Psychoanalysis of Antisemitism*

Please do not expect too much from me. Antisemitism is a very complicated phenomenon. If one wishes to understand it, sociological, historical and political points of view must be employed as well as the psychological one, and opinions vary very much with regard to the relative significance which psychology has in the understanding of social phenomena. I do not like to estimate it too highly and am of the opinion that we can only throw light on one side of the problem, it is true, a side which would remain quite dark without our help. And so that you may not expect me to explain everything, I will begin by telling you of a discussion which I had with a colleague, who, it appeared to me, over-estimated the value of psychology in such connections which lead us straight to the point.

At that time I had a controversy with certain analysts with regard to their attempts to transfer the knowledge which they had gained by examining the mental conflicts of individual neurotics to socially and historically important mass-psychological phenomena, in too simple a manner. I was of the opinion that one must keep the following differences in mind. The actions of a person are determined from two sides, first by the current influences to which the person is subjected and to which he reacts, and secondly by the instinctual structure which he brings with him and which determines what these reactions will be. This structure for its part consists of biological factors on one side and all the early influences on the other side. A psychological description must therefore describe current experience and structure. But there is one category of phenomena in which one can relatively slight the current experiences, and place all the importance on the structure,—these are the neurotic phenomena. A neurotic is characterised by the fact that he