Ambiguous this phrase Freud's “anti-Semitism.” Is it the fumes of anti-Semitism that bathed Freud in Vienna? Is it the ambivalence about his Semitism that Freud indicated? We will return to this.
But for this commentary, let's examine Richards's question: “What does it mean that psychoanalysis was founded by a Jew?” (p. 987). For the fun of it, repeat the same question, changing the subject of the sentence, “psychoanalysis,” to another word. Say it out loud. “What does it mean that — ‘special relativity’ (Einstein);’ sociology ‘(Durkheim); ‘cultural anthropology’ (Boas); ‘philosophy of science,’ (Fleck and later Kuhn)—was founded by a Jew.” I've limited the list to fin de siècle middle Europe. In the next couple decades, we have political philosophy (Casirrer), art history (Panofsky) and archival work (Warburg). Who are they? Can you imitate Lenny Bruce and say, “Kike! Kike! Kike!” What they all share — Einstein, Durkheim, Boas, Fleck, Kuhn) is a search for universal principles, whether these be of the universe, mankind, or the study of science. And they're all Jews. And this is quite Jewish. To search. To search for universals that underlie our common—universe, humankind, scientific communities. For psychoanalysis too, for Freud, is an attempt to discover what is commonly human to all of us. What lies beneath; what we share. It is a Weltanschauung, a world view, as well as a treatment and theory of mind. Yet, most people don't ask that question—What does it mean that…. Is founded by a Jew—of special relativity of sociology, of anthropology or of philosophy of science. At least they do not ask with the same ambiguous or ambivalent tone as it's asked about psychoanalysis. There can be, I suggest, a fundamental anti-Semitism even in posing the question about psychoanalysis.
Let's turn back to external anti-Semitism, for it too is a universal stretching back at least two millennia—before Christ, before Mohammed and well before Hitler. Seneca, the first century Roman, called Jews “a criminal tribe.” Tacitus, not to be outdone, referred to Jews as “the abhorrent
ones.” And A.B. Yehoshua, who died recently, dates the first textual anti-semitism to the Book of Ester, where Haman refers to the Jews as “… a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; and their laws are different from all people; nor do they keep the king's law: … If it please the king, let it be written that they may be destroyed.” Not only does he state the Jew problem, he outlines the final solution, destroy them. So, Richard Wagner, the French Celine or the Portuguese Saramago have long-standing predecessors for Jew-hatred of Jew. They ain't so original.
Freud attributed hatred of Jews (in his otherwise intellectually misshapen Moses and Monotheism) as due to Jews being stiff-necked (Genesis, 32:9), a form of self-pride that in turn evokes envy and hence hatred. “Stiff-necked” is God's phrase; and God's solution to Moses was to kill them off! Envy, we recall from Greek myth, is that ravenous beast with withered body, who consumes hungrily and is never satisfied, even as blood drips from its maw.
Freud might have been speaking of his complex self. A man certain of his inner search (personal analysis) of his search in others' souls, of his technique which varied overtly little after the dream book: he stayed the clinical course, changing theories when the clinical work demanded. He was stiff-necked about listening to his patients, about creating a view of inner world, about humility before the impulses (sexual and aggressive); not so stiff-necked about theories. As Frattaroli demonstrated elegantly, Freud was both heterodox and orthodox. His lesser students (who were many) broke into camps of either heterodoxy (Jung, Adler) or orthodoxy (the Wednesday circle).
