From an early age I was aware of the impact of anti-Semitism. I came from a committed Jewish background, with many Holocaust survivors in our family.
I focused on anti-Semitism in my doctoral work, which stemmed from some cases in my clinical work. At that time, I became connected with Dr. Judith Kestenberg, who was interviewing child survivors of the Holocaust. A major aspect of this study was a focus on the impact of Holocaust trauma on child development. I became co-chair of this study, now housed at The Hebrew University and Yad Vashem in Israel. Our findings have been published. I am still involved with this study, The Study of Organized Persecution of Children.
The term “anti-Semitism” first emerged in 1879 in Germany as a “euphemistic substitute for ‘judenhass’, Jew hatred” (Prager and Telushkin, p. 199). It was coined by Wilhelm Marr, an anti-Jewish spokesman of that time. This term is actually a misnomer because anti-Semitism has nothing to do with Semites. The term evolved from a scholarly confusion in the previous century, when the word Semite was used to connote race as well as language.
According to Bernard Lewis, the Semites were never a race but were an ethnic group (Lewis, p. 50). The homeland of these Semites was probably the north Arabian desert, but they migrated into the Fertile Crescent and, through the Red Sea, to the Horn of Africa (Lewis, p. 50). As an ethnic group, the Semites share some degree of racial homogeneity and language (Lewis, p. 50). However, the Middle East of ancient times was peopled by other civilizations whose languages were diverse. One such group was the Canaanites, whose language dates back as far as the middle of the second millennium B.C. (Lewis, p. 52). According to Lewis' research, the Hebrew language was a derivative of Canaanite. Indeed, there is mention of the land of Canaan in the Biblical story of Abraham's origins. In the
Bible, the Israelites are referred to as speaking “the language of Canaan” (Lewis, p. 50). The other division of Semitic languages was Assyro-Babylonian, which became obscure and fell into oblivion by the sixth century B.C.
Lewis writes, “The Arabs are by a long way (italics mine) the last of the Semitic peoples to appear with a speaking role on the stage of history” (Lewis, p. 55). The spread of Arabic by the Muslim prophet Muhammad and his followers brought linguistic unity to the countries that it influenced. It is the most widely spoken and written of Semitic language (Lewis, p. 56). The second remaining Semitic language, but stemming from another people and ethnic group, is Hebrew. Surviving as a sacred language by Jews everywhere, Hebrew was revived within the last one hundred years by the early settlers in Palestine. It is now the official language of the State of Israel, which has as its second official language that of Arabic.
Anti-Semitism, in the context of this thesis, is defined as “attitudes and actions against Jews based on the belief that Jews are uniquely inferior, evil or deserving of condemnation by their very nature or by historical or supernatural dictates” (Grosser and Halperin, p. 5). It is a severe prejudice which goes beyond the boundaries of the prejudgment that is an underlying factor in prejudice (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 3). It involves stereotyping and stereotyped thinking which
is distinguished from the prejudgment only by a greater degree of rigidity. Prejudgment occurs wherever facts are not available. But stereotypy is a process which shows little concern for facts when they are available (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 4).
Ackerman and Jahoda propose that the psychological aspect underlying any definition of anti-Semitism as a prejudice is the presence of “a pattern of hostility in interpersonal relations which is directed against an entire group, or against its individual members; it fulfills a specific irrational function for its bearer” (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 4).
For Prager and Telushkin, the term anti-Semitism does not connote either racial or ethnic prejudice, although it may share some aspects. They feel that the presence of hatred in the persecutor must be understood as being essentially different from that of prejudice. “This hatred must be understood as being very different from a prejudice” (Prager
and Telushkin, p. 25). They postulate that anti-Semitism is a response of hatred directed towards Jews and Judaism.
For Jean-Paul Sartre, anti-Semitism is defined as a “passion”, which emerges as hatred (Sartre, p. 10). He writes that
for the anti-Semite, what makes the Jew is the presence in him of “Jewishness,” a Jewish principle analogous to phlogiston or the soporific virtue of opium. We must not be deceived: explanations on the basis of heredity and race come later; they are the slender scientific coating of this primitive conviction (Sartre, pp. 37-38).
There is a “metaphysical principle” that the anti-Semite magically applies to the Jew, which is that of doing evil. In turn, this makes the Jew on the level of the Devil. For the anti-Semite, hatred is therefore necessary because “the Jew is assimilable to the spirit of evil” (Sartre, p. 40).
For Yehuda Bauer, anti-Semitism connotes many levels of meaning, usually related to a specific period in history. He writes,
It is one thing to talk of religious hostility or racial discrimination or murderous intent such as that of pogromists in Tsarist Russia. It is quite another thing to talk about social discrimination…. Accusing Jews of Christ-killing is one action, but it is another to translate that into burning people at the stake —though the latter may derive from the former. Nazi anti-Semitism and current Soviet anti-Semitism are—one ought perhaps to add, “thank God”—quite different things (Bauer, p. 2).
Bauer takes an interesting point of view towards those who emphasize the emotional component in defining anti-Semitism. He states that prior to the emotional component developing, there must be an intellectual component. “I believe the key to any contemporary investigation of Jew hatred is that anti-Semitism will always be an intellectual or ideological movement before it becomes a mass phenomenon” (Bauer, p. 3). Bauer relates this to the powerful influence of thought over the acceptance of reality (Bauer, p. 4).
Rudolph Loewenstein defines three essential aspects in anti-Semitism, which he applies to behavioral patterns. He writes that these are
(1) an attitude of personal vigilance and distrust of Jews, which may crystallize into overt and obsessive dislike; (2) Judeophobia— a mixture of hatred, fear, contempt, and disgust for Jews; (3) a “delusional” or “paranoid” form of anti-Semitism, the victims of which are convinced of the existence of a world-wide Jewish plot for the enslavement and destruction of the Aryan world (Loewenstein, pp. 16-17).
