A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis - Softcover

Gay, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300046081 ISBN 13: 9780300046083

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1989

Synopsis

“Why did none of the devout create psychoanalysis?  Why did it have to wait for a completely godless Jew?” Freud once asked.  In this book, the eminent historian and Freud scholar Peter Gay enters the long-running controversy about the relationship between religion and psychoanalysis.  Gay takes seriously Freud’s claim that he was an atheist and argues that atheism was an essential stance for the making of psychoanalysis.  He contends, in fact, that Judaism was not essential and that psychoanalysis is not a “Jewish science,” as both anti-Semites and ardent Freudians have often assumed.  
Peter Gay begins by discussing why psychoanalysis could only have been conceived by an atheist.  According to him, Freud saw science and religion as absolutely at odds with each other.  While some theologians and analysts have attempted to forge an alliance between psychoanalytic and religious positions, these attempts at accommodation have failed and must fail.  Psychoanalysis is not a religion, and the two comprise wholly incompatible styles of thinking about the world. 
Gay then deals with the question of whether Freud’s Jewish background contributed to the creation of psychoanalysis and describes Freud’s secular Judaism: while Freud was very much aware of his Jewishness and was in fact proud of it, this had nothing to do with the making of psychoanalysis itself.  True, Freud himself saw a possible link between his Jewishness and his daring: as a Jew he was treated ass an outsider and therefore, he thought, could approach delicate topics such as sexuality more boldly than he would have if he had been thoroughly lodged on the inside.  However, Gay maintains that this is at best a weak statement.
Writing with his customary wit and charm, Gay not only discusses Freud’s life and personality as they affected his ideas on religion but also compares Freud’s thoughts on religion to those of William James, Charles Darwin, Paul Tillich, and a host of Enlightenment figures.  The result is a book that will richly reward ever reader.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The notion that psychoanalysis is somehow a "Jewish science" has brought together strange bedfellows: gentiles eager to disparage Sigmund Freud, Jews eager to claim him and his daughter, Anna Freud. Gay (The Bourgeois Experience) reviews the various claims for the Jewishness of psychoanalysis and finds them to be wholly without merit. Paradoxically, he argues that Freud's position as an outsideran atheist and Jewenabled him to pierce the taboo topics of sexuality and the unconscious which led to his momentous discoveries. In this valuable essay, Gay, a professor of history at Yale, brings great sensitivity and insight to a debate that still persists in some quarters. He disputes the idea that psychoanalysis is a form of religion, tracing Freud's roots back to Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Newton.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

This is a concise, pointed historical inquiry into Freud's atheism and Jewish cultural identity and their role in his development of psychoanalysis. A fair-minded, careful scholar, Gay does not engage in the kind of "wild analysis" often associated with studies of Freud's personal psychology and motives in developing his theories. Unfortunately, though, the book is rather thin and unexciting in its conclusion. Essentially, Gay emphasizes Freud's identification with the scientific attitude and with scientist predecessors such as Darwin. While Freud's Jewishness was clearly very much a part of his personal identity, his firmly rooted skepticism and critical scrutiny of religion (his atheism) seems more central to the development of psychoanalysis. Paul Hymowitz, Cornell Medical Ctr., New York
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0300046081
• ISBN 13: 9780300046083
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 182