This article represents an effort to further the appreciation of the impact of Jewish life on one salient aspect of our culture—psychoanalysis. It will carry on the spirit that Freud began in his “cultural books,” most conspicuously represented in Totem and Taboo, Civilization and Its Discontents and Moses and Monotheism. The latter book being perhaps the best example of Freud as a provocative and imaginative literary figure and mythmaker, and not only a man of science as he wanted the world to see him. This captures so nicely the tension that was expressed in his personal and public persona, that will be addressed in what follows, and be thought of as an exercise in psychoanalytic-social psychology. We will have to transcend the restraints that individual psychology may place on this endeavor. Thus, in coming to terms with ideologies, we have to study the social and economic contexts of the people who accepted them as it is one of the central contributions of psychoanalysis that it removed from the equation the artificial disunity between the individual and the collective. Freud stressed that there is no individual psychology of man isolated from his environment. Freud knew no homo psychologicus, no psychological Robinson Crusoe, like economic man of classical economic theory. The attempt will not made to demonstrate that psychoanalysis is or is not “Jewish.” What will be considered is whether, and to what extent, that was Freud's position—a very different discussion.”
As with the history of ideas generally, the history of psychoanalysis has been in part a chronology of suppressing or distorting, the vital or subjective or sectarian loyalties of those who are intimately connected in advancing and boosting nonsectarian universal ideas. The early contributors to the psychoanalytic enterprise made it stand out as an intellectual endeavor that courted false construction and muddled it, for it exhibited considerable particularistic tendencies. The original members regarded themselves as an embattled, heroic elite, intolerant of those outside but dedicated, as in battle, to give their findings to the world. Their profound feeling of having a purpose that must be delivered a world, whether it
chose to accept it or not, disposed them to a cause—indeed, occupied them to promote in a fashion that took Freud and his loyal followers far beyond the traditional bounds of a scientific effort.
As we regard psychoanalysis as a moral enterprise as well as an undertaking to heal, it is reasonable to look into in the religious origin, development and self-identification of the founder of psychoanalysis. Heretofore, if such an investigation was considered relevant (if at all), it was only as background material, a part of the cultural history of individuals and ideas. Even more sectarian and unanalyzed was the preponderance of Jews who joined forces with Freud from the very beginning in 1902 to 1906—all seventeen were Jewish. The complete meaning of this number can only be appreciated if we consider how they viewed themselves. They were quite aware of being Jewish and often maintained a sense of Jewish purpose and solidarity. Jones realized that this feeling of pride helped formed the core identity of group: “As a spur to renewed independence, it tightened the bond among the group members and infused their self-image of a redemptive elite” . So potent were their feelings of being Jewish that even after 1906, when Jones and otter non-Jews joined the assemblage, the sense of being part of a Jewish current persisted.
Jones could be thought of as being prototypical of those who supported the psychoanalytic movement yet could not accept the Jewish connection of the early analysts. For Jones, they became more of an impediment and an impurity in the advancement of truth. Annoyed, perhaps, with the Jews in the early circle surrounding Freud, for assuming an air of superciliousness, and possibly a victim of mistrust between Jews and non-Jews, he consistently understood the value that being Jewish played in Freud's life. To cite but one example, Jones omitted Freud's voicing his gratitude to “those of our faith” in a then-unpublished letter Freud addressed to Martha in 1884 .
David Bakan asserted that in psychoanalysis, “each person is a Torah.” He overextends his reach by some measure but perhaps not without some truth—that the name of one of Freud's most noted patients, Dora, about whom he wrote abundantly in evolving his views, is curiously similar in sound to the word Torah. Regrettably, Bakan strains prove his point that it is the Kabbalistic tradition that influenced Freud, even
though he admitted that “we are unable to hypothesize whether Freud actually read any Kabbalistic literature.” What Bakan fails to realize is that the hermeneutic devices he attributes to Freud are actually reminiscent of rabbinic midrash, which influenced kabbalistic thinking as well.
Freud's great grandfather was Rabbi Ephraim Freud, and his grandfather was Rabbi Schlomo Freud. The information available does not allow us to draw the conclusion that they were rabbis in the religious sense, or whether their titles merely connoted respect. Freud was given the name Schlomo after his grandfather. Freud's own name demonstrates how resolute the Jewish tradition could be. While Jacob, his father, over time freed himself from his family's religious estate, he did give Freud the middle name Scholmo, clearly an offering to his own father who had died barely three months prior to Sigismund Schlomo's birth. It was a name that Freud could never ascribe to. As Freud assumed the role of father, and with it the responsibility of naming his children, he declined to allow this faded remnant of tradition to express itself as he gave none of his children a Jewish name. The choice Freud made provides titillating support for his unconscious life. It might be argued that the six children's names provide a direct link to one person, and to Freud's enduring emotional entanglement with his father.
It was generally assumed that in Vienna that there was a “Jewish Mind” that transcended conversion or adaptation, and that this mind was inherently unoriginal . In the writings of a number of Viennese “Jewish” intellectuals at the turn of the century, such as Theodor Gomperz, Sigmund Freud, Otto Wininger, Fritz Witells, Otto Rank, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, one can see a wide range of the complex internalization of questions of Jewish cultural contributions that are linked in striking ways. It is not that this was a specifically “Viennese” problem, but rather that, in a city in which the Bildungsburgertum—the intellectual middle class—was defined by ideas of originality and creativity, this quality of mind came be central in the self-definition of those labeled or self-labeled as Jews. This quality, attributed to the Jews, came to be ascribed, in the course of the early twentieth century, to psychoanalysis. They too had so submerged their own identities as Jews, their early myth-building, that they represented a type of intellectual formation. In 1937, after the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany, and the beginning of the politics of race that led to the Shoah, Karl Menninger,
a non-Jewish American psychiatrist, noted that “if we had no further illustration than the character of Sigmund Freud, we should have a basis for suspecting some connection between tbe Jew and psychological genius. It would carry us too far to list all of the names of outstanding Jewish psychologists and psychiatrists, nor would it, in my own mind, be fitting to associate lesser names with such a master as he . Jews are “distinguished for their scientific accomplishments in all fields of medicine.” This is a prototypical metaphor for the extraordinary nature of Jewish intelligence, but it Is here applied specifically to psychoanalysis. Yet, Menninger is careful not to interpret his own view as views as compensatory. “Furthermore as a Gentile, I am apt—like Gentiles—to overestimate the superiority and attainments of the Jews (a psychological fact which no doubt contributes in part to anti-Semitic reactions).” While psychoanalysis may not have been seen as directly corrosive of the dominant culture, as was communism, its challenge to the American culture has been profound and telling .
In this connection Ostow states: “It may be its antagonism to prevailing institutions of cultural and political dominance that attracted, and still attracts, Jewish political liberals and radicals to the psychoanalytic profession, rather than simply the opportunity to escape into universalist discipline” (p. 14).
The marginal status of Jews in European culture has drawn the attention of many. An interesting read from a member of our field can be found in Arieti's Parnas and the Holocaust , and a recent release by Bodernan addresses the present situation of Jews in Germany. It is ironic that while Freud tried to live out the ideal of a citizen of the world, the final entry in the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud consists of a letter to the editor of Time and Tide on the subject of anti-Semitism in England . Thus, to the very end of his days, Freud did not escape the fate of the Jew as an outsider, living at the margins of society. Rothman and Isenberg have written that, since the Jews as marginal men were subject to harassment and discrimination by an accident of birth, a number of possible paths lay open to those anxious to escape he consequences of marginality. First, one could assimilate with the majority culture. In fact, Freud did consider conversion but always rejected it (; ). Another path was to attempt to transform one's self and one's group into a majority. That was
the Zionist solution, but it was a solution Freud could not get himself to accept. Speaking to the B'nai B'rith , Freud said, “Whenever I felt an inclination to national enthusiasm, I strove to suppress it as being harmful and wrong, alarmed by the warning examples of the people among whom we Jews live” (p. 273). Freud's solution fell into the third possible contingency as articulated by Rothman and Isenberg, that being the attempt to undermine the dominant culture that delineates the margin. They reminded us that the new discipline, psychoanalysis, by establishing a universalistic psychology, “denied the reality of culture and cultural difference” (p. 53). In The Ambivalent American Jew Liebman presents us with another option, that being subverting the cultural categories that define Jews as marginal, as an explanation of the characteristic Jewish attachment to universal ideas of a liberal or radical nature.
