930), pp. 24-25-
2. The Dybbuk, pp. 57-58.
3 Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. C. Day Lewis (London: Hogarth
Press, 1952), p- 151.
“... quod si mea numina non sunt
magna satis, dubitem haud equidem implorare quod usquam.
Electere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.”
—Virgil, Tw Azneip ed. J. W. Mackail (Oxford: Clarendon
Press), Book VII, lines 310-312.
Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 608.
Geza Roheim, Psychoanalysis and Anthropolgy (New York:
International Universities Press, 1950), p- 469.
Roheim, p. 473.
Freud, The Int. of Dreams, pp. 262-263.
ve
ye
213
28
Freud’s Paper on Demoniacal Possession
Freud begins his paper “A Neurosis of Demoniacal Posses-
sion in the Seventeenth Century” * by telling us that neuroses
which may now appear in a “hypochondriacal guise” would
formerly masquerade in “demonological shape.”* Then he
writes, “Despite the somatic ideology of the era of ‘exact’ sci-
ence, the demonological theory of these dark ages has in the
Jong run justified itself.”* The paper is an analysis of a man
by the name of Christoph Haitzmann, a painter, who is sup-
posed to have entered into a contract with the Devil. Docu-
ments associated with the events surrounding the contract
were brought to Freud’s attention. The paper attempts to dis-
cover the underlying psychological factors involved in such a
contract. Early in the paper Freud says:
‘What in those days were thought to be evil spirits to us are base
and evil wishes, the derivatives of impulses which have been re-
jected and repressed. In one respect only do we not subscribe
to the explanation of these phenomena current in mediaeval
times; we have abandoned the projection of them into the outer
world, attributing their origin instead to the inner life of the
patient in whom they manifest themselves.‘
214
FREUD'S PAPER ON DEMONIACAL POSSESSION
With this proviso Freud enters into the spirit of the docu-
ments. On the basis of his detailed analysis, he tells us that
the essential conditions for making such a contract are (1)
that the man was depressed, (2) that the depression resulted
from the death of his father, and (3) that he was concerned
with earning a livelihood. From the Fliess correspondence we
know that these conditions actually coincide exactly with
Freud’s own state at the time that The Interpretation of
Dreams was being written.
The question of the seriousness of Freud’s entry into the Sa-
tanic Pact may well be raised. Freud was a modern man who
did not believe in supernatural beings. Indeed Freud himself,
in this essay on a medieval document, questions the seriousness
of the Satanic Pact even at that time. He suggests, on the basis
of a somewhat tenuous interpretation of the internal features of
the document, that some deception may have been involved.
But then it would all have been a ruse rather than a neurosis,
the painter a malingerer and a cheat instead of a man sick of
demoniacal possession! But the transition-stages between neu-
rosis and malingering are, as we know, very elastic.’
If, in his conception, Christoph Haitzmann may not have been
serious about all of this, we can hardly expect Freud to have
been fully taken by the metaphor. Yet what Freud is saying
is, in effect, that the full acceptance of the supernatural reality
of the Devil is not an essential feature of the motivation of the
Satanic Pact.
Concerning the motivation of the Satanic Pact, Freud asks,
“Why does one sell oneself to the Devil?” He enumerates the
possibilities: “Wealth, immunity from dangers, power over
215
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
mankind and over the forces of Nature, but above all these,
pleasure, the enjoyment of beautiful women.”* Then he says,
“Remarkable to relate, it was not for any one of these very
natural desires.”” He cites offers of the Devil to the painter
which the painter refuses.
Now since he refuses magical powers, money and pleasure
when the Devil offers them, and still less makes them a con-
dition of the Bond, it becomes really imperative to know what
the painter desired of the Devil when he entered into the Pact.
Some motive or other he must have had to induce him to have
any such dealings at all.
On this point, too, the Trophaeum provides us with reliable
information. He had become depressed, was unable or unwill-
ing to paint properly and was anxious about his livelihood, that
is to say, he suffered from melancholic depression with inca-
pacity for work and (justified) anxiety about his future.*
[Freud then cites some passages from the documents and freely
interprets.] That is to say, his father had died and he had con-
sequently fallen into a state of melancholia, whereupon the
Devil had appeared before him, inquired the cause of his de-
jection and grief, and had promised “to help him in every way
and give him aid.”
This man sold himself to the Devil, therefore, in order to be
freed from a state of depression. Truly an excellent motive,
in the judgment of those who can understand the torment of
these states and who appreciate, moreover, how little the art
of medicine can do to alleviate the malady.”
Freud’s allusion to the art of medicine is odd. As comment
on the art of medicine in the nineteenth or twentieth century,
particularly in contrast with psychoanalysis, it might have
some meaning. Thus this remark again suggests the contem-
porancous reference of this paper for Freud.
216
FREUD'S PAPER ON DEMONIACAL POSSESSION
He cites some additional supporting material from the docu-
ment, indicating Haitzmann’s sense of himself as a son of the
body of the Devil, and specifying the term of the Pact as nine
years. Freud says,
This incomprehensible Pact would then acquire a straightfor-
ward meaning which might be expressed thus: The Devil
binds himself for a period of nine years to take the place of his
lost father to the painter. At the end of this period the latter,
as was customary in such dealings, becomes the property of
the Devil, body and soul. The train of thought motivating this
Pact seems indeed to be as follows: Owing to my father’s death
Tam despondent and can no longer work; if I can but get a
father-substitute I shall be able to regain all that I have lost.
A man who has fallen into a melancholia on account of his
father's death must have loved that father deeply. The more
curious then that he should have come by the idea of taking
the Devil as a substitute for the loved parent.!®
In the preface to the second edition of The Interpretation
of Dreams, written in the summer of 1908, Freud writes,
For this book has a further subjective significance for me per-
sonally—a significance which I only grasped after I had com-
pleted it. It was, I found, a portion of my own self-analysis,
my reaction to my father's death—that is to say, to the most
important event, the most poignant loss, of a man's life."*
It should be noted that The Interpretation of Dreams was
brought to completion in the summer of 1899, from May to
September." Thus this preface, indicating the emotional sig-
nificance of the death of his father, was written almost exactly
nine years after the completion of the book! Further, that the
number nine is of particular significance to Freud is indicated
217
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
by his association of nine with The Interpretation of Dreams
in a paper he published in 1925.