Thus, Loewenstein makes a case for the connection of anti-Semitism and emotional disorder.
Scholars from varying fields have written about anti-Semitism. In the following material, these ideas will be described so as to broaden the understanding of anti-Semitism in its environment, where it affects both individuals and groups, and where it stems from both individuals and groups.
Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, both historians, describe their understanding of anti-Semitism as being a hatred directed at Jews and Judaism. They describe four basic reasons for anti-Semitism, of which the first is the hatred of Judaism and its challenge. Describing that Judaism is divided into three components of “God, Torah (laws and teachings), and Israel (Jewish nationhood)” these authors claim that each is a target for anti-Semites (Prager and Telushkin, p. 27). The God of the Jews, being the only God in the world, demands certain moral obligations to be fulfilled. Anti-Semites target the Jews because the legitimacy of other gods and the morality that is practiced is threatened. They write that
a basic element of antisemitism is, therefore, a rebellion against the thou shalts and the thou shalt nots introduced by the Jews in the name of a supreme moral authority. One explanation for the antimonotheism roots of antisemitism is offered by the contemporary (non-Jewish) social psychologist Ernest van den Haag: “Fundamental to [anti-Semitism] … though seldom explicit and conscious, is hostility to the Jewish belief in one God, a belief to which antisemites very reluctantly converted and which they never ceased to resist… . One cannot dare to be hostile to one's all-powerful God. but one can be to those who generated Him….” (Prager and Telushkin, p. 28).
Prager and Telushkin posit that the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus, which is contrary to the Jewish idea of monotheism, brought additional hatred to the Jews because
the Jews came to constitute the one group in the Christian world to deny the fundamental tenet, the defining characteristic, of Christianity, the divinity of Jesus. The Jews' monotheism which dictated this denial has been the single most important factor in Christian anti-Semitism (Prager and Telushkin, p. 80, italics mine).
This rejection of a basic tenet of the neighboring peoples has continually provoked hatred towards Jews. It is evident even in the Soviet Union, where the Jewish dissidents deny the basic tenets of Communism “just as their ancestors challenged the deities of ancient Rome or the divinity of Jesus” (Prager and Telushkin, p. 31). To continually deny what is reversed and worshiped by others engenders anti-Semitism.
Prager and Telushkin's second focus is Jewish law, which they feel is an additional component that solidifies the hatred towards the Jewish God. “The first aim of Jewish law is to have the Jew express his affirmation of God and denial of other gods in daily actions” (Prager and Telushkin, p. 32). Many additional laws dictated how Jews should live their lives, which was contrary to or different from their neighbors. “Had the Jews removed themselves from society, or been social failures, while adhering to their distinctiveness, they would have provoked far less hostility” (Prager and Telushkin, p. 33). The Jews' emphasis on performing the good deeds according to Jewish law was seen by many gentiles as a “denial of salvation through Christ” (Prager and Telushkin, p. 34). The fact that so many Jews are not currently so observant of Jewish law does not mitigate against these authors' argument because
thousands of years of observance continue to influence their behavior. The generally higher quality of Jews' lives, as exemplified by the stability of the family life, significant lower rates of intoxication and wife beating, higher education, greater professional success, much less violent crime, and greater communal solidarity, has been due solely to millennia of adherence to Jewish law, and has provoked profoundly ambivalent reactions from non-Jews (Prager and Telushkin, pp. 34-35).
The Jewish nation, the third source, provides for a major source of anti-Semitism as connected with Zionism and racism.
In the age of religion, the Jews were offered equality on the condition that they abandon their religion and convert… . In the new age of nationalism, the Jews were offered equality on the condition that they abandon their national identity and adopt the majority's national identity. In both ages opponents of the Jews have delivered the same message: cease being Jews (Prager and Telushkin, pp. 36-37).
Nowadays, many nations seek to deny the right of Israel to live as a nation. Therefore, they do not call themselves anti-Semites, but anti-Zionists. “But the major difference between antisemites throughout Jewish history and today's anti-Zionists is only which component of Judaism each has found most intolerable (Prager and Telushkin, p. 37).
Prager and Telushkin focus on the chosen people idea as a fourth basis for anti-Semitism. Defining the chosen people idea as the belief that God chose the Jews to spread ethical monotheism, these authors point out that this does not confer anything more than obligation and suffering. “The Jews are chosen only to complete a task” (Prager and Telushkin, p. 43). The chosen people idea has been interpreted negatively because it connotes superiority, which engenders hostility and hatred. The chosen idea and other distinct aspects of Jewish life are thought to have had a pronounced effect upon other people. So seriously was the Jews' chosenness taken by the Christians
…that among the first beliefs adopted by them was that the Church had taken over divine election from the Jews. The Church leaders did not deny Jewish chosenness; rather they so believed in it that they sought to appropriate it to themselves (Prager and Telushkin, pp. 40-41).
A scholar of Near Eastern studies, Bernard Lewis, concludes that anti-Semitism is a new force in the Arab world, compared to its long history in Europe. Lewis, tracing the history of anti-Semitism throughout Christianity, compared it to the emerging Arabic anti-Semitism of modern times. His thesis is that Arab anti-Semitism became increasingly virulent as Israel became a dominant force in the Middle East.
The philosophical and literary anti-Semitism of Christendom is an expression of certain deep-rooted and persistent fears and accusations. These . are for the most part unknown to the classical Islamic world. The Jews under the Muslim rule received little praise or even respect, and were sometimes blamed for various misdeeds. They were not, however, accused of being inherently evil or conspiring to take over the world. It was not until many centuries later that this kind of paranoia began to infect the Muslim world (Lewis, p. 127).
The basis for this long history devoid of major anti-Semitism is that “the outstanding characteristic . of the Jews as seen and treated in the classical Islamic world is their unimportance” (Lewis, p. 126). Lewis observed that even with the rise of modern Arab anti-Semitism, there is “the absence. —with few exceptions—of the kind of deep, intimate hatred characteristic of the classic anti-Semite in Central and Eastern Europe and sometimes elsewhere” (Lewis, p. 257). Nevertheless, the Arab anti-Semitism is quite powerful.
