Language:
English
Year of publication:
1997
Titel der Quelle:
Discourse; Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture
Angaben zur Quelle:
19,2 (1997) 21-52
Keywords:
Freud, Sigmund,
;
Antisemitism Psychological aspects
;
Self-hate (Psychology)
;
Jews Identity
;
Circumcision Psychological aspects
Abstract:
Interprets the moment when Freud grasped the misrecognition which informed his Jewish self-alienation. Suggests that for Freud, as an assimilating Jew in fin-de-siècle Central Europe, the basis of antisemitism was due to the fact that Gentiles saw Jewish men as defective because of their circumcision, and that Freud internalized this attitude, unconsciously adopting it as a leitmotif for his own work. Thus, Freud's chief theories, which he claimed were universal for all mankind, centered on the phallus: the Oedipus complex, castration anxiety, and penis envy. Points out that the "Ostjuden" who did not want to assimilate to Western culture (i.e. Orthodox Jews) would have differed fundamentally from Freud and the assimilationists in that they believe that only circumcised males are complete - and they would therefore not be subject to the self-hatred characteristic of assimilating Jews.
Note:
Another version appeared in "The Psychoanalysis of Race" (1998), and in "Queer Theory and the Jewish Question" (2003) 166-198.
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink
