Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition

David Bakan

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486147499
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

`Dr. Bakan's book … is destined to become a landmark in the study of the historical origins of psychoanalysis.` — American Journal of Psychiatry
In this pioneering work, David Bakan challenges the popular view of Freud as an entirely secular intellectual, schooled in modern culture rather than Jewish traditions. Bakan contends that the father of psychology was profoundly influenced by mystic lore about which he appeared to know very little — and which represents the antithesis of scientific method.
This work is based on the premise that Freudian psychoanalytic theory is largely rooted in the Jewish religion, particularly the mysticism of the kabbala. In a fascinating interpretation of the blend of personality and cultural history, Bakan explains how Freud's Jewish heritage contributed, either consciously or unconsciously, to his psychological theories. The author employs Freud's own distinction between being a Jew and the acceptance of Jewish doctrine to demonstrate the effect of Jewish mysticism in the formation of Freud's technical genius.
With its focus on the ways in which Freud was and was not Jewish, this study offers a model example of the problem of Jewish identity — as embodied by one of the giants of modern science, who professed to be both `infidel` and `Jew.`

Part I

The Background of Freud’s Development of Psychoanalysis

1

The Problem of the Origins of Psychoanalysis

The year 1956 marked the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sigmund Freud, a man whose long life spanned almost half of the nineteenth century and over a third of the twentieth. His essential modernity leads us to overlook how much of his life was spent in an age which most contemporaries cannot remember, and to ignore the historical factors that may have played a role in the development of psychoanalysis.

Freud was evidently aware of the deep moment of his contributions with respect to man’s self-evaluation. He once indicated that there have been three major blows to man’s narcissism. Copernicus delivered the cosmological blow; Darwin delivered the biological blow; and psychoanalysis delivered the psychological blow.¹ In addition to his profound effect upon our ideas of the treatment of mental disorder, Freud has had an overwhelming influence on psychology at large, the arts, the social sciences, social reform, child rearing, and indeed every problem involving human relationships.

The psychoanalytic movement seemingly originated as an effort on the part of a physician to cure certain ailments that were resistant to other forms of treatment; and it was in this guise that it first presented itself to the world. Yet, shortly after this introduction, it reached out to touch, infiltrate, and encompass practically every other form of intellectual endeavor.

The far-reaching consequences of Freud’s thought are paradoxically confirmed by the degree to which his contributions are taken for granted. Freudian concepts are used freely in the contemporary intellectual world to win insight into other problems, even as this essay, which is an attempt to understand the genesis of psychoanalysis itself, will manifest. The literature of our day uses Freudian terminology without mentioning the source, as though it were gratuitous to do so. In a world in which the method of allusion has in general gone out of fashion—because writers cannot be confident that allusions will be understood—allusions to Freudian notions are made freely in full confidence that they will be appreciated by the reader.

So much for the impact of Freud on modern thought. We turn now to the major question of this essay: Against what backdrop of the history of ideas shall we place these momentous contributions of Freud? The tremendous impact of psychoanalysis makes the problem of its origins all the more important, especially since we have learned from Freud that only by the penetration of the mystery of origins can we come to a full understanding of either the individual or society. The editors of the letters and notes which Freud wrote to his friend Fliess gave them an appropriate title beginning with the word “origins,” used in the sense that it has for our question ; ² and the atmosphere of excitement which accompanied the publication of the letters and notes confirmed their significance to the intellectual world.

In thinking through the problem of origins it is important to take note of the findings of Freud and his followers about the way in which distortion along these lines can take place. Indeed such distortions have already been set in motion. As an amusing example, when the citizens of Freiberg, Moravia, Freud’s birthplace, decided to put a memorial tablet on the house where he was born, they misread the birth records and put Freud’s birthday two months ahead of his actual birthday. Since Freud was born almost exactly nine months after the marriage of his parents, such an error would have thrown doubt on his biological legitimacy, something which would have gladdened the hearts of some of his critics. The lessons of psychoanalysis suggest that such an error may be an unconscious aspersion on the legitimacy of the origins of psychoanalysis. ³

just as we must guard against the processes which would undermine psychoanalysis, so must we guard against the genotypically similar processes which would lead us to overvalue and idealize Freud. In this essay we will try to steer a middle course. As pointed out by Ekstein, in the same way that the death of Freud’s father brought to Freud an awareness of the ambivalent nature of his feelings towards him, so it seems “as if the death of Freud permits us now to learn more about him, his life and consequently about Psychoanalysis.... Our own ambivalence, another example of the Oedipal theme, is converted into scientific curiosity that aims at better insight into and integration of the work he left us.” ⁴ A new generation may perhaps scrutinize him more objectively, in the absence of emotions stirred among those people who knew him intimately and whose thoughts about psychoanalysis were conditioned by their expectations of Freud’s own reactions.