The presence of anti-Semitism in the Arab world now is traced by Lewis to the change in image of the Jew in the world. The Jew was no longer a minor presence, to be tolerated at best, after the Israeli war victories. Lewis writes,
Most of all, the sense of [Arab] outrage, as is clearly shown in countless speeches and writings, was due to the identity of those who inflicted these dramatic defeats in Muslim Arab armies and imposed their rule on Muslim Arab populations. The victors were not the followers of a world religion nor the armies of a might imperial power, by which one could be conquered without undue shame—not the Catholic kings of Spain, not the far-flung British Empire, not the immense and ruthless might of Russia—but the Jews, few, scattered and powerless, whose previous humility made their triumphs especially humiliating (Lewis, p. 289).
It was due to this tremendous narcissistic injury to Arab pride and tradition that Arab anti-Semitism emerged. The Arabs then adopted the Nazi-type anti-Semitic material. The groundwork for this was laid during the Second World War, where contacts were made between Arab
leaders and Nazi officials (Lewis, pp. 140-163). The end result is that Nazi material has been woven into the highest intellectual discussions and publications. Lewis writes of this as follows,
Since 1945, and in many regions for long before that, explicit antisemitic literature was published and read only within the lunatic fringes of society, and its influence has in recent times been minimal. This can no longer be said of the Arab world. The volume of anti-Semitic books and articles published, the size and number of editions and impressions, and eminence and authority of those who write, publish, and sponsor them, their place in school and college curricula, their role in the mass media, would all seem to suggest that classical antisemitism is an essential part of Arab intellectual life at the present time—almost as much as happened in Nazi Germany, and considerably more than in late nineteenth century France, where the clamor of the anti-Dreyfusards was answered by at least equally powerful voices in defense of reason and tolerance ((Lewis, p. 256).
There is frequent use of the many old forms of anti-Semitic attacks taken from the West, such as inferior racial characteristics, world domination and conspiracy charges, and ritual murder accusations. Thus, the old forms of anti-Semitism have been incorporated into drab propaganda and intellectual life. They do not, however, have the type of impact that the two-thousand-year-old Western anti-Semitism has. This does not mean, however, that the form and impact are less virulent.
For Shmuel Ettinger, a scholar of modern anti-Semitism, the overriding motivation of current Soviet anti-Semitism is to provide the Russian people with a negative portrait of the Jew, in much the same manner as a scapegoat. An underlying motivation is to diffuse the hostility engendered by the dictatorial government towards the Jews as a target.
The role assigned to the Jews within these ideological arguments, that of evil throughout history, the main opposition to all the positive trends in history, constitutes a real threat to Jewish existence. As long as the Soviet government keeps an iron grip on the population of the USSR, including all its constituents, it is difficult to believe that social or ideological upheavals could give rise
Page 139to far-reaching changes. But I foresee, with dread, a development that many predict as well, the fall of the Soviet government. If this development does not come about, the first to fall victim to the counter-revolution will be the Jews of the USSR who will be presented as the confirmed enemies of the Russian people (Ettinger, pp. 21-22).
For Ettinger, the main motif of Soviet anti-Semitism derives from the long history of Western and Russian anti-Semitism. What has become a particularly forceful theme relates to the chosen people idea. Ettinger describes the thinking of this motif as follows:
According to these propagandists, Zionism is a racist ideology, for it is based on “Judaic” principles which claim that the Jews are a chosen people. The term “a chosen people” means that the Jews may enslave, oppress and exploit other peoples with the aim of ruling the world. There exists an international conspiracy of Jews whose purpose is to make themselves rulers of the world (Ettinger, p. 15).
One such variation of this theme is that the Jewish Zionists cooperated with the Nazis to achieve the goal of the establishment of the State of Israel. Many other variations are promoted in this type of propaganda, such as the idea that the white collar positions in the USSR are held mainly by Jews. Ettinger traces this to an acute underlying class division between the lower class peasants and the urban intellectuals. “Matters have come to such a pass that among the lower classes it is popularly believed that the rulers of the USSR are mainly Jews. There were even those who claimed Brezhnev was a Jew” (Ettinger, p. 18).
Irwin Cotler, speaking on International anti-Semitism, at a conference entitled “Anti-Semitism: Threat to Western Civilization” on October 27, 1985, described eight components in modern anti-Semitism. He described that the classical formulation, where Jews are denied the right to live in a free society, is replaced by the new formulation, where Israel is denied the right to live in the world as a country.
Cotler delineated eight components of the new anti-Semitism. The first is political anti-Semitism, which finds expression in delegitimizing the Jewish people and Israel. This is seen in the United Nations' numerous
resolutions declaring Zionism is racism. There is a silence of the world community to these numerous resolutions, which becomes a prisoner, permeating the formula “Zionism is racism” into “Zionism is Nazism”. The second component, ideological anti-Semitism, occurs where the negative stereotypes of the past, such as Nazism, find contemporary counterparts. Therefore the Zionist, seen as racist, is seen also as a supporter of apartheid. The third is the public-legal character of anti-Semitism. This is not just propaganda, but formalized resolutions, as in the U.N. Cotler described the increased number of anti-Semitic incidents that emerged in Canada and Great Britain, following the passage of these U.N. resolutions. The fourth is the political-legal variant of anti-Semitism, which results in denial to Jewish particularity, in whatever form, in having equal access to international law. On a substantive level, this results in the obsessive condemnation of Israel. Among his many examples, Cotler cited how the Israeli delegate was denied the right to speak at the Copenhagen Conference on Women in 1980. The fifth is political anti-Semitism as a double orb. Cotler cited examples of politicians who feared the impact of disapproval of anti-Semitic nations, and voted accordingly. One such member of the U.S. Senate changed his vote because he feared certain reprisals. The sixth area is economic anti-Semitism where international repercussions are imposed on companies that do business with, hire, or promote, Jews. The seventh is the dimension of anti-Semitic terror. Cotler cited a study in which over 50 percent of all terrorist acts between 1980-1984 in Europe were against Jews or Jewish establishments. The eighth is a political-ideological- judicial anti-Semitism. Cotler here referred to groups that wish to “steal” the Holocaust with revisionistic views. Therefore, Jews are seen as collaborating with Nazis, converting the idea of a death camp to a recreational center, in order to get reparation money to build the State of Israel.
