Further Reflections on Sigmund Freud and Judaism: With a Focus on Anti-

Anna Freud was scheduled to speak at a meeting in Jerusalem. The purpose of the gathering was the establishment of the Sigmund Freud Chair at the Hebrew University, but she failed to appear. Jerome A. Chanes and Eva Fogelman, in their response to my essay, recall that they were in the audience. “The buzz around the room,” they recalled, “was that, in this, she was replaying her dad’s ambivalent attitude by not wanting to be overly identified with Judaism or Jewishness.”

Their anecdote about a near encounter with Anna Freud brings to mind my actual encounter with Anna Freud. I interviewed her on October 13, 1981, in her office in the home where her father had lived during the final year of his life. Near the end of our discussion, I mentioned that there was more interest in psychoanalysis in the United States than in England. The English, because of their style and their attitude toward the inner world, I commented, do not seem to be open to psychoanalysis. “Also,” I went on, “there aren’t many Jews in England, and Jews seem comfortable with introspection and revealing themselves, and that is important to being receptive to psychoanalysis.”

She surprised me with her response: “Yes, the Jewish science.” This statement meant, I thought, that she considered me to be in agreement with those who dismissed psychoanalysis as being a Jewish creation that is not applicable to people in general.

I replied quickly, “That term was used in a derogatory way. I certainly didn’t mean that.” I told her I was Jewish. I explained that my mother is Jewish and that I was brought up as Jewish, although my father is from a Gentile background.

“A little Jewish blood is all you need,” she noted, apparently including me among the Jews. She added that she agreed Jews are more open to psychoanalysis.

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Both of these anecdotes draw our attention to the subject of anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism in Freud’s Vienna

Norman Simms, in his response, observes that my essay “skirts the sticky issues of pervasive Viennese anti-Semitism.” Alan Mohl notes that Freud “struggle[d] to free the psychoanalytical movement from being labeled a ‘Jewish affair.’” Merle Molofsky points out that, as a Jew in Vienna during his era, “Freud not only was an alien, but a despised alien, an object of fear, contempt, and discrimination.” According to Frederick Stecker, “Freud’s Jewishness was a matter of ethnic and cultural affinity at a time when obsessive prejudice was rampant in Vienna.” Many of the commentators see anti-Semitism as a topic that should be included in a discussion of Freud’s Jewishness, so I am focusing on that topic in my reply.

Freud’s era in Vienna is remembered for the great accomplishments of people of Jewish background, such as Gustav Mahler, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alfred Adler, and Arthur Schnitzler. Jews also had more success than ever before in medicine, law, academia, and business. Yet it was also a time of almost unbelievably virulent, destructive, and consequential anti-Semitism (my following comments are based on Dennis B. Klein, Jewish Origins of the Psychoanalytic Movement, 1981; Bruce F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism, 1992; Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship, 1999).

Freud’s middle childhood occurred during a period in which Jews in Vienna had the rare privilege of enjoying full legal rights, and anti-Semitism, though widespread, was not intense. Yet in his later years at the Gymnasium, Freud notes that he became aware of the anti-Semitism surrounding him: “I began to understand for the first time what it meant to belong to an alien race” (Standard Edition 1900, 4: p. 229). A few years later in 1873, when he began at the University of Vienna, “I found,” Freud recalls, “that I was expected to feel myself inferior and an alien because I was a Jew. I refused absolutely to do the first of these things. I have never been able to see why I should feel ashamed of my descent or, as people were beginning to say, of ‘my race’” (S.E 1925, 20: p. 9).

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The atmosphere at the University became increasingly hostile toward Jews after Freud’s graduation. The German fraternities expelled their Jewish members. Respected professors and political leaders called for limiting the number of Jews in Gymnasia and universities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; despite substantial support, official quotas were not established. Often Jews were denied professorships because of their religion. Freud was bitter about being turned down for that reason multiple times beginning in 1897, but he finally received an appointment in 1902 after asking a grateful patient, who had connections at the highest level of government, to help him. Jews were openly discriminated against, and in the period after World War I, they would be beaten up from time to time by roving bands of malicious students.

In the 1890s, Vienna was one of the most anti-Semitic cities in Europe and the only major city whose mayor was an avowed anti-Semite. The tolerant Emperor, Franz Joseph, refused to allow Karl Lueger to assume office the first four times he was elected. (Freud lit a cigar “for joy at Lueger’s non-confirmation in office” the second time it happened.) The Emperor finally gave in and Lueger became mayor. Franz Joseph commented privately that he tried to protect the Jews, “but who really is not an anti-Semite?”

As the Emperor realized, anti-Semitism was widespread, but there was more than just a mild dislike of Jews. Large numbers of Austrians—possibly a majority of non-Jews—accepted the despicable narrative of the anti-Jewish leaders, who included politicians and newspaper writers. They promulgated two seemingly contradictory points: first, that the Jewish immigrants from the east were overwhelming and poisoning the country and would soon destroy it, and second, that the powerful Jews, such as bankers and newspaper owners, were carrying on a conspiracy to dominate the country and to join with other Jews to suppress freedom throughout the world. Adolf Hitler, an Austrian who lived in Vienna from 1908 to 1913, swallowed this propaganda and used it to form the basis of his rabid hatred of the Jews. Jews were largely excluded from higher positions in the military and from government jobs. The anti-Semites passed a law in 1910 to ban peddlers, who were predominantly Jewish, and they carried on boycotts against Jewish businesses. In Vienna during the early 20^th century, it was consid-

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ered legitimate to hate Jews and to seek ways to discriminate against them.

Influence on Freud

Freud was rightly afraid that psychoanalysis would be dismissed as a “Jewish science” that did not apply to Gentiles. That is just what happened at times, as Patricia Cotti shows in her response. Auguste Forel, who rejected Freud’s work for its Jewishness, was at the very top of the profession of psychiatry; for nearly 20 years he headed the Burghölzli, which was the most prestigious psychiatric hospital in the world.

Freud stated explicitly that he believed his Jewishness contributed to the resistance to psychoanalysis: “Finally…the question may be raised whether the personality of the present writer as a Jew who has never sought to disguise the fact that he is a Jew may not have had a share in provoking the antipathy of his environment to psycho-analysis… But we have unfortunately grown so suspicious that we cannot avoid thinking that this factor may not have been quite without its effect” (S.E. 1925, 19: p. 222). Anna Geifman and George Khasin argue that Freud took a “doctrinaire position” about his ideas; according to Vivian Rosenberg, “Freud was convinced that his way of interpreting human nature (and treating mental problems) was the ‘scientific’—and therefore the ‘right’—way.” I agree that, although Freud made significant changes in his theory during his lengthy career, he did have a deep conviction about the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. I think Rosenberg has identified the main reason: Freud believed his ideas applied universally to human beings, as did the ideas of the physical scientists he most respected, such as Hermann von Helmholtz and his teacher, Ernst von Brücke. Moreover, with his deep interest in a wide variety of literature, such as Greek and Roman writing (Don Carveth emphasizes Freud’s interest in classical learning) and the Old Testament, as well as English, French, and Spanish fiction, Freud found that his ideas seemed to fit, and help explain, much that he found there. I would argue that anti-Semitism also played a role in his claim to universality. As Alan Mohl notes in his response, Freud wanted to “free the psychoanalytical movement from being labeled a ‘Jewish affair.’”

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At the international psychoanalytic congress in 1910, Freud wanted to install Jung as the Association’s president because he was a Gentile. Freud’s Viennese followers held a meeting to decide how to protest that a Swiss was to be given this position instead of one of them. Though not invited, Freud “crashed” the meeting. He said, “Most of you are Jews, and therefore are incompetent to win friends for new teaching. Jews must be content with the modest role of preparing the ground. It is absolutely essential that I should form ties in the world of general science. I am getting on in years, and am weary of being perpetually attacked.” Freud was so upset that tears were running down his cheeks as he spoke. Grabbing his coat by the lapels, he declared, “They won’t even leave me a coat on my back” (Peter Gay, 1988, pp. 218 & 681).

As Don Craveth observes in his response, “Freud had a dim view of the viability of democracies.” Craveth notes that Freud did not believe the masses were capable of “instinctual renunciation.” I submit that Freud’s experience with anti-Semitism was the underlying reason for his suspicion of democracy. He saw firsthand that masses of people were capable of believing in the most heinous and outrageous lies about the Jews—and that was in Vienna in the early years of the 20^th century, long before Hitler came to power in Germany.

Anti-Semitism, in my view, did not have an influence on the content of Freud’s psychological ideas, but it had an impact on his stewardship of the psychoanalytic movement, reinforced his conviction that his ideas were universal, and contributed to his distrust of democracy. Plus, it had the larger effect of contributing to his generally pessimistic, even cynical view of human nature.

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