My Interpretation of Dreams [1900] and my “Fragment of an
Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” [1905] (the case of Dora) were
suppressed by me—if not for the nine years enjoined by Hor-
ace—at all events for four or five years before I allowed them
to be published."*
Having introduced the idea of the Devil “as a substitute for
the loved parent,” Freud starts a new section which he en-
titles The Devil as a Father-Substitute, and spends over two
Pages presenting and refuting arguments by imagined “sober-
minded critics.” He argues for his imagined critic,
Why should we hold aloof from this obvious and natural ex-
planation? The state of affairs would then simply be that
someone in a helpless state, tortured with melancholic depres-
sion, sells himself to the Devil, in whose healing powers he
reposes the greatest confidence. That the depression was caused
by the father’s demise would then be quite irrelevant: it could
conceivably have been due to some other cause. This seems a
forceful and reasonable objection. We hear once more the fa-
miliar criticism of psycho-analysis that it regards the simplest
affairs in an unduly subtle and complicated way, discovers
secrets and problems where none exist, and that it achieves this
by magnifying the most insignificant trifles to support far-
reaching and bizarre conclusions."*
Freud goes on to argue, in reply, for the general soundness
of the psychoanalytic mode of thought. This protest in the
midst of his discussion again suggests his personal involvement
in conceiving of the Pact with the Devil as a reaction to the
father’s death, although we must add that this in no way de-
tracts from the validity of what he says.
218
FREUD'S PAPER ON DEMONIACAL POSSESSION
Freud goes on to assert:
«+. God is a father-substitute, or, more correctly, an exalted fa-
ther, or yet again, a reproduction of the father as seen and met
with in childhood—as the individual sees him in his own child-
hood and as mankind saw him in prehistoric times in the father
of the primal horde. . . 2
Ie requires no great analytic insight to divine that God and
the Devil were originally one and the same, a single figure
which was later split into two bearing opposed characteris-
tics... 3
The father is thus the individual prototype of both God and
the Devil. The fact that the figure of the primal father was
that of a being with unlimited potentialities of evil, bearing
much more resemblance to the Devil than to God, must have
left an indelible stamp on all religions.”
Perhaps precisely because Freud did not accept the super-
natural reality of the Devil, he could permit himself the full
exploitation of the metaphor. We may imagine that at times
the sense of possession became quite strong; and it is this feel
ing of possession that Freud is analyzing in his paper.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 28
1. Freud, Col. Papers, 1V, pp. 436-472.
2. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 436-
3. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 436.
4- Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 437-
5. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 465.
6. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 443-
7. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 443.
8, Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 444-
9. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, pp. 444-445-
10. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 446.
219
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
11, Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. xxvi.
12. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, pp. xix-xx.
13. Freud, Col. Papers, V, p. 187. This refers wo the years before
1899.
14. Freud, Col. Papers, 1V, pp. 447-448.
15. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 449-
16. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 450.
17. Freud, Col. Papers, IV, p. 45%.
29
The Composition of The Interpretation
of Dreams
In the next few pages we will present a series of quotations
from the Origins of Psychoanalysis, Freud's letters to Fliess,
which throw some light on Freud’s state of mind while he
was in the process of working out the material for what is
doubtless his greatest work, The Interpretation of Dreams.
We find confirmation that it was fashioned under conditions
specified by Freud as leading to the Satanic Pact: the death of
his father, depression and financial pressure. Freud, as we
recall, felt that it was his Judaism which supplied him with
energy. In our interpretation, it was partly Sabbatian Judaism
which helped him overcome his depression, in the metaphor
of the Devil.’ We find that Freud immerses himself in de-
moniacal literature; and that the desired effects, the liberation
from depression and ability to work, are achieved. We find
him referring to primitive Semitic sexual cults and one can
hypothesize that his Sabbatian tendencies were finding warm
echoes as he perused the history of these early Semitic sexual
221
‘THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
cults. We find him denying the possible effects of his “real
father” and asserting the significance of his Catholic nurse;
and again we sense in the latter figure an clement important
for the development of his Sabbatian tendencies, although the
available information is insufficient to allow for a detailed
analysis of her meaning to him. We have included a quotation
showing his reactions after the book is published, in which he
relates the dynamics of his own struggles of discovery to the
medieval Devil notion, the struggle of Jacob with the angel,
as well as a reference to “Lucifer-Amor.”
Freud's father died on the night of October 23, 1896. The
last sentence of the published version of the letter reporting the
death is “It all happened in my critical period, and I am really
down over it...
On December 4, 1896, he tells Fliess, “The first thing I shall
disclose to you about my works are the introductory quota-
tions,” and cites the “Flectere . ..” Two other quotations which
he cites are:
They are exceeding all bounds, I fear a breakdown; God does
not present the reckoning at the end of every week,
and
Cut it short! On doomsday it won't be worth a... !*
On December 6 he tells how “dead tired and mentally fresh”
he is “after completing the day's labour and earning the rec-
ompense that I néed for my well-being (ten hours and 100
florins)... .”*
On January 3, 1897, he writes in a blush of confidence “When
Tam not afraid I can take on all the devils in hell. ...”° And
222
COMPOSITION OF “THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS”
later in the same letter he says that as a quotation for the section
“Sexuality” he will use “‘from heaven through the world to
hell’—if that is the correct quotation.”*® On January 17, 1897,
he writes,
By the way, what have you got to say to the suggestion that the
whole of my brand-new theory of the primary origins of hys-
teria is already familiar and has been published a hundred times
over, though several centuries ago? Do you remember my
always saying that the mediaeval theory of possession, that held
by the ecclesiastical courts, was identical with our theory of a
foreign body and the splitting of consciousness? But why did
the devil who took possession of the poor victims invariably
commit misconduct with them, and in such horrible ways?
Why were the confessions extracted under torture so very like
what my patients tell me under psychological treatment? I
must delve into the literature of the subject.’