The philosopher and writer, Jean-Paul Sartre, writing after the Holocaust, reflects upon the issue of anti-Semitism in society. Obviously concerned about the nature of anti-Semitism, Sartre states that anti-Semitism does not have the right to exist “within the category of ideas protected by the right of free opinion” (Sartre, p. 10). Opinions or ideas that are aimed at extermination and/or suppression of others should be seen as passions having underlying hatred. Sartre's understanding of anti-Semitism is that of a necessary scapegoat and target
for society's deep hatreds. “Far from experience producing his idea of the Jew, it was the latter which explained his experience. If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him” (Sartre, p. 13). For Sartre, the idea of the Jew is essential to understanding anti-Semitism. The idea of the Jew is incorporated by man, via his free choice, into anti-Semitism. When the anti-Semite adopts one of the negative stereotyped ideas of the Jew, he is projecting his hatred onto a psychologically needed target. “Anti-Semitism is a free and total choice of oneself, a comprehensive attitude that one adopts not only towards Jews but toward men in general, toward history and society; it is at one and the same time a passion and a conception of the world” (Sartre, p. 17).
A special characteristic is that it is unprovoked by actual events in reality, existing more in the minds of men. “But ordinarily hate and anger have provocation: I have someone who has made me suffer, someone who condemns or insults me. We have just seen that anti-Semitic passion could not have such a character” (Sartre, p. 19). False reasoning appears to be a state of imperviousness, which is taken to a height of producing fear and terror in others. The anti-Semite “has chosen to find his being entirely outside himself, never to look within, to be nothing save the fear he inspires in others” (Sartre, p. 21). The Jew becomes the living representative of Satan, free to do all evil. The anti-Semite can blame all evil on the Jews.
The anti-Semite is afraid of discovering that the world is ill-contrived, for then it would be necessary for him to invent and modify, with the result that man would be the master of his own destinies, burdened with an agonizing and infinite responsibility. Thus he localizes all the evil of the universe in the Jew (Sartre, p. 40).
Sartre explains that the anti-Semite does not seek to rebuild society but merely to purge society of its so-called evil. In the process, sadism towards Jews can be promulgated.
But since Evil, to the anti-Semite, is incarnated in unarmed and harmless men, the latter never finds himself under the painful necessity of being heroic. It is fun to be an anti-Semite. One can beat and torture Jews without fear
Sartre postulates that because of the sadistic nature of the anti-Semite,
he must surround himself with Jews. Viewing this psychoanalytically, Sartre states that the anti-Semite gains pleasure by these contacts with his potential victims because of “a sort of inversion of their sadism; they take pleasure in keeping under their eyes the living image of this people whom they execrate” (Sartre, p. 48).
Sartre includes as sadistic the sexual aspects of the relationship between anti-Semite and Jew. He writes that the term “a beautiful Jewess” has
a very special sexual signification, different from that contained in the words “beautiful Rumanian”, “beautiful Greek”, or “beautiful American”… . This phrase carries an aura of rape and massacre. The “beautiful Jewess” is she whom the Cossacks under the Czars dragged by her hair … . And the special works which are given over to accounts of flagellation reserve a place of honor for the Jewess. But it is not necessary to look into esoteric literature … [because] the Jewess has a well-defined function in even the most serious novels. Frequently violated or beaten, she sometimes succeeds in escaping dishonor by means of death, but that is a form of justice; and those who keep their virtue are docile servants or humiliated women in love with indifferent Christians who marry Aryan women. I think nothing more is needed to indicate the place the Jewess holds as a sexual symbol in folklore.
A destroyer in function, a sadist with a pure heart the anti-Semite is, in the depths of his heart, a criminal. What he wishes, what he prepares, is the death of the Jew (Sartre, pp. 48-49).
The theme of the annihilation and inversion preoccupies Sartre, to the point that he considers anti-Semitic acts as reflecting the primitive ritual of human sacrifice which assures the favor of the gods. In becoming an anti-Semite, a man reflects his inhumanity. “Anti-Semitism, in short, is a fear of the human condition” (Sartre, p. 54). Sartre concludes that
contrary to a widespread opinion, it is not the Jewish character that provokes anti-Semitism but, rather, that it is the anti-Semite who creates the Jew. The primary phenomenon, therefore, is anti-Semitism, a regressive social force and a conception deriving from the prelogical world (Sartre, p. 143).
For Sartre, anti-Semitism is a barometer of the spread of Evil in the world. Therefore, to counteract Evil, the world must be willing to accept that the fate of the Jews is a barometer of the fate of the world. No one can be secure as long as Jews fear for their lives.
Nathan Ackerman and Marie Jahoda's study Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation was a research study of anti-Semitic patients in treatment in the U.S.A. Published in 1950, it was based on therapists' and analysts' data on their patients, without direct contact between the authors and their patients. From this study, the authors collated their findings in a description of the psychodynamics of the anti-Semite. Not surprisingly, the authors found that anti-Semitism covers a range of pathologies, from neuroses to psychoses to character disorders. What is surprising is that they found the absence of deep depression in the cases studied. “In this broad range of diagnoses and vague symptoms, however, one type of disturbance becomes conspicuous through its absence. None of the cases manifested a genuine, deep depression (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 25). This is attributed to the apparent contradiction of excessive self-blame concomitant with projection onto the outside world. The authors note that this does not preclude “a depression reaction before or after anti-Semitic manifestations in one and the same individual. Such alternate patterns of depressive moods and outbursts of anti-Semitism were indeed reported in a few cases” (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 26).
