Freud and Judaism

After first having been denied, the Jewish element in the works of Freud has been variously studied from many different points of view.

In this wide-ranging collection, there can be found studies that are representative of the tendencies in research during the last few years: from the biographical and psychological approach explaining this connection through the existence of a 'particular Jewish tendency' or 'outlook' deriving from the special social and existential condition of the Jew in modern society, to the approach establishing a parallel between the history of thought and of the psychoanalytic institution on the one hand and the history of contemporary Judaism in the face of the phenomenon of assimilation on the other; from the reconstruction of the historical context in which Freud found himself working, to the identification of anti-Jewish drives within clinical practice itself.

In the two essays on Moses links are sought between Freud's scientific production and his personal meditation on Judaism, and between his own personal myths and the connection of those with the plan to evolve a positive theory of Judaism in reply to the outbreak of antisemitic racism.

Includes a Foreword by Mortimer Ostow and a previously untranslated lecture, "Death and Us", by Sigmund Freud.