In his next letter of January 24, 1897, exactly three months
after his father’s death, he discusses the Devil and witchcraft
extensively, and refers to a sexual cult in the Semitic East:
The parallel with witchcraft is taking shape, and I believe it is
conclusive. Details have started crowding in, I have found the
explanation why witches “fly”; their broomstick is apparently
the great Lord Penis. Their secret gatherings, with dances and
other entertainment, can be seen any day in the streets where
the children play. I read one day that the gold which the devil
gave his victims regularly turned into excrement; and next day
Herr E, who reports that his nurse had money deliria, sud-
denly told me (by way of Cagliostro—alchemist—Dukaten-
scheisser) that Louise’s money was always excrement. Thus
in the witch stories it is only transformed back into the sub-
stance of which it originally consisted. If I only knew why the
devil's semen in witches’ confessions is always described as
“cold.” I have ordered a Malleus Maleficarum * and now that
223
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
I have put the finishing touches to the children’s paralyses I
shall study it diligently. Stories about the devil, the vocabulary
of popular swear-words, the rhymes and habits of the nursery,
are all gaining significance for me. Can you without trouble
suggest some good reading from your well-stocked memory?
In connection with the dances in witches’ confessions you will
recall the dancing epidemics of the Middle Ages. . ..*
I am toying with the idea that in the perversions, of which
hysteria is the negative, we may have the remnants of a prim-
itive sexual cult, which in the Semitic east may once have been
a religion (Moloch, Astarte).. .
I am beginning to dream of an extremely primitive devil
religion the rites of which continue to be performed secretly,
and now I understand the stern therapy of the witches’ judges.
The links are abundant.
Another tributary into the main stream is suggested by the
consideration that to this very day there is a class of persons
who tell stories similar to those of witches and my patients;
nobody believes them, though that does not shake their belief
in them. As you will have guessed, I refer to paranoiacs, whose
complaints that excrement is put in their food, that they are
abominably maltreated at night, sexually, etc., are pure mem-
ory content... .*
‘One more point. In the exacting standards insisted on by
hysterics in love, in their humility before the loved one, or in
their inability to marry because of unattainable ideals, I recog-
nize the influence of the father-figure. ‘The cause is, of course,
the immense elevation from which the father condescends to
the child’s level. In paranoia compare the combination of
megalomania with the creation of myths about the child’s true
parentage. That is the reverse side of the medal... .
I think I have now passed the age boundary; I am in a much
more stable state.
* Our deletions.
+ Deletions by the editors of Origins.
224
COMPOSITION OF “THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS”
Ina letter on April 28, 1897, Freud speaks of criticizing Fliess
“for taking no pleasure in the Middle Ages.” On May 31,
1897, he says he has a presentiment that he is “about to discover
the source of morality”, and tells of a dream which, he says,
“of course fulfills my wish to pin down a father as the origi-
nator of neurosis and put an end to my persistent doubts.” **
In his letter of June 12, 1897 he has quite clearly left the bio-
logical: “you take the biological, I the psychological.” And this
is immediately followed with “Let me confess that I have re-
cently made a collection of deeply significant Jewish stories.”
He says of himself, “I believe I am in a cocoon, and heaven
knows what sort of creature will emerge from it.”'? On
October 3, 1897, approaching the anniversary of his father's
death he writes,
I can only say that in my case my father played no active role,
though I certainly projected on to him an analogy from my-
self; that my “primary originator” [of neurosis] was an ugly,
elderly, but clever woman who told me a great deal about God
and hell, and gave me a high opinion of my own capacities.
On October 15, 1897, he quotes his mother about the old
nurse who took care of him when he was very young.
“Of course,” she said, “an elderly woman, very shrewd indeed.
She was always taking you to church. When you came home
you used to preach, and tell us about how God conducted His
affairs.” “*
This Catholic nurse may have had a role to play in the gen-
eration of his Sabbatian tendencies. He evidently had an early
exposure to Christian religion. The rearousal of these mem-
ories, when he was in the wake of the experience of his father's
death and as he was growing aware of the significance of the
a5
‘THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
Oedipus complex and becoming increasingly concerned with
the demoniacal, may not be coincidental. The old nurse may
have served as some sort of support in rebelling against the
superego.
The letter written on October 27, 1897, which relates experi-
ences that Freud had on “Sunday,” is of particular interest.
October 27, 1897, was actually a Wednesday, and therefore, the
Sunday referred to in the letter was October 24, 1897, which
was the anniversary of the death of his father. The letter shows
the personal importance of Fliess to Freud, the fact of his de-
pression, and his concern over money matters, and refers to the
classical story associated with the Satanic Pact, Goethe's Faust.
He writes,
I do not seem to be able to “wait” for your answer. The ex-
planation of your silence certainly is not that you have been
whirled back by some clemental power to the times when read-
ing and writing were a burden to you, as happened to me on
Sunday, when I wanted to write you a letter to mark your not-
yet-fortieth birthday; but I hope it was something just as harm-
less. As for myself, I have nothing to tell you except about my
analysis, which I think will be the most interesting thing about
me for you too. Business is hopelessly bad, it is so in general,
right up to the very top of the tree, so I am living only for
“inner” work. It gets hold of me and hauls me through the
past in rapid association of ideas; and my mood changes like
the landscape seen by a traveller from a train; and, as the great
port, using his privilege to ennoble (sublimate) things, put it:—
Und manche licbe Schatten steigen auf,
Gleich einer alten, halbverklungnen Sage,
Kommt erste Lieb! und Freundschaft mit herauf—*
* "And the shades of loved ones appear, and with them, like an old, half-for-
gotten myth, Girst love and friendship."—From the Dedication of Goethe's Faust.
226
COMPOSITION OF “THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS”
as well as first terror and strife. Some sad secrets of life are
being traced back to their first roots, the humble origins of
much pride and precedence are being laid bare. I am now ex-
periencing myself all the things that as a third party I have
witnessed going on in my patients—days when I slink about
depressed because I have understood nothing of the day's
dreams, phantasies or mood, and other days when a flash of
lightning brings coherence into the picture, and what has gone
before is revealed as preparation for the present.!*
On October 31, 1897, he makes an interesting remark about
the state of his sexuality—“Also sexual excitation is of no
more use to a person like me” *—indicative perhaps of his
depressed state, as well as his emotional maturity in the tradi-
tion of Kabbala.
In a letter that he wrote on December 5, 1897," he talks
about Rome and Hannibal and cites the quotation from Goethe
which we have mentioned. This suggests that Messianic
Kabbalistic ” feelings are operative, as well the sense of anti-
Semitism and a tendency toward obscurantism. The idea of
writing the book is first mentioned in May 1897. In the early
months of 1898 he completed a first draft of the book, with
the exception of the chapter reviewing the literature. The book
was actually brought to completion in the period from May
to September of 1899. In the year after its completion Freud
was evidently depressed by the negligible attention it received.
In the six years after its first publication only 351 copies were
sold.”*
On May 7, 1900, the day after his forty-fourth birthday,
The letter is originally dated December 3, 1897, but the December 3rd com-
tent is missing in the published version of the letter. The December sth entry
begins “A critical day prevented me from going on.”
27
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
Freud has a reaction to some of the high spirits he had mani-
fested while writing The Interpretation of Dreams. This re-
action is describable, to repeat Freud's metaphor, as that which
comes upon one when one discovers that “the gold which the
Devil gave his victims regularly turned into excrement.” *
He writes, first about Fliess and then about himself:
When your book is published none of us will be able to pass
the judgment on it which, as in the case of all great new
achievements, is reserved for posterity; but the beauty of the
conception, the originality of the ideas, the simple coherence of
the whole and the conviction with which it is written will
create an impression which will provide the just compensation
for the arduous wrestling with the demon. With me it is dif-
ferent. No critic... can see more clearly than I the dispropor-
tion there is between the problems and my answers to them,
and it will be a fitting punishment for me that none of the
unexplored regions of the mind in which I have been the first
mortal to set foot will ever bear my name or submit to my laws.
‘When breath threatened to fail me in the struggle I prayed the
angel to desist, and that is what he has done since then. But I
did not turn out to be the stronger, though since then I have
been noticeably limping.® Well, I really am forty-four now, a
CE. Goethe's Faust, on the limping Devil; and Jacob's
with the angel. It will be recalled that Tacob is to be called
with God,” because he strove with God and with men and prevailed (Gen. 32:29).
The medieval concept of the limping-Jew-Devil has its origin in this verse. Cf.
also the limping Dr. M. (Mephistopheles?) in The Interpretanon of Dreams, pp.
107 ff.
The following Biblical passage may also be of some interest in this connection:
“And the sun rose upon him [Jacob] as he passed over Peniel, and he limped upon
his thigh. ‘Therefore the children of Israel eat not the sinew of the thigh-vein (gid
ha-nasheh) which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day; because he [the
angel] touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, even in the sinew of the thigh-vein"—
Gen, 32:32-33.
We sce here a kind of testimony to the idea of the eating of the father and the
taboos aswociated with it as developed by Freud in Totem and Taboo. (Note also
that Freud's father was Jakob.) This passage in the Bible is an important basis for
228
imping after wrestling
COMPOSITION OF “THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS”
rather shabby old Jew [Israelit in the German], as you will see
for yourself in the summer or autumn.??
About two months later, he shows signs of building new
defenses. He fantasies a marble tablet on the house where “the
Secret of Dreams was revealed to Dr. Sigmund Freud,” ** and
says,
People’s opinions on the dream book are beginning to leave me
cold, and I am beginning to bewail its fate. The stone is ap-
parently not being worn down by the dripping?
It is then that we have one of the clearest images from Freud
of what he is going through. He says,
It is an intellectual hell, layer upon layer of it, with everything
fitfully gleaming and pulsating; and the outline of Lucifer-
Amor coming into sight at the darkest centre.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 29
CE. pp. 95 ff, above.
. Freud, Origins, p. 170. It is unfortunate that the published
version of the letter does not show what follows after this.
3. Freud, Origins, p. 172.
4. Freud, Origins, p. 173.
5. Freud, Origins, p. 183,
6
7
rs
. Freud, Origins, p. 184.
. Freud, Origins, p. 188.
the Jewish dietary laws—<f. S. L. Levin and E. A. Boyden, The Kosher Code,
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1940), p. 184. ‘The word gid may
mean tendons or blood vessels or nerves. Grd he-macheh is interpreted to mean the
sciatic nerve. It may be completely fortuitous, but “for what it is worth,” Freud
himself made an investigation of a disturbance of a nerve in the thigh from which
he himself suffered. Cf. Jones. I, p. 218, and Freud, “Uber die Bernhardtsche Sensi-
bilititsstorung am Oberschenkel,” Newrolog. Cencralblatt (1895), P. 14. P. 491.
229
‘THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
8. Henricus Institorus, Malleus Maleficarum, trans. M. Summers
(London: Pushkin Press, 1948). This book was the most
authoritative work on demonology and the standard hand-
book for Inquisitors for three centuries after its writing ia
1486.
9. Freud, Origins, pp. 188-191. Cf. pp. 176 ff, above.
10. Freud, Origins, p. 194.
11. Freud, Origins, p. 206.
12. Freud, Origins, p. 211.
13, Freud, Origins, p. 219.
14. Freud, Origins, p. 221.
15. Freud, Origins, pp. 225-226.
16. Freud, Origins, p. 227.
17. CE. pp. 169 ff above.
18. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, pp. xix-xx.
19. Freud, Origins, p. 188.
20. Freud, Origins, pp. 318-319.
21. Freud, Origins, p. 322. Letter of June 12, 1900.
22. Freud, Origins, pp. 323-324.
33. Freud, Origins, p. 323.
230
30
Accretion of Meanings to the Devil Image
The concept of the Devil, because of its ancient history and
also because it catches at a significant aspect of human exist-
ence, has many accretions. Throughout the Middle Ages the
Devil was a star in the great spiritual drama which was then
taking place. As Freud had so aptly pointed out, even though
the Devil is perhaps no longer a personage in the same sense
as in the Middle Ages, the psychological phenomena associated
with his image are still current and important. We have al-
ready indicated the psychological signicance of the Devil image
as an ally against the superego, or better, as its suspension. To
further illuminate the role of this image in Freud’s thought
we turn to a consideration of some other aspects of its meaning.
