eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
In this pioneering work, David Bakan challenges the popular view of Freud as an entirely secular intellectual, schooled in modern culture rather than Jewish traditions. Bakan contends that the father of psychology was profoundly influenced by mystic lore about which he appeared to know very little — and which represents the antithesis of scientific method.
This work is based on the premise that Freudian psychoanalytic theory is largely rooted in the Jewish religion, particularly the mysticism of the kabbala. In a fascinating interpretation of the blend of personality and cultural history, Bakan explains how Freud's Jewish heritage contributed, either consciously or unconsciously, to his psychological theories. The author employs Freud's own distinction between being a Jew and the acceptance of Jewish doctrine to demonstrate the effect of Jewish mysticism in the formation of Freud's technical genius.
With its focus on the ways in which Freud was and was not Jewish, this study offers a model example of the problem of Jewish identity — as embodied by one of the giants of modern science, who professed to be both "infidel" and "Jew."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780486147499 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 04/05/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 696 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition
By David Bakan
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 2004 Dover Publications, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-14749-9
CHAPTER 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 almost 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 contemporaries 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 indicated that there have been three major blows to man's narcissism. Copernicus delivered the cosmological blow; Darwin delivered 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.
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 encompass practically every other form of intellectual endeavor.
The far-reaching consequences of Freud's thought are paradoxically 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 literature of our day uses Freudian terminology without mentioning 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 momentous contributions of Freud? The tremendous impact of psychoanalysis 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 "origins," used in the sense that it has for our question ; and the atmosphere of excitement which accompanied the publication 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 biological 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 unconscious aspersion on the legitimacy of the origins of psychoanalysis.
Just as we must guard against the processes which would undermine psychoanalysis, so must we guard against the genotypically 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 converted into scientific curiosity that aims at better insight into and integration of the work he left us." A new generation may perhaps scrutinize him more objectively, in the absence of emotions stirred among those people who knew him intimately and whose thoughts about psychoanalysis were conditioned by their expectations of Freud's own reactions.
CHAPTER 2Hypotheses Relating the Origins of Psychoanalysis to Freud's Personal Life
It is one of the major paradoxes of contemporary psychoanalytic 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 psychoanalytic thought are.
We note that Freud's intellectual life falls into two distinct periods, the one that preceded the psychoanalytic period and the psychoanalytic period itself. In the first period Freud concerned 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 contributions, including his pioneering work on the properties of cocaine. It was not until he was in his late thirties that he showed any indication of what was to come from him. The change which took place in him has been aptly characterized as follows:
When Freud startled his contemporaries with his first publication on the neuroses he was in his late thirties. He had behind him years of training, research, and practice in anatomy, physiology and neurology. With every step he took in his new venture he became more of a stranger to his colleagues. They could see 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 Brücke, Freud's materialistic-minded scientific mentor, would have reacted to the shift.
Yet Brücke would have been astonished, to put it mildly, had he known that one of his favorite pupils, one apparently a convert 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 psychoanalysis 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 compulsory deflection of my original purpose, and the triumph of my life is this: that after a very long way round I have regained the path in which I began....
Jones writes:
To medicine itself he felt no direct attraction. He did not conceal in later years that he never felt at home in the medical profession, and that he did not seem 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 problems—ultimately the great problem of how man came to be what he 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 suspension 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 afflictions brought him no nearer, and perhaps impeded his progress. That, however, he finally attained his goal, though by an extraordinary circuitous route, he rightly came to regard as the triumph of his life.
It is clear that, if we seek some explanation of Freud's psychoanalytic developments in the formal preparation and the professional work of his pre-psychoanalytic years, we find little there to give us insight. The tradition of severe materialism of Brücke, 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 ignore this other tradition and to strike out in completely new directions.
If the scientific background with which Freud was intimately acquainted does not provide us with any cogent clue to the question of the origins of psychoanalysis, what other hypotheses might be advanced? Five types of explanation are available, somewhat related to each other and referring primarily 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 discounted as one would discount the assertions of a mentally disturbed person.
Indeed, we also find this kind of hypothesis advanced in one way or another by persons who are sympathetic to Freud. Even Jones occasionally permits himself to be somewhat victimized. For example: "In tracing, as best we can, the genesis of Freud's original discoveries, we therefore legitimately consider 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 arguments may be appealing. However, by focusing attention on such factors as an "unusual family constellation" or an "opportunity ... 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 experiences.
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 cartoon....
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 character for his discoveries.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition by David Bakan. Copyright © 2004 Dover Publications, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Copyright Page,
Preface,
NOTES,
Preface to the New Edition,
Acknowledgments,
Part I - The Background of Freud's Development of Psychoanalysis,
1 - The Problem of the Origins of Psychoanalysis,
2 - Hypotheses Relating the Origins of Psychoanalysis to Freud's Personal Life,
3 - Psychoanalysis as a Problem in the History of Ideas,
4 - Anti-Semitism in Vienna,
5 - The General Question of Dissimulation,
6 - Did Freud Ever Dissemble?,
7 - Freud's Positive Identification as a Jew,
8 - Freud's Relationship to Fliess and His Other Jewish Associates,
Part II - The Milieu of Jewish Mysticism,
9 - Early Kabbala,
10 - Modern Kabbala,
11 - The Zohar,
12 - The Chmielnicki Period,
13 - Jewish Self-Government,
14 - The Sabbatian Episode,
15 - The Frankist Episode,
16 - Chassidism,
Part III - The Moses Theme in the Thought of Freud,
17 - The Moses of Michelangelo,
18 - Some Relevant Biographical Items,
19 - Moses and Monotheism—A Book of Double Content,
20 - Moses as an Egyptian,
21 - Moses Was Killed By the Jews,
22 - Freud's Messianic Identification,
Part IV - The Devil as Suspended Superego,
23 - Introduction,
24 - The Transition,
25 - The Hypnosis and Cocaine Episodes,
26 - The Discovery of the Transference,
27 - The "Flectere ..." of the Interpretation of Dreams,
28 - Freud's Paper on Demoniacal Possession,
29 - The Composition of The Interpretation of Dreams,
30 - Accretion of Meanings to the Devil Image,
Part V - Psychoanalysis and Kabbala,
31 - The Problem of Scholarship,
32 - Techniques of Interpretation,
33 - Sexuality,
Epilogue - Heimlichkeit,
Index,
A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF INTEREST,