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This book can be encapsulated with a syllogism:
Sigmund Freud was Jewish.
Sigmund Freud created psychoanalysis.
Therefore, psychoanalysis is Jewish.
The rest, as Rabbi Hillel said, is commentary.
Much of the commentary is provided by the volume's editor, Harvey Schwartz, who works hard to provide a common core of meaning to a collection made up of very disparate parts. Five of the six chapters are transcribed versions of scholarly lectures given at the Jewish Thought and Psychoanalysis series organized by Schwartz in Philadelphia, beginning in 2013. Two of them deal directly with the connection between Freud's work and his Judaism, a third engages in Biblical exegesis with the intent of highlighting the parallels between psychoanalytic and traditional Jewish thought, a fourth explores the alleged phenomenon of telepathic communication between psychoanalyst and their patients and (not very convincingly) relates it to the Jewish mystical tradition, while a fifth explores the attractions of psychoanalytic thought among some of the founders of the State of Israel. The sixth chapter is a transcription of a conversation between Schwartz and the Israeli writer Ruth Calderon, around a short story of Calderon's that is informed by her understanding of psychoanalysis.
As a group, Schwartz explains in a short preface, the lectures (and subsequently the chapters in the volume) were intended “to introduce to the public both the similarities and differences between the psychoanalytic and the Jewish world views,” though the similarities, “the Jewishness of psychoanalysis” (p. xiii), undoubtedly occupy center stage. Schwartz adds that he conceived of the lecture series as a way to bring to light the “historically high percentage of psychoanalysts who have been Jewish,” a topic he suggests has “long been latent” because of “fears we associate with speaking freely of such matters” (p. xiv). What these fears are or who experiences them is not spelled out, but Schwartz's extended introductor