Freud: Judaism and Zionism

1
Freud Judaism and Zionism

• Grew up in a Jewish home. But His Jacob Amalia
  married in a Reform ceremony. He was circumcised
  according to tradition.
• His Philipson bible with a Hebrew dedication by
  his father to Shlomo-Sigismund (at the age of
  35).
• The family did not celebrate the holidays but
  Passover was celebrated at his parents home.
• In his own family with Martha
• Martha a grandaughter of Isaac Bernays
• Freud writes her during their engagement
  something of the core of the essence of this
  life-affirming judaism will not be asent from our
  home
• A conflict between his Jewish roots and identity
  and his Viennese Bourgeois.
• Also Freud is a militant atheist there is no
  court of appear higher than reason (in Future
  of Illusion- Religion A collective Neurosis)

2

• At that time something asks him what if he feels
  Jewish. He answers with YES. Then he is asked
  what it is for him to which he says
• Not very much but probably the main thing.
• He attributed his ability to withstand attacks to
  his Jewish identity.
• In 1897 he joins Bnai Brith. In 1931 at his 75th
  birthday he says
• It seems quite non sensible to deny the major
  part of my identity Me being a Jew.
• What bound me to Judaism was not faith, not even
  national pride but many dark emotional powers
  all the more powerful the less they could be
  expressed in words
• At about the same time he writes to a friend
  What am I? I am a Jew from Moravia whose parents
  come for Austrian Galicia.
• In 1938 he angers the Jewish community with Moses
  and Monotheism in which he claims that (a) Moses
  was an Egyptian prince, who (b) was killed by the
  Hebrews. (ties in with his theorizing on
  patricide).
• His fascination with Moses, Italy and Egypt. The
  objects in his study.

3

• Another dimension The emphasis on the abstract
  (the prohibition of the concrete- pictures and
  statues-). The need to intellectualize rather
  than see and sense.
• In 1938, shortly before death, Anna Freud reads
  to an audience her fathers words We Jews have
  always known to respect spiritual values. We
  preserved our unity through ideas
• Freud and Anti-Semitism
• Exposed at an early age (Jacobs story when Freud
  was 10)
• At his late age he writes to a friend
  basically all are anti-semites. They are
  everywhere. Frequently anti-semitism is latent
  and hidden, but it is everywhere.

4

• Psychoanalysis did indeed suffer from being
  labeled a Jewish science.
• In 1921 Nolles writes in favor of Psychoanalysis
  but notes that it has to rid itself of its Jewish
  attitudes and that it was developed with typical
  Jewish patients who are never satisfied.
• In 1921 McDougal writes that Psychoanalysis was
  developed by a Jew who studied Jewish patients
  and it seems to appeal strongly to Jews for me
  and those like me this theory looks bizzare and
  fantastic and may be valid only for the Jewish
  race.
• The clash between what the Nazis saw as their
  virile ideology and weak feminine
  psychoanalysis.

5

• He writes about Herzl as the champion of our
  rights
• In his letter to Albert Einstein he writes
• I am proud in our university in Jerusalem, and
  our flourishing settlements, but Zionism is an
  irrational movement and the Christian and the
  Muslim world will never permit their holy places
  to be given to the Jews
• He writes that he is sorry about the
  unrealistic fanaticism of our brothers in
  Palestine which is awakening the suspicions of
  the Arabs
• He continues in the same spirit I can master
  no sympathy for the piety that makes a national
  symbol of a wall of Herod, and for its sake
  challenges the feelings of the local population
• His link with Zionsim was through his 2 sons who
  belonged to Kadima and one of them was the editor
  of the bulletin of Kadima. He did endorse,
  neither expressed dissatisfaction with this
  activity.
• He then calls himself I am an infidel Jew

6
Alfred Adler (1870-1939)

• Also born in Vienna to a Jewish family, but a
  different kind of a Viennese Jew.
• Jewishness for him a relatively minor thing. When
  it seemed convenient he converted to being a
  Protestant (1904).
• Freud and Adler represent opposites.
• Compared to the strange Jacob-Amalia-Sigmund
  Freud triangle, his was a more normal family.
• His relationship with his mother not very good.
  He developed the idea of a counterfoil (i.e.,
  the early image against whom we struggle). For
  him it was his mother.
• He had a very successful older brother , a
  younger brother and a sister (perished in
  Auschwitz).
• His theorizing about the inferiority complex
  which is associated with birth order. (compared
  with Freuds privileged position as an adored
  first born)

7

• Finished medical studies in 1895, and married
  Raisa Epstein in 1897
• He was a social activist. One of the fathers of
  European Social-Democratic movement.
• His theories Very socially relevant. Not the
  high-theory of Freud, but pragmatic and down to
  earth theorizing on the human condition.
• In 1902 joins Freuds Wednesday evening meetings
• In 1911 leaves the circle and establishes
  Individual Psychology.
• In 1926 His most important book Understanding
  Human Nature
• 1930- A medal of honor by the city of Vienna
• 1937- Dies in Aberdeen, Scotland
• Freud wrote to Arnold Zweig The Jewish boy from
  a Viennese suburb who died in Aberdeen. He must
  have achieved something.