A. THE PROBLEM OF “DISTANCE”
As we have already indicated we believe that for Freud the
idea of the Devil functioned as a metaphor. A metaphor may
be more or less “distant” from the person. This phenomeno-
logical dimension, although perhaps difficult to specify exactly,
231
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
is extremely real. The “distance” of which we speak is, on the
one hand, at its greatest in scientific literature, if we take the
position that scientific constructs are metaphors. In science,
presumably, the content of the investigation should be “inde-
pendent” of the investigator. On the other hand, “distance” is
considerably less in works of art, particularly in the Romantic
tradition. In certain forms of poetry or music the distance is
minimal. We sometimes refer to a work of art as “personal,”
meaning that the “distance” is small. In our age, the capacity
to maintain “distance” is sometimes taken as the measure of
intellectual maturity: the greater the “distance” the greater
the maturity.
Part of the intellectual genius of Freud was his astounding
facility for maximizing “distance” with respect to modes of
thought in which minimal “distance” prevailed initially. The
Interpretation of Dreams is actually a magnificent achievement
as a treatment of the problem of “distance”; for it deals with
his own life and personality with such “distance” as to create
a new methodology.
The image of the Devil is one which is particularly prob-
lematical with respect to the matter of “distance.” In our dis-
cussion of the “Flectere . . .” quotation we saw that Freud took
this demonological reference as indicative of the forces within
the individual by which the “suppressed material finds meth-
ods and means of forcing its way into consciousness.” In the
religious allegory, God holds the content unconscious, and
the Devil is the counterforce which renders the material con-
scious. The task involved in Freud’s self-analysis was that of
bringing the unconscious into consciousness. Continuing the
232
ACCRETION OF MEANINGS TO THE DEVIL IMAGE
allegory, an alliance of the ego with the Devil was necessary
to make it possible to achieve the requisite “distance.” Thus
by permitting successful intervention of the Devil the person
wins “distance.” Hence, paradoxically, the Devil must cause
his own destruction. By bringing the daemonic into the light,
the daemonic is stripped of its daemonic character. More
prosaically this can be stated as follows: The disease of the
neurotic is his guilt. This guilt is, in itself, an evil and its
removal is good. However, within the neurosis the guilt is a
punishment for evil. Within the neurosis a counterforce to the
punishing imago is required. Hence there is an alliance with
such a counter-imago as will allow all to become open, acces-
sible to consciousness. If God is the guilt-producing imago,
then the Devil is the counterforce. But the Devil's very permis-
siveness is the cause of his own destruction. Having permitted
all to become open, the infantile character of both imagos is
revealed and “distance” with respect to each is won.
As Freud said in discussing Anatole France’s Revolt of the
Angels, “War will produce war and victory defeat. God de-
feated becomes Satan and Satan victorious will become God.” *
It is interesting that in Freud's later writing he separates Eros
from the image of the Devil and lets the Devil stand for destruc-
tiveness.*
B. THE DEVIL AS KNOWER
Classically the Devil is associated with knowing. He is usu-
ally depicted as a personage of great knowledge and craft.
Man's original sin consisted in eating of the Tree of Knowl-
edge, and therefore God's curse is upon him. When Adam and
233
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge “the eyes of them both were
opened.” * In the Faust legend the contract is made in despair
over lack of knowledge. It is interesting that Freud should
himself point up the knowing feature of his The Interpreta-
tion of Dreams. In the preface to the English edition in 1931,
he writes,
Tt contains, even according to my present-day judgment, the
most valuable of all the discoveries it has been my good fortune
to make. Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a
lifetime [our italics]
That our society is saturated with the association of evil with
knowing is indicated by our criminal proceedings, in which
the critical question is often whether the person “knew” what
he was doing. We characteristically identify innocence with
ignorance and guilt with knowledge.
When Freud broke the ground in making the most intimate
features of man the subject for scientific investigation, it was
necessary for him to repeat the very same moral and social
struggle which had been engaged in by the early pioneers in
the physical and biological sciences. That he was dealing with
such intimate matters made the struggle all the more difficult.
He could only indirectly avail himself of the “distance” of the
other sciences, which, on the surface, are outside the province
of the medieval soul. Freud’s repeated affirmations that he was
a scientist may be interpreted, in part, as an effort to draw upon
himself some of the fruits of the victories that science had
already won.
234
ACCRETION OF MEANINGS TO THE DEVIL IMAGE
c. THE CURATIVE POWER INHERENT
IN THE DEVIL
‘The Devil notion has associated with it a feature which we
might call that of aid-in-deep-despair. The Devil is supposed
to have great powers and is characteristically called upon when
all else has failed. He is a terrible cure, but a powerful one
nonetheless. Characteristically the Devil is approached, to use
the expression Freud used of writing the third part of his
Moses and Monotheism, “with the audacity of one who has
little or nothing to lose.” *
From a psychological point of view we envisage, on the basis
of what Freud has taught us, the individual, in his develop-
ment, as entering into a kind of social contract, in which the
individual agrees to abide by the demands of society in return
for certain basic satisfactions and protections. When one’s life
situation grows too bad, the question arises as to whether the
other party is abiding by his part of the contract. If this doubt
crosses the line and becomes a conclusion, that the other party
has broken the contract, then the individual feels free to do as
he pleases.
This is the conflict of Job, and the conflict the Jews have
experienced over and over again as they were persecuted. The
notion of the Covenant is psychologically the idea of the social
contract, that the Jews would accept the yoke of the Law in
return for God’s favor.
The idea of the contract with the Devil is of course con-
sistent with the contractual feature of both the Covenant and
235
THE DEVIL AS SUSPENDED SUPEREGO
the social contract, but is a new one in its details. The dread
of punishment still exists, but it is delayed. The new contract
is entered into because, with the loss of hope, the anguish turns
into despair; for despair is exactly anguish without hope of
relief.
The Devil is then a cure for despair. He is called upon as an
assertive act when all hope is gone. And in this sense also, the
Devil is always the Tempter. The essential message of the
Tempter is that the anticipated rewards associated with resist-
ance to temptation will not be forthcoming, that faith is
groundless. The Devil presents the new hope, and supports
his promise by immediate tokens of his favor. But since these
tokens themselves bring so much relief, one permits oneself, in
his relationship to the Devil, to be thus taken in (by the Devil),
since he feels that he has already been taken in (by God).