This discussion of marginality leads us to the figure who picked up the psychoanalytic reins of power and transposed them to the United States, Abraham Arden Brill, a man who had a deep understanding of all the levers and pulleys of policy-creation. When Arthur Schniztler wrote Der Weg ins Frie (The Road to the Open Road) in 1908, he compared the Jews of his day to those of the prior generation: “A Jew who loves his country … I mean in the way my father did, with real enthusiasm for the dynasty is, without the slightest question, a tragi-comic figure … . A man like that today would certainly appear merely comic.” He was making reference to Austria's short but deeply felt era of political liberalism which, only after decades of rule, began to come to an end in the 1880s. The patriotic zeal of the Jews during this period mirrored the pervasive confidence in the extension and guarantee of rights to those outside the domain of economic and political influence that was controlled by the aristocracy. Refused the absolute integration into society in their legal liberation at the end of the proceeding century, Jews typically endorsed the ideals of the constitutional era with unusual fervor.
Into this world did our American missionary and pioneer of psychoanalysis-to-be enter. A strain of independence was aways present as he alone, at the age of fifteen, sailed the United States. Who could have predicted that this apparently hapless soul, as one story goes, who was defrauded of his meager funds on the ride across, further restricted by no
knowledge of English, and without a friend to greet him, would eventually rise to the height he did in the world of psychoanalysis in New York? His resourcefulness found expression as he managed find shelter in a saloon by providing chores. He acquired the language of his new home and quicky parlayed his skill into providing English lessons to other newly arriving foreigners for the munificent sum of twenty-five cents per lesson. Conditions improved rapidly for the young Brill as he was befriended by a physician and was allowed to sleep on his office floor. His income was further nourished by teaching mandolin and billiards, and by playing chess, which he excelled at, for stakes.
It might be useful to put the influx of Jewish emigres in some perspective. In 1790 there were probably no more than 2,500 in the United States; by 1825, there about 6,000, of whom 500 lived in New York. By 1848 the Jewish population grew to about 50,000, with about 12,00013,000 living in New York City, which had a total population of 500,000. In 1880, the 60,000 Jews in New York City represented 25 percent of the Jewish national total. It was not surprising that Brill was confronted by a set of conditions that his fellow newcomers faced, that being to “Americanize” the new arrivals as rapidly as possible. Americanization had two purposes: to remove the odium of strangeness from the immigrants, and to help them adjust more readily to their new home. One of the first such institutions established with the specific aim of preparing Jewish immigrants for life in America, was the Hebrew Institute of New York, organized in 1889 as an outgrowth of the YMHA. By 1939, 40,000 Jewish refugees a year were entering the United States (some 200,000 all told came between 1933 and ); these latter arrivals were older, poorer, and afflicted with medical and emotional ills. In June 1939 the National Refugee Service (NRS) was set up to replace the predecessor organizations. The NRS offered migration services; resettlement help; subventions to physicians, scientists, and other professionals to enable them to study for examinations and resume their professional careers; an employment and retaining program; loans to small business men; and assistance to refugees who were seeking permanent visas. As Eli Ginzberg has pointed out, the remarkable work of the NRS, through quiet and efficient assistance to refugees in becoming integrated into American life and American society, deterred the anti-immigration sentiment which was building up among groups in the United States (pp. 22-29).
To those established in the professions, the Jews newly crowding in were a threat. To some degree there was fear of competition and uncertainty as to whether there really would be enough room for everyone. Still more important was the unwillingness to risk the loss of status that association with the Jews might entail. The pattern of exclusion already established the undesirability of these people. Would not an undue number of them transfer their odium to the whole profession? The most serious forms of exclusion developed in the medical profession. At the turn of the century there were were already well-founded complaints that the medical societies and three hospitals were refusing to admit qualified Jewish doctors. Although these societies were generally private associations, membership in them was essential to successful practice. Before the first decade of the century was over, the restrictive polices had spread to medical education as well. The number of medical schools and the number of graduates fell steadily, and everywhere, the first be excluded were the Jews. In part, this development grew out of the desire to improve the quality of medical education, particularly after the Flexner Report had revealed its glaring inadequacies. But there was also the less laudable intention of restricting the number of doctors for competitive reasons, and of excluding the Jews and other groups, labeled as inferior, to protect the social prestige of the profession. In practice, all medical schools devised quota systems to keep the number of Jewish students low.