Let's turn to Fleck, who offers Richards a foundation to his exploration of the science (or discipline as Wallerstein preferred) of psychoanalysis. Fleck was speaking of hard science, such as his immunology. Kuhn, a follower of Fleck, got his Ph.D. in physics; Polanyi, in chemistry. When they spoke of science, they knew whereof they spoke. Psychoanalysis as a science? Perhaps we can bridge the gap between “science” and “art” by referring back to the German academic terms for these different disciplines: Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft. Natur, refers to “nature”; Geistes refers to “spirit.” But for the German, both are Wissenschaften, the bridging word brings them closer. The dictionary
will translate Wissenschaften as “science.” But we can get more concrete and try “knowledge work” for Wissenschaften. Wallerstein's resolution of this unfruitful science-art debate is to call psychoanalysis a discipline (personal communication). Like other disciplines—physics, ballet, violin, medicine—it takes years of repeated and practiced and mentored effort to do it right. As Yitzhak Perlman said to a master class, “Practice makes permanent.” That is, corrected practicing makes the master.
Richards correctly argues that Fleck gave multiple factors that influence science: cultural, social, historical, personal, psychological. He then argues persuasively the personal and historical sources that helped Freud's view of psychoanalysis. But, Kuhn, Polanyi and others built on Fleck, did not accept as given all that Fleck said. In fact, when the community of science works properly, the individual factors that may bias a given scientist's or scientific community's view, are winnowed out by further discovery. The truth will out. Einstein could not accept quantum mechanics, because (his) God would not place dice with the universe. But his physics community shifted towards demonstrating the validity of quantum mechanics. For emotions, Darwin postulated six or seven basic emotions. Margaret Mead, intent on arguing that cultures vary in all sorts of manners, argued that emotions and emotional expressions varied across cultures: a smile in New York would mean happy; in Samoa, something else. When Paul Ekman demonstrated empirically that at least our facial expression of emotions are universal, cross-cultural, Mead's book review of Ekman was entitled, “the a-PAUL-ing” state of emotions research. Over the decades Ekman and his colleagues demonstrated that emotions are discrete and universal, often with cross-cultural facial expression. (Although gestures can vary culturally). That is, philosophy of science was initiated by Fleck, but did not stop there; Polanyi argued for individual aesthetic judgements of scientific theories; Kuhn, in his final book, argued for at least eight different factors used by scientists to judge the validity of a theory. And time counts. When Copernicus posited a heliocentric view of the solar system, many astronomers accepted it as more valid than Ptolemy's, only because it was simpler, more elegant. Empirical proof for Copernicus' view took another two centuries for Foucault's pendulum. In the interim, the Church threatened excommunication (Galileo) and burned Tycho Brahe for their scientific demonstrations. That is, for a true discipline, the community of researchers will
move towards greater clarity and truth, move away from the idiosyncrasies of history or sociology or personality. On the other hand, fads may change (as do hemlines), but these we do not consider scientific advances. This is the dilemma for psychoanalysis: to what degree is it a discipline, to what degree faddish. Or to challenge us differently, to what degree is there a disciplined psychoanalytic community versus an array of dress-designers trying to get something new for this year's Fashion Week in New York or Paris?
Let's return to Richards's citations of Freud that documents his Jewishness, a non-religious Jewishness but embedded within a religiously scientific mind.
Freud's argument to the B'nai B'rith, where he presented many of his earliest ideas, was that as a Jew, he was prepared “to be in the opposition and renounce agreement with the compact majority” (p. 996). Elsewhere he articulates what he considered his Jewishness:
“…the attraction to Jewry and Jews (are) irresistible—many obscure emotional forces [which] were the more powerful the less they could be expressed in words, as well as a clear consciousness of inner identity, the safe privacy of a common mental.”
A bit elusive this: “obscure emotional forces…more powerful the less they could be expressed in words.” Freud was extraordinarily articulate, winner of the Goethe prize. For him not to be to articulate something leaves us puzzled, wanting. But, Freud does undress the ritual of Jewishness—not just the Hasid's frock and hat, but also the prayers and such. He distills out some sense of way of thinking that served as an inner strength and identification with this stiff-necked people who, to Spengler's dismay, just wouldn't disappear.
