On Freud and Judaism

In his memoirs, Carl Jung recalls a 1910 conversation with his then-friend and colleague Sigmund Freud. Contemplating the future of psychoanalysis, Freud suddenly turned to him and said: “My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory. That is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark.” “A bulwark against what?” Jung asked, surprised. Freud replied: “Against the black tide of mud of occultism.” Jung remembers being astonished by Freud’s dogmatism, “for a dogma, that is to say, an undisputable confession

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of faith is set up only when the aim is to suppress doubts once and for all. But that no longer has anything to do with scientific judgment, only with a personal power drive” (C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1965, p. 150).

This conversation not only punctuates the famous split between two prominent thinkers, but also offers a rare glimpse into Freud’s critical shift in attitude towards his theory. By the turn of the 20^th century, he had adopted a dictatorial and doctrinaire position with regards to psychoanalysis. He was intolerant of any attempt to modify it and fought anyone who deviated from its basic tenets. To protect it from the slightest criticism or doubt, he sought to isolate it. There is strong evidence to suggest that for Freud, psychoanalysis took a form of religion or cult, of which he was the leader.

Freud’s “secret committee,” established in 1912, is a glaring example of his rigid attitude. This small circle of colleagues loyal to Freud was committed to his ideas verbatim and prepared to lead a “united front” against anyone who doubted psychoanalysis. The chief adversaries of this society were renegades Adler and Jung, labeled the “apostate.” Freud assumed the role of a sect spiritual leader, ritualistically granting each committee member an ancient ring, which symbolized loyalty (Phyllis Grosskurth, The Secret Ring: Freud’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis, 1991, pp. 1-5). As on multiple other occupations, Freud’s behavior was suggestive less of a scholar advancing a scientific theory than of a prophet proclaiming the ultimate truth. For an explorer of the unconscious, he was astonishingly insensible to the fact that his attitude carried the imprint of Judaism, the rejected culture of his childhood.

The first paragraph of Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers)—a principal Jewish source of the Talmudic era—ends with “vasu siyag latorah,” which translates as “and make a safety fence around the Torah.” There is a striking resemblance between this well-known dictate and Freud’s demand “to make a bulwark” around psychoanalysis. It is highly probable that Freud unconsciously borrowed his phrase from the classic text he had to learn as a Jewish boy.

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James Anderson presumes that Freud “had a minimum of what can be described as Jewish learning,” but this underestimation hardly agrees with his frequent and free usage of scriptural references and quotations in scholarship and letters. Some researchers say that Freud’s exposure to Jewish thought was average for his time; others claim that he was fully tutored in Jewish studies (Earl A. Grollman, Judaism in Sigmund Freud’s World, 1965, p. 52). When he was a gymnasium student, Jews were required to study religion with instructors certified by their own community. Sigmund learned Hebrew tradition and literature between 1865 and 1873. He certainly had to read in an essential source, Pirkei Avot, however permeated with “humanistic values” his Jewish education might have been, according to Anderson. He does admit that Freud’s analysis of dreams and of some jokes is “like Talmudic analysis.”

Freud’s commandment to turn psychoanalysis into “a dogma…an unshakable” could have been a “Freudian slip.” Behaving as if he were a cult guru, Freud would not have enjoyed the irony of being the object of analysis, in which his own discovery was a means to reach unconsciousness. Still, the “Freudian slip” reveals that, beyond his awareness, psychoanalysis for him was a creed.

Freud’s admiration for Moses is also well-documented. As a young boy, Sigmund listened to his father’s recounting of the Biblical stories about the Exodus, which left a profound impression on him. His life-long fascination with the most celebrated Jewish leader and prophet is reflected in two controversial works, “The Moses of Michelangelo” essay (1914), and Moses and Monotheism, Freud’s last book (1937) (B. Goodnick, “Sigmund Freud and the Countenance of Moses,” The Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences, 32.2 [1995] p. 3).

On a deeper level, Freud strongly identified with Moses’ character. In private correspondence, he assigned to himself the role of the prophet, once musing that his efforts to conquer the territory of the unconscious are equal to Moses’ journey to the holy land and that he, like the Jewish leader, would only be able to reach his goal with the help of his “Joshua ben Nun”—Carl Jung (Boris Kherson, “Resistance to Psychoanalysis” Moriah 3 [2005]).

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Having denounced all religions, and specifically Judaism, Freud might have come to perceive psychoanalysis as a credo-substitute. He did maintain that, like a creed, his theory could explain all phenomena. Freud compared his own effort to the work of Moses—the gigantic endeavor of a spiritual leader, who, through his psychoanalytic “Torah,” reveals the law of universal deliverance.

Moses and Monotheism negates the two pillars that support the edifice of the Judeo-Christian culture—the divinely ordained Exodus and receiving the Law of Torah at Mount Sinai. While building the immutable “safety fence” around his sexual theory, Freud’s simultaneous unconscious intent might have been to undermine the old tradition so as to “make space” for his new religion of salvation. If psychoanalysis were the panacea of the modern world, then Freud would be Moses incarnate.

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