Freud as Atheist Jew

Dr. James William Anderson has given us an essay on the influence of Jewishness on Freud’s creation of psychoanalysis that is modest in its scope yet provocative in its implications. I say “modest” because Dr. Anderson recognizes that there were numerous other influences on Freud that contributed to the uniqueness of Freud’s thinking and of psychoanalysis itself. I say “provocative” because the very topic touches on the controversy of the relation between science and religion as well as the role of ethnic and cultural values in science.

In its stated modest form, Dr. Anderson’s essay makes a solid, credible case for the importance of Freud’s Jewishness for certain aspects of psychoanalysis. Anderson argues that Freud was imbued with “assumptions, beliefs about human nature, and values” that made up Jewish culture in Central and Eastern Europe in the 19^th century. Part of this cultural heritage included marginality

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from Gentile culture and thinking which Freud, himself, felt enabled his creativity. A similar thesis was advanced by the Norwegian-American Thorstein Veblen in his short paper, “The Intellectual Pre-Eminence of the Jews in Modern Europe,” which he published in 1919 in the Political Science Quarterly. Veblen’s point was the same as Freud’s, namely that because Jews are marginalized in European society, they are in a position to exercise the kind of skepticism and intellectual freedom that leads to new ideas in scholarship, particularly in the sciences.

In his book, A G-dless Jew, Peter Gay argues that only an atheist could have created psychoanalysis. He argues that marginality is not a sufficient explanation for the ability to make innovations in science. He cites the example of Darwin, who was not socially marginalized yet made iconoclastic innovations in scientific thinking. He was also an atheist. This is a point that Anderson’s assertion ignores.

Freud was both an atheist and a Jew, a condition brought about by the fact that Jewishness is both an ethnicity and a religious category. Freud consciously abandoned the beliefs and behaviors of the religion but retained the ethnic and cultural aspects of Jewishness in his identity.

However, Anderson goes on to assert two additional factors in religious Judaism that favorably disposed Freud toward the discovery of psychoanalytic principles: “the greater Jewish acceptance of sexuality” and “no particular sanction against sinful thoughts.”

The first assertion remains for me unconvincing and ambiguous. Generalizing on attitudes about sexuality between two major religions is a hazardous undertaking. Anderson provides scriptural examples of a supposed Jewish celebration of sex within marriage and examples of a seemingly Christian antipathy toward sexual pleasure. I feel the evidence in this part of his essay is thin.

There were other innovators in the field of sexology, like Havelock Ellis, who was raised in the Christian tradition, and there were many Jews who found Freud’s emphasis on sexuality anathema. If expanded, this part of the argument may prove convincing.

While Anderson argues that Judaism celebrates sexuality

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within marriage, it is also true that Orthodox Judaism advocates and enforces strict gender roles and stereotypes. Women are separated from men in the synagogue, have not been allowed to study Torah or become rabbis, and other limitations. While Freud’s thoughts about sexuality were a major contribution, the part of his theory having to do with female sexual and gender development are by far the weakest part of his life’s work. Is Freud’s Jewishness also responsible for his erroneous ideas about women? He did have four younger sisters and was his mother’s favorite.

The second assertion about the different treatment of sinful thoughts in Christianity and Judaism, however, has great merit and cannot be emphasized enough. Here, Anderson’s citation of Jesus’ words on the matter seems convincing. We know that this concept has had wide influence on Christianity, if only from the example of Jimmy Carter and his sins of the heart. Psychoanalysis makes a sharp distinction between thought and behavior and does, as Anderson argues, make a moral distinction between the two. Freud felt that one was not morally responsible for the content of one’s dreams, for example. This kind of distinction has been the basis of the understanding of moral development and moral responsibility in general in psychoanalysis to the present day. It has had a great effect on clinical practice as well. Psychoanalytic therapists are constantly reminding patients that “just because you think it doesn’t mean you are going to do it.” Or, “it is okay for you to think it and talk about it rather than to do it.” Essentially, the thought is not equal to the deed. This is indeed a difference with Christian thought and does seem to be Judaic in origin. Freud seems to have absorbed this kind of moral and ethical value system despite his atheism.

Dr. Anderson has given us a thoughtful essay that attempts to illustrate the role of ethnic, cultural, and religious background in the creation of ideas in science. He stresses the role of marginality in promoting the kind of skepticism and intellectual freedom to make new advances. He cites particular teachings in Judaism that he believes contributed to some of Freud’s major concepts. The essay, at the same time, evokes the volatile issue of the relation between science and religion. Anderson argues, largely convincingly, that cultural and religious values do affect scholarly innovations in

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science. Psychology, in particular, cannot be value-free. It is no secret, however, where Freud stood. He was an atheist and a scientist, yet Anderson has shown that Freud was influenced by certain cultural-religious values and conditions whether he liked it or not.

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