Ackerman and Jahoda found certain emotional predispositions to anti-Semitism, such as anxiety; confusion of the concept of the self; unsatisfactory interpersonal relationships; conformity and the fear of the different; impaired reality adaptation; and impaired conscience development and repression. They summarize their lengthy discussion on each of these predispositions as follows:
Each of these individuals is plagued by pervasive anxiety. Deeply confused in his own self-image, he derives no strength from his personal identity with which to face a menacing world. His personal relationships are shallow and unsatisfying. His group relationships are characterized by an exaggerated surface conformity, beneath which lurks a primitive, untamed hostility. Within his group the slightest indication of nonconformity appears as a threat.
Page 144Outside his group, differences are exaggerated. Lacking a basis of genuine identification, he tends in a compensatory way to define his group status by reference to qualities he does not actually possess. He achieves only a partial adaptation to reality, and is unable to develop spontaneous and genuine personal relationships. His conscience is underdeveloped and unreliable, his repressions incomplete and inefficient, thereby necessitating recourse to the laborious tasks of conscious repression (Ackerman and Jahoda, pp. 39-40).
(The authors note that their portrait of the anti-Semite is similar to Jean-Paul Sartre's in his writings.) These emotional factors do not appear as isolated traits per se, but emerge in a psychodynamic interrelationship within the personality.
The emotional predisposition cannot produce the entire picture, which Ackerman and Jahoda recognize. They sought to understand the genesis of these predispositions, which were described in their findings. The first, the relationship between the parents of the anti-Semite, revealed poor marital adjustments in every case.
At best, only the semblance of a respectable family union was preserved through conformity to conventional standards. Basically, there was no warmth, affection, or sympathy between the parents; and what little evidence of the sexual adaptation between the parents is available indicates that sexual relations were unsatisfactory (Ackerman and Jahoda, pp. 43-44).
They describe sharply contrasting personalities in the parents. “Even where such basic differences were not understood by the children, the fundamental hostility between the parents was inescapably felt” (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 44). Children often felt these differences stemmed from the different groups and backgrounds the parents came from, which was understood as the tangible basis for the parental difficulties.
Such an emphasis had, from the child's point of view, the apparent advantage… . They at least provided a name for the lack of ease, warmth, and unity in the family … [namely] difference in group membership (Ackerman and Jahoda, pp. 44-45).
The second factor concerns the relationship of the patients as children.
Among the factors that affect the predisposition to anti-Semitism are rejection and narcissistic exploitation of the child. This child becomes skilled in pretending to be submissive, while aggression and rage lie underneath. Excessive compliance during the anal stage results in aggressive derivatives emerging in the later stages of development. The third factor concerns the oedipal struggle where there is an incomplete resolution, characterized by “incomplete incorporation of the parental images” (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 49). This produces “lifelong indecisiveness and confusion as to sexual identity”, resulting in a sense of weakness, which is defended against by an attack on the Jews, perceived as a weak group (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 49).
Ackerman and Jahoda also describe the major ego defenses that were prevalent in the patients they studied. They include rationalization as an aspect of each of the other defenses. In projection, the anti-Semite finds his modus operandi. “From the psychoanalytic point of view, the character pattern in such persons favors ‘acting out,’ seeking the relief of emotional tension through impulsive expression, as an attempted solution of inner conflict (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 56). It is reinforced by the negative stereotype of the Jew for over two thousand years.
For the anti-Semite, the Jew is a living Rorschach ink-blot. His alleged and sometimes actual qualities are so manifold and so inconsistent, so ambiguous and so indeterminate, that the anti-Semite sees whatever he needs to see in the Jew (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 58).
With the use of denial, in an interplay with projection, a vicious cycle is formed. This emerges as a result of the failure of projection and the recourse to denial. The process itself creates increasing anxiety.
Anti-Semitism appears to serve the purpose of fortifying every step in the defense pattern. A denial sounds more convincing when it is substantiated by the rejection of an external group which is alleged to have those qualities which the anti-Semite wishes to renounce or deny in himself (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 62).
The authors describe that an underlying component in these defenses may be a wish to conform.
Having submissively denied parts of their own individuality, such persons feel deep resentment against anyone who does not do
Page 146likewise. They demand that other persons should conform to the same restrictions … [which are] a result of partial self-denial (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 63).
Another defense was social aggression as a substitute for anxiety, where the aggression is utilized in the service of denying one's passivity. “For at least that limited time during which they try to intimidate others, they may escape the need to face their own anxiety” (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 63). This is culturally tinged with the acceptability and availability of the Jew as a target in any given society. In the culture of America in 1950, Ackerman and Jahoda find that for the most part this defense is not fixed, but remains labile, with alternations between overt anxiety and withdrawal. The defense of avoidance of contact, or withdrawal, oscillates with direct attack.
Like straws in the wind, these anti-Semites are tossed about because of their inability to make a clear-cut distinction between their own selves and the surrounding world…. Lacking well-established internalized standards they are likely to affiliate themselves with groups which give them pseudo-strength by providing outlets for their hostilities (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 65).
Closely associated with these defenses is that of opposition, linked to the use of social aggression as a substitute for anxiety relief. Other defenses include displacement, reaction formation, compensation, and introjection.
What compensatory mechanisms aim to achieve in the sphere of social status, introjection attempts on the psychic level. Introjection … is an attempt to take into oneself what appears to be desirable in other persons (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 68).
These people seek to “borrow” an identity, “partly by introjection, but perhaps mainly by imitation, they build up a borrowed identity” (Ackerman and Jahoda, p. 68).
