Language:
English
Year of publication:
1988
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Psychohistory
Angaben zur Quelle:
15,3 (1988) 333-358
Keywords:
Freud, Sigmund,
Abstract:
Recent attacks on Sigmund Freud for giving up his original theory of child seduction, thus abandoning children to adult abuse, are irrational and unduly virulent. They reflect widespread disappointment with Freud, especially among Jews, many of whom had seen his theories as a secular form of redemption. Psychoanalysis had failed to prepare Jews to meet the Holocaust, to predict German violence, or to explain Nazi motivations. Surveys works by Jewish psychologists which reflect these perceptions, among them J.M. Masson and Alice Miller. She sees the Holocaust as the outcome of centuries of abusive German childrearing. By revoking the seduction theory, Freud yielded to this tradition and became an unwitting ally of the Nazis. Had he helped to reform German childrearing practices, the Germans would not have found it necessary to exterminate the Jews. These attacks against Freud are an unconscious attempt to exonerate Germany and France for their actions during the Holocaust, injecting the guilt onto Freud and psychoanalysis, and describing them as false messiahs which polluted the nation.
Note:
On the Holocaust as a factor underlying critiques of Freud.
URL:
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