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This book recounts the unique history of the migration of psychoanalysis from central Europe to Jewish Palestine under the British Mandate (later Israel) during the years 1918-1948. It illustrates a remarkably thorough historical research into the early formative years of the establishment of the new psychoanalytic society in Jerusalem and the acceptance and influence of psychoanalytic theory in contemporary Jewish society. This is presented as embedded in the wider historical social and cultural context of Europe, Zionism, Israel and Jewish migration from central Europe, as well as in the development and spreading of psychoanalysis.
Rolnik integrates here two perspectives: one is the reconstruction of the history of the psychoanalytic movement and ideas in Jewish Palestine as an episode in the history of psychoanalysis in the twentieth century, and the other is the presentation of the local discourse on Freud's ideas as an aspect of the evolution of a unique Hebrew culture. He suggests that the existence of a psychoanalytic discipline in Jewish Palestine provides yet more evidence that the modern Jewish settlement in Israel, and the culture that developed alongside it, were first and foremost an episode in modern European history.
The three parts of the book represent these wide perspectives. The first part is about the emergence of the Zionist version of the European ‘new man’ and its relation to the Freudian view of the human being. The second part deals with the emigration of psychoanalysis from Central Europe since the beginning of Nazi rule in Germany. The third describes the development of Israeli psychoanalytic discourse since the arrival of the immigrating psychoanalysts and the establishment of a psychoanalytic institute in Jerusalem. These historical narratives are described with rich evidence from letters and documents, though occasionally the excessive details obscure the story-line. Reviewing this book, it is not easy to do justice to the breadth of know