Richards points out that the term antisemitism arose in the mid-nineteenth century, although as Yehoshua documents, the concept and sentiments well-predated the term. In his landmark book, Makari (2021) documents that the term “xenophobia” arose in late nineteenth century, is not an ancient Greek term. First used by an obscure French journalist. This sentiment—fear of stranger—also preexisted. But the words to say it—anti-Semitism, xenophobia—are created in the era that was
otherwise a time of great liberation for nations: the 1848 revolutions gave birth to European nations and identities. Except for the Jews. They belonged nowhere. Einstein, when his theory was still being examined critically, was asked by a journalist what the Germans and French would say of him. His answer. If his theory holds up, the Germans will claim him as German; the French as a citizen of the world. If it failed, the French would dismiss him as a German and the Germans as a Jew.
And Freud's Vienna was a cauldron of ambivalences. A center for both antisemitism and great cosmopolitanism (Bettelheim, Freud and Man's Soul, 1983). And we must recall that the most enthusiastic anti-Semites in the 1930's were the academics, the students, the “intellectuals.” Auerbach, Adorno, Walter Benjamin, young Hanna Arendt (after being seduced by her middle aged, married, Nazi-sympathizing professor, that great Heidegger who never renounced his anti-Semitism) discovered this all too bitterly.
Let's return to one of the original questions: What to make of psychoanalysis being discovered by a Jew. Well, what to make of some twenty-percent of all Nobel prizes going to Jews, who number some eleven million (after the Nazi and later Stalinist culling)? We Jews are enigmatic. We are stiff-necked in the sense of hanging around with a common identity for so long, with our stories dating back to Abraham. To be stiff-necked means that one's spine is straight, a weight-lifter, gymnast taught me. Being stiff-necked and firm-spined creates an axis around which the athlete can be supple. So too with psychoanalysis, a firm spine (of technique and ethics) permits the analyst to have “supple thinking, relativism, playfulness and paradox” (D.J. Fisher, personal communication).
Freud would first look at himself deeply critically to understand feelings and reactions of those around him. He looked at his Jews to argue that our stiff-neckedness, our belief in such things as a one god (or, psychoanalytically, unity of one's self) our need to control impulses. The clarity of the ten commandments is exemplary of simplicity: in the Bible, there are five (mostly) yeses—I'm the Lord, no other gods; “God” not in vain; keep Shabbath; honor mother and father; and five no's: don't murder, don't adultery; don't steal; don't bear false witness, don't covet. Can we duplicate that for fundamental rules on psychoanalytic technique? Try. Start with Freud's three factors for a good interpretation: content,
timing, affect. Continue with transference and its dance partner, countertransference. And Freud's defenses are a good next step in this dance. If only we could agree on such clarity within our discipline.
But, back to Freud. He looks candidly at his fellow Jews and explains (without excusing, never excusing the anti-Semitic Gentile) as inducing anti-Semitic sentiment because of our stiff-neckedness. Or can we say pride in our legacy, our long-livingness, our ability to thrive in various “soils” foreign though these be. And we thrive not only for ourselves but for humankind's benefit—in Wissenschaft. This is not an indictment of Jews; this is not Freud suggesting that we not continue to be seekers of truths (whether this be of the universe's physical laws, or universal expressions of emotion, or our tumultuous inner lives and our capacity to rein them in).
How does Bellow (1998) capture the Jewish/Goyish dilemma?
“…there is something exceptional in all our Jewishness, … the risk we take upon ourselves. … (W)e live on the brink of an abyss and know how to do so. To us, our Jewish nature is clear and we can feel it—but it is hard to say the world can understand it.”
We Jews, we psychoanalysts, live this dilemma. Psychoanalysis had to be discovered by a Jew. Perhaps also sociology or anthropology or relativity. For we seek truths that underlie our universe even as we recognize variations in our humankind. Erikson and Bettelheim—both Jews—in their last books, however spoke plaintively that we need to seek our common humanity for us to survive. That is perhaps the best we can do.
I thank Dr. Richards for his usual scholarly study and for the opportunity to respond to it.