David Terman, a psychoanalyst, writes about anti-Semitism from a Kohutian point of view. Kohut's understanding of the Self and narcissism is that the traumatized Self, with its resultant narcissistic rage, produces “arrogance, intolerance, insensitivity, prejudice, bigotry and relentless revenge” (Terman, p. 18). The concept of narcissistic rage is based on
underlying feelings of entitlement. When an injury to the self occurs in the immature personality, “the sense of the entitlement of the injured is proportional to the insensitivity of the perpetrator” (Terman, p. 19).
Transferring this to the concept of the group ideal, Terman postulates that the Jew was the perpetrator who did not accept the Christian's ideals. This triggered the narcissistic rage of the Christians.
In the long history of western Christendom, the Jew became the very symbol of the invalidator of the Ideal—questioner, free-thinker, dissenter… . Traditionally, the target of narcissistic rage from the injury to Christianity, the Jew was the suitable object of the German's rage over their shattered national pride. The German Reich, adhering to an Ideal both post-Christian and pagan, was, however, willing to annihilate the offending separatist: it had no further need for Jewish witness.
Anti-Semitism is a symptom of a historical process in which humanity's reach for a universal binding ideal has failed (Terman, p. 24).
Otto Fenichel attempts to understand the mass psychology of the people. He reviews the idea that anti-Semitism gives the masses a means to satisfy “these two contradictory tendencies at the same time … [namely] the rebellious tendency through destructive actions against defenseless people, and the respectful tendency through obedient action in response to the command of the ruling powers” (Fenichel, , p. 337). Although this scapegoat theory is essentially correct, Fenichel postulates that it is not sufficiently deep enough. His idea is that the Jews' history of being a different type of people makes the others feel that the Jews are therefore capable of doing anything imaginable. This issue relates to the history of the Jewish people, particularly to their survival. “Subsequently, their strangeness gave the impression of something archaic, of something left over from ancient times—which the non-Jew himself had overcome…” (Fenichel, , p. 339). Psychologically, there is an equation of foreign equaling hostile. In addition, “one's own unconscious is also foreign [and] foreignness is the quality which the Jews and one's own instincts have in common” (Fenichel, , p. 341).
Fenichel connects this with Freud's ideas about “the uncanny.” The uncanny events seem to prove that something improbable can be true after all. He writes:
To the average person, a murderer, in particular a parricide, or someone guilty of incest is uncanny, because each of us has felt such impulses—and later repressed them. Conversely, a person or race which is any way uncanny, is capable of murder and incest. [Therefore] the Jew with his unintelligible language and incomprehensible God appears uncanny to non-Jews, not only because they cannot understand him … but even more so because, somewhere in the depths, they can understand him very well, for his customs are archaic, that is, they exhibit elements which the no— Jews once had but lost later (Fenichel, , p. 341).
Fenichel points out that the oppressed Jew is seen as having an endless vengeance. The anti-Semites, as well as those in power over the Jews, cannot imagine that the Jews do not harbor a vast storehouse of revenge for their oppressors.
They recognize archaic, deep features in their behavior, and they know how revengeful they themselves would be… . That which they had believed to be overcome appears to rise again and again like a hydra, and they try to cut off its heads (Fenichel, , p. 342).
The oppressors and anti-Semites attempt to deal with their disavowed instincts and fears via contempt, disregard and projection (Fenichel, , p. 342). What makes this an uncanny phenomena is that the seemingly defenseless Jews overcome their oppressors, somehow managing to rise again.
An additional aspect contributing to uncanniness is the Jewish religion itself. Fenichel postulates that the God of the Jews, totally without any concrete image, reflects upon archaic fears of looking at the forbidden object, which is a universal. Fenichel understands that this relates to a number of unconscious derivatives. First, “the sight of God (among primitive people the sight of the king, his representative) means death” (Fenichel, , p. 343). The next aspect relates to the idea that what is forbidden to be seen must be “terrible, however inspiring—an ugly sight” (Fenichel, , p. 343). Fenichel reflects on the third aspect of God, as being wonderful, beneficent. Therefore, the God of the Jews has an uncanny aspect in its double nature, which merges with “the double character of wonder and fear, inherent in foreigners . in terms of the feeling one has for strange gods. … (Fenichel, , p. 343).
Because it can be unbearably difficult to have these double feelings at the same time, people have divided loving and hateful aspects of God into two parts, “their own God, who is good and beautiful, and the strange one who is wicked and ugly” (Fenichel, , p. 344).1 Fenichel writes that “many religious systems are dualistic. They have a good and bad principle….” (Fenichel, p. 344). This is usually separated into God who is good and the devil who is evil. It is the devil, seen as more uncanny than God, who symbolizes strangeness, revenge and differences.
The devil is always suitable as a carrier of the projection of one's own instinctual impulses; he is murderous, dirty, debauched, a tempter, and a deceiver. It is clear to the anti-Semite that the Jewish God, and thus the Jew, is the devil, the anti-Christ, the wicked principle directed against God, which crucified God. The devil, too, characteristically is despised and dreaded at the same time (Fenichel, p. 344).
For non-Jews, the fear is that the Jew, representing the devil, will attempt to change them, either by magic or by death and resurrection, into Jews.
Fenichel focuses on the aspect of circumcision, which Freud associated with anti-Semitism (Freud, 1909). Reviewing the idea that the uncircumcised fear a revenge in the form of circumcision, Fenichel traces this to an archaic initiation ceremony that has aspects of the uncanny. It certainly relates to fears of being castrated by those who are circumcised. Thus, the revenge can be seen in sexual terms.
The Jews will do something to the little girls of other races in the same way that they do something sanguinary [or] sexual to the little boys of their own race. Psychoanalysts are of the opinion, therefore, that circumcision, which is strange—yet familiar in unconscious depths—operates in the same way as the other customs which make the Jew appropriate as a devil-projection (Freud, 1909, p. 346).
