Sigmund Freud, one of the most famous Jews of the 20th century, was proud of his Jewish heritage, openly defiant of anti-Semites, and at the same time famously anti-religious. He wrote a book of Jewish jokes, confronted anti-Semites on trains, insulted the Gestapo to their faces, and was constantly wary of anti-Semitism as a threat to the field of psychology he created: psychoanalysis. This book explores how Freud’s fears about the public’s reception of his controversial work interfered with his efforts at scientific proof. Psychoanalysis has now lost its pre-eminent status among the mental sciences, and must regain it in order to fulfill its Enlightenment mission of relieving humankind of its self-destructive irrationality. Freud’s experience as a vulnerable Jew in prewar Europe is one of the keys to understanding the history of psychoanalysis, and how it may still be redeemed.
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