In more secular terms, Freud suffered from acute depressions.
His self-analysis, and his development of psychoanalysis, were
the cure for his depression. His practice had already provided
him with ample evidence that diseases which other people
were suffering from, for which there was no other hope, could
be cured by such means. In his despair over making a living,
and in his despair over anti-Semitism, he had “little or nothing
to lose” by his “audacity.” Furthermore, this new set of meth-
ods which he was producing held out the promise of bringing
patients to him and so solving at least the problem of making
a living. That he conceived of psychoanalysis as a means of
economic support is indicated by a remark he made in Sachs’s
presence. Sachs says,
236
ACCRETION OF MEANINGS TO THE DEVIL IMAGE
But Freud's expectation did not include any martyrdom: “I
would probably succeed in making a living with the help of
the therapeutic success of the new technique.” *
In thus becoming involved in the metaphor of the Devil,
Freud certainly risked great sin (or its psychological equivalent,
guilt) himself. But in this he had the support of the tradition
of the Bale’ Shem. These wonder-workers repeatedly risked
themselves by invoking God’s name in their efforts to cure
other people. In order to help people it was necessary for them
to thus invoke the Ineffable Name, which was always a pos-
sible violation of the third commandment, that “Thou shalt
not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord
will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.”*
NOTES TO CHAPTER 30
1. Freud, The Int, of Dreams, p. 608.
2. H. Sachs, “The Man Moses and the Man Freud,” Psychoanal.
Rev., 1941, 28, 156-162, p. 159.
3. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. Joan Riviere
(London: Hogarth Press, 1955), p. 100.
4 Gen. 377.
5. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. xxii.
6. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 66.
7. Sachs, “The Man Moses . . .,” p. 162.
8, Exodus 20:7.
237
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Part V
Psychoanalysis and Kabbala
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31
The Problem of Scholarship
In this section we propose to detail some of the similarities
between psychoanalysis as developed by Freud and the Kab-
balistic tradition. Up to this point we have emphasized Freud's
life and thought as they were an expression of, and a working
with, the classical problems associated with Jewish mysticism.
We will try to present some features of Kabbala primarily
through selected excerpts in order to show at their source the
ideas present in the Jewish mystical culture. Despite the simi-
larities of psychoanalysis to Kabbala as a doctrine and method,
we are unable to hypothesize that Freud actually read in
Kabbalistic literature. The point is actually a minor one. The
Kabbalistic spirit pervaded the culture out of which Freud
arises. This much is evident: Freud was opened up to Kab-
balistic feelings within himself, and this may be a sufficient
explanation of the close similarities. In a letter to Fliess, Freud
furnishes us with an instance of the ease with which ideas may
be transmitted when there is a readiness for them. Freud got
the idea of bisexuality, which as we shall see is characteristic
of Kabbala, from Fliess. Freud mentioned it to Swoboda, a pa-
241
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND KABBALA
tient, in the course of treatment. In a letter to Fliess, Freud
says Swoboda mentioned the word “bisexuality” to Weininger
who “slapped himself on the forehead and ran home to write
his book” * in which the idea was thoroughly exploited.
Kabbala is extremely old. Through the centuries it has been
modified and added to continuously. It has woven itself into
the cloth of man’s intellectual and spiritual stirrings in com-
plex and strange ways. The attempt to explicate such a doc-
trine, even to some degree, cannot be undertaken without
humility and awe. The hesitation stems perhaps from the
essential uncertainty associated with Kabbala, from the taboo
‘on its exposition, and from the sense that its meaning can
never be plumbed. The hesitation stems also from the fact
that any clear assertion about the nature of its content is some-
how denied, as though clarity itself is a denial of what Kabbala
affirms. Its allegorical, paradoxical, and obscurant features
invite the greatest latitude with respect to interpretation and
constrict clear-cut assertions. As it hints of great mysteries and
knowledge of precious secrets, so does it warn of inherent risks.
We have indicated that the major counterforce to Kabbalistic
thought came from the Jewish tradition of disciplined scholar-
ship? Scholarship provides the ballast which Kabbala itself
does not have. And the Kabbalistic superego, if we might use
such a term, dictates that the flight into Kabbalistic spaces
should be held in check by the development of scholarship.
‘The danger of scholarship in this sense, however, is that it may
be so heavy that one never gets off the ground.
‘These difficulties were indeed the very same that Freud faced.
He chafed at the problem of scholarship. Sometimes he chose
242
THE PROBLEM OF SCHOLARSHIP
to be wanton with it; sometimes he yielded to it. A few in-
stances of his struggles on the score of scholarship might be
cited to make the point:
The first chapter [of The Interpretation of Dreams], dealing
with the literature, .. . had always been a bug-bear to Freud?
He wrote it after the other parts of the book, evidently as a
kind of appeasement of the scientific superego. He says:
I shall give by way of preface a review of the work done by
earlier writers on the subject as well as of the present position
of the problems of dreams in the world of science, since, in the
course of my discussion I shall not often have occasion to revert
to those topics.*
Indeed the editor of the Mocern Library edition of Freud's
Basic Writings simply deletes the bulk of the chapter with a
note on its lack of importance.’ In a postscript to the first
chapter added for the 1909 edition, Freud indicates that his
failure to extend the account of the literature
«+. stands in need of justification. It may strike the reader as
an unsatisfactory one, but for me it was none the less decisive.
‘The notions which led me to give any account at all of the way
in which earlier writers have dealt with dreams were exhausted
with the completion of this introductory chapter; to continue
the task would have cost me an extraordinary effort—and the
result would have been of very little use or instruction.®
And although he says in connection with the reading of medi-
eval demonological materials that he “must delve into the
literature of the subject,”" he also writes “what horrifies me
more than anything else is all the psychology I shall have to
read in the next few years,”® indicating, perhaps, that he is
243,
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND KABBALA
interested in reading only insofar as it will stimulate the flight.