For Fenichel, “the anti-Semite arrives at his hate of the Jews by a process of displacement, stimulated from without” (Freud, 1909, p. 347). In order
This is similar to the idea of splitting the good and bad aspects of the object (Mahler, pp. 117-120).
for anti-Semitism to become a mass movement, there must be two factors present which tend to interrelate. The first is the tradition of Jew as scapegoat; the second is the separateness of Jewish life within a host culture. Although Fenichel recognizes that these are not the only factors that must play a part, he is limited in his ability to delve further. He explains that the psychological explanation is limited but that further sociological, political and economic studies may provide further insights into the phenomena of mass anti-Semitism.
Stanley Rosenman, a psychoanalyst, reviewing anti-Semitism in German legends and the formation of Jewish identity, finds that the archetypal image of the living dead is applied and projected onto the Jews. The idea of the living dead has two aspects:
First, the person feels hobbled in living his life, depressed, not fully alive. Biological and social restraints generate a rage to kill the Parent-God responsible for these fettering conditions. The decidal fury is turned inward so that the person craves non-consciousness, even death, to release him from his painful conflicts (Rosenman, p. 244).
The idea of death is seen as appeasement or punishment for the wish to destroy God. This, in turn, produces further depression, intensifying the lifeless, dead feeling. The second aspect of the idea of the living dead relates to the presence of the uncanny. Here the archetypal images appear to dwell within the psyche, “like unwelcome guests, with no independent sources of life, just devouring their host's life [like] ghostly apparitions of the past that bedevil and cripple their host” (Rosenman, p. 244). These aspects are externalized onto the Jews, who are viewed as “parasitic, odious intruders of the homeland … [where] Jews are [seen as] a necrophilic race that has lived past its time” (Rosenman, p. 244).
Rosenman states that in addition to this psychological externalization of the living dead, the anti-Semite seeks to create the conditions that make this a reality. The history of anti-Semitism, with its tortures and pogroms, certainly prepared the stage for the Holocaust. The anti-Semite imposes conditions “on the Jews that sap all desire to live, that make life feel like an imposed burden. [For example] Wiesel graphically describes how Jews were reduced to the living dead in the murder camps”
(Rosenman, p. 244). The anti-Semite is drawn to necrophilia as a defense against his own inner deadness and as an acting out of the underlying rage. He seeks to impose death rather than becoming dead. In addition,
The anti-Semite's conception of the Jew as yearning for death facilitates not only the defensive projection of the former's intrigue with death, but also the enactment of the loving-of-death cravings with the Jew as their object. Even when, as in the Middle Ages, ransoming kidnapped Jewish corpses, or during the Holocaust, enjoying household artifacts made from Jewish bodies, the victimizer can deny his exhilarated intrigue with death: it is the Jew who is the necrophile (Rosenman, p. 245).
For Rosenman, the wish to annihilate is clearly present in the anti-Semite. It is seen as stemming from intrapsychic projections of the subject's own rage. What is unacceptable with the psyche is projected onto the Jews.
Erik Erikson discusses his ideas about anti-Semitism in his article on the psychodynamics of Adolf Hitler, whose anti-Semitism is seen as multi-determined, stemming from envy, projection, and Hitler's family background. Erikson emphasizes the brutality of Hitler's father and the passive-aggressiveness of his mother as promoting Hitler's predisposition towards anti-Semitism and violence.2 Jews were seen as sub-humans, subject to inhumane treatment. Regarding Hitler's anti-Semitic dynamics, Erikson writes,
It is obvious enough that much envy was hidden in Hitler's fantastic overestimation of the Jewish “danger,” embodied as it was in such a small part of the population, and a highly intellectualized one at that. But as we have said, the narrow German always felt endangered, denationalized, by information which exposed him to the relativity and diversity of cultural values. The Jew seemed to remain himself despite dispersion over the world, while the German trembled for the identity in his own country. In fact, these mysterious Jews seemed to be making of intellectual relativity a means of racial self-preservation. To some Germans, this was not understandable without assuming an especially devious chauvinism, a
Alice Miller elaborates on his theme in her essay, “Adolph Hitler's Childhood: From Hidden to Manifest Horror.”
Page 152hidden Jewish pact with Fate (Erikson, p. 353).
This latter idea, “the hidden pact,” has a relationship to the ideas of the Jews as the Devil and the chosen people. Erikson finds that these are similar to German chauvinistic ideation (Erikson, p. 353).
Erikson's understanding of anti-Semitism in Germany includes ideas on Jewish identity. “Jewry is a singular example of an old entity which clings to its identity—be it racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural—in such a way that it is felt to be a danger to emerging identities (Erikson, p. 354). Erikson first finds that the ideals of the adolescent were represented in Hitler's approach to the German people in that he appealed as an older sibling to a brotherhood or gang, rather than as a father to children. Taking this a step further, Erikson finds that the German's adolescent-like mentality was threatened with castration by the circumcised Jews, with further derivative phobias relating to the spread of venereal disease.
In addition, Erikson examines Jewish identity from a dialectical approach, wherein two divergent trends express themselves, “dogmatic orthodoxy” and “opportunistic adaptability” (Erikson, p. 354).
We may think here of types, such as the religiously dogmatic, culturally reactionary Jew, to whom change and time mean absolutely nothing; the letter is his reality. And we may think of his opposite, the Jew whose geographic dispersion and cultural multiplicity have become “second nature”: relativism becomes for him the absolute, exchange value his tool (Erikson, p. 355).
Erikson traces these components in a brief analysis of three Jews whose ideas strongly impacted upon this century, namely Marx, Freud, and Einstein, attributing their genius to the dialectical integration of their culture and their Jewishness. “… These thinkers climaxed the cultural and scientific crisis of Europe not because they were Jews, but because they were Jews and Germans and Europeans” (Erikson, p. 356). Erikson concludes that “strong eras and strong countries assimilate the contributions of strong Jews because their sense of identity is enhanced by progressive redefinitions” (Erikson, p. 356). When this does not happen, as during periods of crisis or anxiety, the identity of a country is threatened by suggestions of further change, particularly from those of a defined other identity.