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

1

Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, ed. James Strachey (5 vols., London: Hogarth Press, 1950-1952), V, p. 173.

2

S. Freud, The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes: 1887-1902, eds. M. Bonaparte, A. Freud, and E. Kris; trans. E. Mosbacher and J. Strachey; introd. E. Kris (New York: Basic Books, 1954).

3

Cf. L. Adams, “Sigmund Freud’s Correct Birthday: Misunderstanding and Solution,” Psychoanal. Rev., 1954, 41, 359-362.

4

R. Ekstein, “A Biographical Comment on Freud’s Dual Instinct Theory,” American Imago, 1949, 6, 210-216.

2

Hypotheses Relating the Origins of Psychoanalysis to Freud’s Personal Life

It is one of the major paradoxes of contemporary psychoanalytic thought that whereas it places so much of its emphasis upon the analysis of “origins,” it itself seems to be without origins. Let us consider what the apparent origins of psychoanalytic thought are.

We note that Freud’s intellectual life falls into two distinct periods, the one that preceded the psychoanalytic period and the psychoanalytic period itself. In the first period Freud concerned himself largely with biological problems, and there are only bare hints of an interest in psychology,¹ indeed not much more than might be expected from any typically well-educated person. His pre-psychoanalytic bibliography ² was already such as to earn him a respectable, although perhaps not outstanding, place in science. He had made several noteworthy contributions, including his pioneering work on the properties of cocaine. ³ It was not until he was in his late thirties that he showed any indication of what was to come from him. The change which took place in him has been aptly characterized as follows:

When Freud startled his contemporaries with his first publication on the neuroses he was in his late thirties. He had behind him years of training, research, and practice in anatomy, physiology and neurology. With every step he took in his new venture he became more of a stranger to his colleagues. They could see no link whatever between those years of solid and fruitful medical research and his new interests and methods. Later, many psychoanalysts used to take the opposite view of the first part of Freud’s working life: they looked at it as a time spent in a foreign land, at best a period of preparation, at worst a waste of precious years as far as psycho-analysis was concerned.⁴

In pointing out the difference between the two periods, Jones comments on how Brücke, Freud’s materialistic-minded scientific mentor, would have reacted to the shift.

Yet Brücke would have been astonished, to put it mildly, had he known that one of his favorite pupils, one apparently a convert to the strict faith, was later, in his famous wish theory of the mind, to bring back into science the ideas of “purpose,” “intention,” and “aim” which had just been abolished from the universe.⁵

Freud himself, prompted by the question whether psychoanalysis might be practiced without medical training, spoke of his own medical background, which was associated in his mind with neurology, physiology, and the like, as follows:

I have been engaged in the practice of medicine for forty-one years and my self-knowledge tells me that I have never really been a true physician. I became a physician owing to a compulsory deflection of my original purpose, and the triumph of my life is this: that after a very long way round I have regained the path in which I began....⁶

Jones writes:

To medicine itself he felt no direct attraction. He did not conceal in later years that he never felt at home in the medical profession, and that he did not seem to himself to be a regular member of it. I can recall as far back as in 1910 his expressing the wish with a sigh that he could retire from medical practice and devote himself to the unraveling of cultural and historical problems—ultimately the great problem of how man came to be what he is.⁷

If Freud had a psychoanalytic type of interest at this early period, it was certainly not being developed in any deliberate work. Jones aptly characterizes what we may call the suspension of whatever psychoanalytic interest he may have had in the pre-psychoanalytic period, and writes of a mood in which Freud

would be a laborious and painstaking student, but one not likely to excel in the “exact” sciences. Biology offered him some understanding of the evolution of life and man’s relationship to nature. Later on physiology and anatomy would teach him something of man’s physical constitution. But would this arid path ever bring him nearer to his ultimate goal, the secrets of man’s inner nature, towards which the deepest urges impelled him? We know that the medical study of man’s physical afflictions brought him no nearer, and perhaps impeded his progress. That, however, he finally attained his goal, though by an extraordinary circuitous route, he rightly came to regard as the triumph of his life.⁸

It is clear that, if we seek some explanation of Freud’s psychoanalytic developments in the formal preparation and the professional work of his pre-psychoanalytic years, we find little there to give us insight. The tradition of severe materialism of Brüc...