Jewish Origins of the Psychoanalytic Movement is likely to be of interest primarily to historians and sociologists. It attempts to discuss psychoanalysis, not as a science, nor as a mode of therapy, but as a social movement. It is as if one were to consider not the science of chemistry but the historical and social group of people among whom chemistry became an interest and an occupation, This unusual point of view leads to a curious conclusion: that Freud and his friends created psychoanalysis as a kind of substitute for the ritual and legal scholarly activities which were the traditional bonds of their forebears.
In this book, Klein does an admirably meticulous job of documenting the influence of his Jewish background on Freud the man; Klein does not, however, demonstrate any influence on psychoanalysis as a science beyond the by now almost banal idea of Judaism's emphasis on learning as a value. Yet the fresh facts and the bright array in which they are mustered make it a book worth reading. By using records of B'nai B'rith chapters in Vienna, Klein is able to show how insularly Jewish Freud's circle in Vienna was and how the social isolation imposed on this circle by Viennese anti-Semitism resulted in a coherent social group with mutual assistance and intellectual interchange as its central values.
Klein shows how the Austrian political and economic climate in the 19th century led to the development of general anti-Semitism; of specific discrimination against those Jews who had roots in Eastern Europe as opposed to those who were of German heritage; and, of assimilationist, Zionist and ethnocentric non-Zionist responses to anti-Semitism. He documents the responses of Freud's friends and mentors to the social conditions of their time and place. From their statements and recorded experiences, he draws inferences about Freud's attitudes. He bolsters these inferences with excerpts from Freud's own letters. He makes quite
a convincing case for the idea that Freud selected out of Jewish tradition exactly what Theodor Herzl, his neighbor in Vienna, selected as the central tenet of Zionism: a belief in the inherited strength of the fighting spirit which had been the hallmark of the ancient Hebrews. Klein shows that Freud was like all Jews in the Vienna of his time in having to choose between conversion to the religion of the majority, Roman Catholicism, and retention of a Jewish identity. He shows how Freud more than once must have considered that choice and how it was finally the influence of his friends that led him to his choice of being a Jew among Jews rather than converting to Christianity. Klein makes it clear that Freud's choice was for his people as against an ideology rather than a choice between beliefs or between systems of ideas. An independent confirmation of Freud's feeling that Jewishness was a matter of belonging to a group rather than a matter of adherence to a creed appears in his 1913 letters to a young disciple: “We are and remain Jews. The others will only exploit us and will never understand or appreciate us” (Carotenuto, 1982, p. 121).
The notion that a system of beliefs was the important thing was central to the Viennese society, which was ready to accept Jews if they would convert to Christianity. Freud's opposition to the idea that mere conversion could change people in a fundamental way, making Christians out of Jews, was part of the Zeitgeist. Klein reminds us that another young man In Vienna came to the same conclusion that Freud and Herzl had. That young man also recognized Jews as a people who could not change their destiny by baptism. His name later became Adolf Hitler. Given Klein's account of the times, it is clear that a Viennese almost had to come to that conclusion by the end of the first decade of the 20th century. For the best thinkers of their day, the idea was already inevitable thirty years earlier. Herzl' s pride led him to believe Jews had to become the dominant majority in a Jewish homeland; Freud's pride led him to believe Jews were a people like all others, entitled to live in Europe with all the other Europeans. If Herzl had Jews as friends, it was because he sought their help in building the new state. If Freud did, it was because Gentiles had not yet understood that Jews were their scientific and social equals.
Apart from the highlighting of Freud's early association with an exclusively Jewish set of friends and intellectual peers, this volume adds little that is new to a specifically psychoanalytic understanding of Freud's Jewish identity. It gives no clues as to how Freud's theories were
influenced by the Jewish circle to which they were presented. Nor does it offer any examples of ideas which could have been traced to Freud's own schooling in Hebrew or in Jewish history or philosophy. This omission leaves the book in the peculiar position of having meticulously proven a weak form of its assertion that Freud's Jewishness made a difference in the development of psychoanalysis. The argument so well documented comes down to the idea that Freud used his Jewish friends as a sounding board until he created a group specifically devoted to psychoanalysis for that purpose.
Other authors have taken a stronger form of the assertion and attempted to prove that Freud experienced his Jewish heritage as a mandate to fight for an unpopular cause (Jones, 1953; Bergmann, 1976; Ostow, 1982). Yet another has linked Freud to the mystical tradition in Judaism (Bakan, 1958). Freud himself ascribed to his heritage the idea that he was free of certain intellectual limitations as well as the capacity to adhere to his own ideas in the face of opposition (1926, p. 274). The case for each of these traits is clearly drawn, but it seems to me that the same traits would be necessary for any scientific innovator. The same character traits of intellectual freedom and tenacity in the face of opposition from traditionalists are just those one looks for in any candidate for a doctorate in any branch of science. Thus Freud's possession of these traits could well account for his success in science but do not in themselves seem specific to psychoanalysis.
We are on quite different ground when we deal with such concepts as the oedipal conflict, unconscious fantasy, resistance, transference and the like. Linking one or more of these core concepts with Freud's Judaism would make a strong case for the influence of his Jewishness on the scientific discipline he created. There are two traditional links between Freud and Jewish heroes. The first, the identification with Hannibal (1900, p. 196), was a symbol for vengeance. The second, Moses (1914), was a symbol for self-control, replacing vengeance with conscience (Bergmann, 1976). If this is taken as the psychoanalytic fruit of Freud's Jewish roots, it links history with the unconscious of the individual in a unique way: via the return of the repressed, such an idea has the quality of a major contribution to psychoanalytic thought. Although there are analysts who would deny the value of psychohistory and consider the idea of a collective return of the repressed in the form of a moral code as
a deleterious rather than an enhancing change, all would agree that it is a change of serious consequence. Klein's own idea that the story of a life has implications for the mind of the person who lived it is very close to the current idea of the psychoanalytic narrative as presented by Spence and Schaeffer.
Klein's historical determinism is parallel to the psychoanalytic method which emphasizes psychic determinism. At its best, each of these methods of explanation produces almost visceral conviction. Ideas are distilled out of the impact of experience on a person's mind. Even when the connections are only very general, as Klein's are in this book, presentation of the evidence may lead a psychoanalytically-minded reader to formulate more specific and challenging propositions. Thus, psychoanalysts interested in psychohistory as well as history and biography readers will enjoy this lively little book even though its implications for clinical theory may be slim.