What Freud was, of course, demonstrating with the lengthy
scholarly section of The Interpretation of Dreams was that he
was capable of that kind of disciplined scholarship. The fact
that The Interpretation of Dreams contains only negligible
references to the demonological materials, which we know,
from his letters to Fliess, he consulted extensively, indicates
again his reluctance to discuss live source material.
He says,
If only one did not have to read! The literature on the subject
[of dreams], such as it is, is too much for me already.”
His actual writing procedure is the reverse of what the scientific
superego would have dictated.
First I want to get my own ideas into shape, then I shall make
a thorough study of the literature on the subject, and finally
make such insertions or revisions as my reading will give rise
to. So long as I have not finished my own work I cannot read,
and it is only in writing that I can fill in all the details.’°
The literature [on dreams} which I am now reading is re-
ducing me to idiocy. Reading is a terrible infliction imposed
upon all who write. In the process everything of one’s own
drains away. I often cannot manage to remember what I have
that is new, and yet it is all new. The reading stretches ahead
interminably, so far as I can see at present.
This hostility to pedantic scholarship was characteristic of
the Sabbatians in particular, who viewed rabbinic scholarship
as something dead and useless. One of the important values
the orthodox Jew saw in study was that it kept temptation at
a distance. In psychoanalytic terms, study served as a repressive
force. The deep immersion in Biblical and Talmudic study was
244
THE PROBLEM OF SCHOLARSHIP
to protect the individual from Satan and “alien thoughts.”
In the developments that took place within Jewish mysticism,
intuitional rather than scholarly ways of appreciating God
were emphasized. It was no longer necessary to pore over
Talmudic folios in order to attain higher piety.
Generally speaking, there are two principal areas in which
Kabbala and psychoanalysis show striking similarity: tech-
niques of interpretation and the importance and meaning at-
tached to sexuality. We will deal with these in order.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 31
. Richard Pfennig, Wilhelm Fliess und seine Nachentdecker:
O. Weininger und H, Swoboda, Berlin: E. Goldschmidt,
1906, p. 26.
CE. pp. 90 ft
Freud, The Int. of Dreams, pp. xix-xx.
. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 1.
. Freud, Basic Writings, p. 185,
. Freud, The Int. of Dreams, p. 93-
Freud, Origins, p. 188.
. Freud, Origins, p, 228.
9. Freud, Origins, p. 244.
10. Freud, Origins, p. 249.
11, Freud, Origins, p. 270.
12, Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition (New
York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House, 1939), p. 155-
Py ayvewy
245
32
Techniques of Interpretation
A. MAN AS TORAH
The subject matter of classical Kabbalistic interpretation was
the Torah. The Zohar, for example, is on the face of it a com-
mentary on the Torah, and its order follows the Pentateuch,
first citing text and then interpreting it. With the social de-
velopment of Kabbalistic modes of thought, an extremely in-
teresting transition took place. The idea gradually took hold
that the Messiah was a Torah. All of the attitudes of reverence
towards the Torah transferred themselves to the image of the
Messiah. Later the person of the Zaddik, the Holy Man, the
center of the Chassidic groups, came to be regarded as a Torah.
Every word the Zaddik spoke, every gesture he engaged in,
was taken as equal to the Torah in profundity and significance.
We may say that Freud carried this transition one step further.
The Kabbalistic forms of interpretation were now to be used in
the appreciation of any human being. This transition on
Freud’s part may be assigned to the democratic and enlightened
trends of modern society. Not only is the Zaddik a Torah, but
each person is a Torah!
246
‘TECHNIQUES OF INTERPRETATION
Actually the Zohar itself suggests such an interpretation of
man by using man as an analogy for the Torah, and already
distinguishes, as Freud does, between what is manifest and
latent.
Thus had the Torah not clothed herself in garments of this
world the world could not endure it. The stories of the Torah
are thus only her outer garments, and whoever looks upon
that garment as being the Torah itself, woe to that man—such
a one will have no portion in the next world. David thus said:
“Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out
of thy law” (Ps. cxix, 18), to wit, the things that are beneath
the garment. Observe this. The garments worn by a man
are the most visible part of him, and senseless people looking at
the man do not seem to see more in him than the garments.
But in truth the pride of the garments is the body of the man,
and the pride of the body is the soul. Similarly the Torah has
a body made up of the precepts of the Torah, called gufe torah
[bodies, main principles of the Torah], and that body is envel-
oped in garments made up of worldly narrations. The sense-
less people only see the garment, the mere narrations; those
who are somewhat wiser penetrate as far as the body. But the
really wise, the servants of the most high King, those who stood
on Mount Sinai, penetrate right through to the soul, the root
principle of all, namely, to the real Torah?
If Freud wished to hint, consciously or unconsciously, that
the analysis of a person is like the analysis of Torah, it would
not have been out of character for him, or inconsistent with
psychoanalytical principles, to name a critical case in some
revelatory fashion. We are immediately led to the case of
Dora,’ in connection with whom he discovered the trans-
ference. “Dora” readily becomes “Torah.” The discipline of
scholarship should immediately warn us that this may be an
247
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND KABBALA
instance of our own associations, a humorous and inconse-
quential coincidence, an example of “clang-association” hardly
to be admitted as evidence. One is aware that there are in-
numerable instances of coincidental similarity of words which,
because of the limited number of sounds that the human being
can make, arise with no other connection between them than
their phonic similarity. And thus one would dismiss the simi-
larity between Dora and Torah as “cute” but inconsequential.
But then, it is Freud of whom we are speaking; and it is
Freud whose mind inferred profound connections from word
similarity. It is quite sober to imagine that if Freud wanted to
hint at something without actually saying it, he would have
done it in this way.
However, such an argument is still insufficient as a basis for
inferring the significance of a Dora-Torah association. We
would want something still more specific from Freud on this
particular phonic connection, and this he obligingly provides
us. The associative links are to be found in his essay on Juda-
ism, Moses and Monotheism, where, we would suppose, they
belong.
The phonic identification of which we speak is his assertion
that the Egyptian Sun God Aton has become the Jewish
Adonai. He says,
‘There would be a short way of proving that the Mosaic religion
is nothing else but that of Aton: namely, by a confession of
faith, a proclamation. But I am afraid I should be told that
such a road is impracticable. The Jewish creed, as is well
known, says: “Schema Jisroel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echod.”
