Vienna Secrets

Freud’s Secret Books

Sigmund Freud wasn’t a very good Jew. He opposed his wife’s desire to establish a Jewish home, and his son Martin wrote that the Freud children were raised “without any traces of… or instruction in Jewish ritual.” None of them, as far as Martin could remember, ever attended synagogue. Even worse, the Freud family celebrated Easter and Christmas! Freud dismissed religion as an illusion, published a critical work on Judaism at a time when thousands of Jews were being transported to concentration camps, and was concerned that psychoanalysis might become a parochial branch of medicine practiced only by Austrian Jews. He didn’t want psychoanalysis to become-as he put it-a “Jewish national affair.” Indeed, this concern led him to name Carl Gustav Jung (known in psychoanalytic circles as the Teuton) as his successor.

Yet Freud had another, rather different side. He was an active member of a Jewish lodge, B’nai B’rith, played cards with Jews every Saturday night, and loved Jewish jokes. He is remembered today, of course, as a great “Jewish” thinker.

Where then did Freud really stand on the subject of his own religion?

In biographies of Freud, the word ambivalence appears repeatedly in this context. But really, there was nothing truly ambivalent about Freud’s position. He thought religion was nonsense but at the same time had many of what Dr. Dennis B. Klein of Kean University has described as Jewish attachments. These attachments were encouraged and strengthened by the anti-Semitism that had become so widespread in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Freud once remarked that Jews had “no choice but to band together” for as long as they were being persecuted. Thus, his “Jewishness” was largely expedient rather than natural.

Yet, commentators have often remarked that it is impossible to think of Freud without registering-at some level-that he was a Jew, and psychoanalysis is frequently described as a Jewish phenomenon. The laws of motion would have been the same whatever creed Sir Isaac Newton had professed. If he had been a Hindu, then force would always equal mass times acceleration, and no one would ever have described the second law as an example of “Hindu physics.” The same, however, cannot be said of Freud. Even though he rejected Judaism, the fact that he was a Jew still seems relevant to his system of psychology. There is undeniably something about psychoanalysis that “feels” Jewish. This isn’t a racist proposition. Many historians of psychoanalysis have made this point, and Freud himself would have agreed, which is why he wanted Jung-the Teuton-to legitimize psychoanalysis for global consumption.

So what are we talking about here? What’s so Jewish about psychoanalysis? It’s relatively easy to identify resonances between psychoanalytic theory and Jewish stereotypes. Take, for example, the Oedipus complex and the attitude of Jewish mothers toward their sons. The following Jewish joke illustrates the point: How do we know that Jesus was Jewish? He lived at home until he was thirty, he went into his father’s business, and his mother thought he was God.

The Jewish roots of psychoanalysis may, however, be far deeper. To explain the Jewishness of psychoanalysis, we must get beyond superficial stereotypes and journey into the world of Jewish mysticism.

Although Freud was a rational man, he was fascinated by religions and the myths of antiquity. That is why his consulting room was crammed with ancient figurines and statuettes-little gods and goddesses. He also wrote works on the origins of religious thought, Moses, totemism, the supernatural, and a seventeenth-century case of demonological neurosis. It should come as no surprise, therefore, to discover that such an individual was acquainted with the kabbala-a body of Jewish esoteric teachings dating back to the twelfth century.

When David Bakan’s Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition was first published in 1958, the author wrote a preface in which he argued that we cannot fully appreciate the development of psychoanalysis unless we view it against the history of Jewish mystical thought. There are indeed many similarities between kabbalistic writings and psychoanalysis: dream interpretation, symbolism, an interest in sexuality, and close attention to language. Kabbalists study the texts of holy books in much the same way as psychoanalysts study people. In both cases, small things-minute details-matter. Bakan’s problem, however, was that there wasn’t much direct evidence to support his thesis. That is, until he was contacted by Chaim Bloch, an eminent student of Judaism, kabbalah, and Hasidism, and a one-time acquaintance of Sigmund Freud.

Bloch recalled visiting Freud and, when left alone, taking the opportunity to examine the great man’s books. What he saw was quite remarkable. In Freud’s library was a large collection of Judaica, now absent from official collections and registers. Among these books were several volumes on kabbalah and a French translation of the Zohar (perhaps the most important work of Jewish mysticism).

In subsequent editions of Bakan’s book, he introduced a new preface, and a paragraph that explains the significance of his discovery with particular reference to the Zohar: It is without question the most important work in the Jewish mystical tradition. A number of features in the Zohar strongly suggest relationship to the psychoanalytic movement-among them the concept of man’s bisexuality, and concepts of sexuality in general. There is also in the Zohar the notion that man can be studied by the exegetical techniques associated with the study of Torah; and a theory of the nature of anti-Semitism almost identical with that contained in Freud’s Moses and Monotheism. Perhaps even more important, there is an atmospheric similarity-one which cannot indeed, be conveyed in any brief description.

Freud was anxious to be seen as a scientist and spent most his life distancing himself from religion. It is the greatest of ironies then that this supposedly rational, irreligious man might have been influenced by not just spiritual texts but spiritual texts of a mystical nature. If we accept Bloch’s testimony, and with it Bakan’s thesis, then psychoanalysis might be described as a late kabbalistic school of thought, which makes Freud not a scientist but a closet kabbalist: the last great mage of the Jewish mystical tradition.

I like the idea of Freud poring over his secret collection of magic books. It is a romantic and fitting image. One is reminded of the Talmudic legend of the lamed vavniks, the righteous men. At any given time there are thirty-six righteous men living in the world whose good deeds stop the world from ending. They accomplish their work in secret and are never rewarded. When one dies, another is born. And so it goes on from generation to generation: thirty-six anonymous Jews, standing-thanklessly-between civilization and ruin.