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This collection of rather literate essays, most translated from the original Italian, is animated by the proposition that Freud's work has been a cultural event within the Jewish tradition and the Jewish community. This idea clearly runs counter to Freud's own expressed views and wishes.
The volume contains 12 chapters by 10 authors (including Sigmund Freud), and it reflects two interesting phenomena in the literature dealing with psychoanalysis as a cultural and historical development. The first phenomenon is what might be called the biographical interpretations of Freud industry; the second concerns the preoccupation with Freud's identity as being more Jewish or less Jewish. The growing literature suggesting every detail of Freud's life as the royal road to a better understanding of his theory claims to be inspired by the master himself. Did not Freud suggest connections between the biography of a creative individual and his ideas, between the private and the public?
As one moves further away in time from the historical reality of Freud's life, the interpretive urge, often described as unconscious, claims to discover causal patterns in his life and work, grows even stronger. Over the past 20 years, one could read literature expounding, or pretending to expound, every known detail in Freud's private and professional life. While in most instances there may have been difficulties in interpreting the facts, in many cases the facts were in dispute in the first place. The whole enterprise becomes one of “therapeutic” interpretations of real (or imagined) events, most of which occurred (or may not have occurred) more than a century ago.
One branch of the growing literature, faithfully represented by this book, is the interpretive effort regarding the issue of Jewishness and Judaism in Freud's life, and in the same context, the