8

• Not the organizer and institutional leader that
  Freud was .
• Freud was accepted (with difficulty) by the
  academic establishment in Vienna. Adler was not.
  In the 1930s his name was well-known, and his
  friends in the US tried to get him position in
  Columbia University. They could not. The story of
  bad blood between academia and Adler may go on
  until today.
• Freud established an organization (e.g., the Wed.
  night meetings, etc.,). Adler sat with his
  followers in Viennese cafés.
• Adler is not deterministic like Freud. He is
  neither a pessimist, not telling us that the past
  determines our future. His emphasis is on
  peoples ability and motivation to self
  actualize. Motivation is not Push, but a Pull
  force to actualize ones potential.

9

• What is the source of pathology/neurosis?
• When a person makes all kinds of tricks to
  avoid the fulfillment of lifes goals
• He appears as the forbearer of the Humanistic
  approach
• In his 1904 paper the physician as educator he
  notes the gist of his approach
• Self confidence of he child and his personal
  courage are his highest goods.
• Not some mysterious Oedipal complex but simply
  positive self regard.
• The neurotic person lives in a world of Opposites
  and black-white. For him there is a total
  failure or ultimate success. This is a mode of
  thinking that is maladjusted because the world is
  made of grey.
• How does the Neurotic flee from self
  perfection? He builds walls around himself.
  Walls that are made up of a small group of
  friends family, etc. In this enclosed environment
  he can behave like a tyrant.
• The neurotic does this in 3 stages
• Creates an imaginary model of the world (all
  people love/hate me)
• Forms hypothesis from this model (Sara whom I met
  hates me, Yossi- loves me). Finds support for
  this hypothesis
• Such models of reality are unrealistic (if I
  dont get the Nobel prize I am not worth
  anything).
• The model meets reality- Finds it inconsistent
  and a crisis occurs. The neurotic can then
  develop the arrangement which allows him/her to
  flee the conflict into depression, phobia or even
  psychosis.

10

• The goal of therapy is to find out the life goal
  that a person has and give him the courage (Mut
  in German) to change his life style to achieve
  it.
• To impart Thymos to the child would the highest
  goal of the educator.
• Each one of us has a life style- Our life story
  with repeating patterns (e.g., break up of
  relationships, etc.,) The way to reveal it is to
  listen to the others story. Once we reveal the
  patterns we need to impart courage to enable
  change.
• Therapy deals with finding out with the patient
  the life style. It seeks to reveal the fictitious
  life goal and replace it with an authentic one.
• There is a lesser emphasis on unconscious
  processes.
• Therapy must be limited to one year- A real
  novelty vs. the Freudian concept.
• Therapy is a pragmatic conscious process. IT is
  not that different from Education.

11
The Adlerian Oedipal complex Community Feeling
vs. Self Expansion

• Community feeling- The thing that binds us to
  others.
• Life is a constant struggle to find the point of
  equilibrium between self-expansion and community
  feeling. This tension is a key concept in
  Adlerian Psychology.
• The child gets the community feeling from the
  mother and the courage the ability to aspire
  for self expansion from the father.
• This is Adlerian Oedipal complex How
  different from Freuds.
• Private intelligence vs. Social Intelligence
• A person who has only private intelligence will
  be maladjusted (may turn out to be delinquent)

12
Some additional concepts

• 1907- The concept of Organ Inferiority which
  causes efforts for compensation.
• Musicians families have a history of ear
  problems. This results in efforts towards Self
  Perfection in Music.
• Organ inferiority can result from social sources
  (family constellation- birth order)
• 1910- Psychological Hermaphroditism
• Both sexes have masculine and feminine qualities.
  
• Very different from Freuds Dark Continent.
  When he reads this in the Wednesday meeting- the
  master frowns.

13
Adler and Freud

• Romanticism vs. Liberal Enlightment (Schopenhauer
  vs. Kant)
• Teleology vs. Determinism
• Optimism vs. Pessimism
• Emphasis on Conscious vs. Unconscious
• Social emphasis vs. Intrapersonal processes
• Pragmatic-intuitively appealing vs. High theory
• Therapy with children and families-Individual
  therapy
• Why the difference? Nature of patients and their
  problems?
• Lower working classes whose problem is to change
  the circumstances of their life and achieve
  self-worth vs. higher classes whose main problems
  have to do with the conflict between strict
  Viennese codes of behavior and their drives.
• Today the gap between the socially aware and the
  intra-psychic high theory is diminished (object
  relations, etc.,)