If the similarity of the name of the Egyptian Aton (or Atum)
to the Hebrew word Adonai and the Syrian divine name Adonis
248
TECHNIQUES OF INTERPRETATION
is not a mere accident, but is the result of a primeval unity in
language and meaning, then one could translate the Jewish
formula: “Hear, O Israel, our God Aton (Adonai) is the only
God.” I am, alas, entirely unqualified to answer this question
and have been able to find very little about it in the literature
concerned, but probably we had better not make things s0 sim-
ple.’
This identification of Aton with Adonai has been criticized
as historically groundless. We are reminded of Leo Strauss’s
comments to the effect that if a great author commits school-
boy errors, that we have reason to search for a deeper meaning
behind the apparent blunders.’ Although Strauss’s analysis is
restricted to conscious processes, there is no reason to suppose
that his considerations cannot be extrapolated to unconscious
processes, particularly since the dividing line is often vague.
The Aton-Adonai identification may, then, have a deeper sig-
nificance. It clearly shows that Freud conceived of a ready
transition from a £ to a d, consistent with classical linguistics,®
a transition which we are hypothesizing in going from Torah
to Dora. The Aton-Adonai transition, and, hence, the t-d
transition, is given to us by Freud in his major essay on Juda-
ism. If Freud, again consciously or unconsciously, wanted to
inform us that in psychoanalysis he is analyzing a human being
as the Jews have for centuries been analyzing Torah, he could
not have chosen a more appropriate place in his writings. That
Moses and Monotheism constitutes, so to speak, Freud's “dying
words” only adds weight to the probability of the hypothesis.
‘Actually the Sefer Yetsirah already refers to the essential identity or inter-
changeability of a # with a d (Paragraph 17 of Sefer Yetsirah). Cl. the Goldschmidt
edition, Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1894, p. 54
249
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND KABBALA
We can summarize the presumptive associational links in
Freud’s thought by a diagram similar to the one Freud uses in
his Psychopathology of Everyday Life:
t Aton —— Moses —— Torah £
d Adonai Dora = Ld
We have direct evidence in Freud’s writings for all the as
sociative links (represented by lines) in the diagram with the
exception of the broken line. Our point is that this final
association of Dora and Torah is strongly suggested by the
others.
Furthermore our presumptive identification of Dora and
Torah would not be complete without adding that the problem
of Dora’s name is one with which he was evidently concerned.
He discusses the matter in the Psychopathology of Everyday
Life:
While preparing the history of one of my patients for publi-
cation, I considered what first name I should give her in the
article. There scemed to be a wide choice; of course, certain
names were at once excluded by me, in the first place the real
name, then the names of members of my family to which I
would have objected, also some female names having an espe-
cially peculiar pronounciation. But, excluding these, there
should have been no need to being puzzled about such a name.
It would be thought, and I myself supposed, that a whole multi-
tude of feminine names would be placed at my disposal. In-
stead of this, only one sprang up, no other besides it, it was the
name Dora {our italics].
250
TECHNIQUES OF INTERPRETATION
Freud then goes on to tell us about a nurse of his sister’s chil-
dren whose real name was Rosa, but who had adopted the
name “Dora” in the household because the woman of the
house was also Rosa. He says,
‘Thus, when I sought a name of a person who could not retain
her own name (Freud's italics], no other except “Dora” oc-
curred to me.”
The Dora-Torah identification makes good sense when we
consider the anti-Semitic atmosphere in Vienna in Freud’s
time.® It would have been impossible for Freud to allow that
his techniques were associated with interpreting Torah. In-
deed, the Torah could not retain its own name!
Freud virtually says that he will analyze human productions
as though he were analyzing Torah. He writes,
We have attached no less importance in interpreting dreams to
every shade of the form of words in which they were laid be-
fore us. And even when it happened that the text of the dream
as we had it was meaningless or inadequate—as though the
effort to give a correct account of it had been unsuccessful—we
have taken this defect into account as well. In short, we have
treated as Holy Writ what previous writers have regarded as an
arbitrary improvisation . .. [our italics]?
Elsewhere we find him referring to “the unconscious, the real
center of our mental life,” in a manner reminiscent of Abulafia,
as “the part of us that is so much nearer the divine than our
poor consciousness.”
This interpretation of man as Holy Scripture was no doubt
facilitated by the general attitude of critical scrutiny toward
the thought and behavior of oneself and others which prevailed
251
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND KABBALA
among the Jews for centuries. Its basis is to be found in the
fact that for the orthodox Jew every action which he engaged
in during the day and night was a satisfaction or a defection
with respect to the varieties of commandments and derivations
from the commandments. A\ll activities that concerned prepara-
tion and eating of food, sexual and social relations, dress, rela-
tionship to relatives and strangers, toilet practices, etc. were
closely regulated. The way of living like a Jew was prescribed
from moment to moment, from sunrise to sunrise, from week
to week, from season to season, from birth to death. It was all
in fulfillment of the Covenant. Not only did the Jew police
himself, but he policed his neighbor also; for if his neighbor
defected, God’s wrath would fall equally on him and his
neighbor. Living was always a full-time religious occupation.
We may say that there occurred a ready transfer of this per-
ceptual attitude, the close scrutiny of the human being with
inordinate conscientiousness in every detail, from the long
Jewish tradition to psychoanalysis.
Even more important, for centuries the Torah had been
treated as a document so sacred that every letter, every nuance
of style—even the size of the letters in the handwritten scroll—
were regarded as having profound hidden meanings, which
the mystic and the exegete interpreted in a manner strikingly
like that of the psychoanalyst interpreting turns and vagaries of
human expression. All that was needed was a transfer of sub-
ject matter from the text of the Torah to the “text” of human
behavior, a point not even very novel in Jewish tradition.
TECHNIQUES OF INTERPRETATION
B. INTERPRETATION EN DETAIL AND EN MASSE
Freud’s method of interpreting dreams involves as one of its
major technical features an initial breaking up of the dream
into parts, and subsequent association to each part separately.
He wr
David Bakan Sigmund Freud And The Jewish Mystical Tradition
David Bakan