In their effort to find a platform of conservatism, they cling with grim single-mindedness to few absolutes which they hope will save them. It is at this point that paranoid antisemitism is aroused by agitators of many descriptions and purposes, who exploit mass cowardice and mass cruelty (Erikson, p. 357).
Rudolph Loewenstein places the roots of anti-Semitic development during the latency stage of psycho-social development, when most children are given religious instruction. Relating to ideas of parricide, which the child has during his oedipal stage, Loewenstein posits that
on a spiritual level the young Christian benefits by the crucifixion. On a psychological, unconscious, level the crucifixion represents to him the culmination of the unconscious death wishes of his oedipal period. The Jew is held responsible for the crime from which the Christian reaps moral and psychological benefit in redemption from sin. Thus the Christian child learns not only that the Jews were essential to Christianity in the past; he learns that they can serve even now as the scapegoat for the personal sins of every Christian (Loewenstein, p. 41).
During the latency stage, the child's superego development receives reinforcement from this religious training. The child identifies with the Christ Child and associates God the Father with the older generation, because God was recognized first by the Jews. In the latency age child's mind, the Jews are identified with their own fathers. From here, it is only one step to the selection of the Jews as the object to be scapegoated. Loewenstein states that although the Christian religion can provide this prototype for hatred of Jews, it can also offer the means to overcome such hatred (Loewenstein, p. 43).
The psychological effect of the teaching of the Crucifixion depends primarily on the level of emotional development of the child. For Loewenstein, the love and hate feelings towards the father are particularly crucial to the development of anti-Semitism. In addition, ambivalence towards the parents, the predominance of projection, and environmental factors, are predisposing adjuncts for the development of anti-Semitism. “A long tradition of anti-Semitism affords the opportunity to any individual in times of stress to concentrate all his aggressions on the Jew” (Loewenstein, p. 297).
Loewenstein's main point is that there is an imprint left on the individual by tradition [which] has its parallel in the historical evolution of this tradition. The historical role of Israel in the birth of Christianity was the mainspring for all anti-Semitic feelings, which are based psychologically on the same forces activated in children of the contemporary world … (Loewenstein, p. 297).
Depending on the child's psychological make-up, the material can be channeled into anti-Semitic ideation and acts. In this way, there is a mutually interdependent role between Christians and Jews, called “cultural pairing,” which Loewenstein feels is the underlying essence of the role religion plays in the development of an individual's anti-Semitism.
Dr. Mortimer Ostow chaired a nine year study of anti-Semitism, in which many prominent psychoanalysts as well as other guest participants (of which this writer was one), met for a total of 75 meetings (Ostow, p.12). Published in 1996, Myth and Madness—The Psychodynamics of Antisemitism, Ostow writes about the methodology the study drew upon.
Our methodology led us to the study of antisemitism in patients who had come to psychoanalysis for treatment of illness. We generally assume that the psychodynamics that prevail in illness are the same as those that prevail in health, except that in illness, satisfactory resolution is not achieved. Instead of realistic compromise or sublimation, a symptom ensues, or some other form of pathologic behavior. Similarly, we assumed at first that antisemitism could be understood as an externalized effort at solution of a conflict. To the extent that antisemitism is socially disruptive and inconsistent with usual concepts of ethical behavior, it could be considered an inappropriate response and hence pathologic. We soon realized however that in certain segments of society, antisemitism was encouraged, and within that segment, socially compliant. That being the case, we had no basis for considering it pathologic or even anomalous unless we assumed that our own views of socially desirable are absolute and universally true. Accordingly, we revised our views, seeing antisemitism now simply as an aspect of human behavior that we in our study group considered undesirable… . Reprehensible, barbarous, horrible, and degraded, yes, but pathologic, perhaps not. On the other hand, it was also true
Page 155that antisemitic prejudice might attempt to resolve conflict or to control affect by externalization, by displacement or by projection, thereby pathologically distorting reality. Delusional antisemitism is pathological no matter in what society, at least to the extent that delusional thinking on any subject is pathologic for that society (Ostow, pp. 16-17).
Ostow's comprehensive coverage of aspects of antisemitism, viewing historical, cultural and mythological aspects, is deeply informative. It is interesting to note that, in his conclusion, Ostow writes, “Among most antisemites, we found that their irrational hatred was the expression of primary process thinking, that is, thought that is driven by feeling and not subjected to the discipline of reason, logic, or reality testing” (Ostow, p. 176).
Veering from the strictly psychoanalytic perspective, Ostow concludes that the rising anti-Semitism at that time predates its growth in social media as it exists today.
Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the press. Although they do not speak with a single voice, there is often enough unanimity to make their prejudices sound convincingly like objective reality. The anti-Israel bias shown by many writers and television personalities suggests that a suppressed antisemitism has been released by the transition of Jews from powerless victim to a people able to look after itself militarily. International behavior that is ignored when it is exhibited by others, is magnified in the case of Israel. Although courageous demythologizing is a weak response, it is one of the few that we have and must be encouraged (Ostow, p. 178).
Phyllis Chesler expanded on this in her updated version of her book, and her ideas are summarized as follows:
The essence of the new Anti-Semitism, Chesler explains, differs from the old in the way in which the center-to-hard left has taken up the cudgels, thereby making anti-semitism (which includes the unalloyed hatred of the Jewish State) acceptable, even required, for those who hold themselves out an anti-colonialist, anti-racist, anti-imperialists.
Page 156The new anti-Semitism is the marriage of the evil far-right to the slavering far-left. It is ugly and it is increasingly ubiquitous .
Thus, it can be seen that anti-Semitism can be seen through psychoanalytic understandings, as well as other lenses. At this time, anti-Semitism has expanded its influence and requires our ongoing vigilance to protect the Jewish people from this scourge.