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A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis
“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 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 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.
Published in association with Hebrew Union College Press
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 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 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.
Published in association with Hebrew Union College Press
182 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Peter Gay
150 books153 followersPeter Joachim Gay was a German-American historian, educator, and author. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers (1997–2003). He received the American Historical Association's (AHA) Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004. He authored over 25 books, including The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, a two-volume award winner; Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1968); and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988).
Gay was born in Berlin in 1923, left Germany in 1939 and emigrated, via Cuba, to the United States in 1941. From 1948 to 1955 he was a political science professor at Columbia University, and then a history professor from 1955 to 1969. He left Columbia in 1969 to join Yale University's History Department as Professor of Comparative and Intellectual European History and was named Sterling Professor of History in 1984.
Gay was the interim editor of The American Scholar after the death of Hiram Haydn in 1973 and served on that magazine's editorial board for many years. Sander L. Gilman, a literary historian at Emory University, called Gay "one of the major American historians of European thought, period".
Gay was born in Berlin in 1923, left Germany in 1939 and emigrated, via Cuba, to the United States in 1941. From 1948 to 1955 he was a political science professor at Columbia University, and then a history professor from 1955 to 1969. He left Columbia in 1969 to join Yale University's History Department as Professor of Comparative and Intellectual European History and was named Sterling Professor of History in 1984.
Gay was the interim editor of The American Scholar after the death of Hiram Haydn in 1973 and served on that magazine's editorial board for many years. Sander L. Gilman, a literary historian at Emory University, called Gay "one of the major American historians of European thought, period".
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 30, 2023
"Why did none of the devout create psychoanalysis? Why did it have to wait for a Godless Jew?" So Freud himself asks the question which this book purports to answer. But it really doesn't. It's more history than philosophy. More of a treatment of Freud's views on religion (in sum: they are negative, in a rather straight-forward old fashioned enlightenment way) than an attempt to give a top-down explanation of why psychoanalysis emerged outside the human society which purports to possess absolute truth (the Church), with some mention of believers' interactions with Freud thrown in for good measure. The only thing I remember of that is this incredibly cringeworthy protestant pastor who describes Freud as the ultimate Christian in a letter to him.
The impression it gives is a bunch of naive, irenic mice (we could say blind mice) making peace offerings to a cat, who cooly devours them one by one...
All that said, it was interesting to go over Freud's arguments against religion and philosophy. The hyper-summary dismissals he gives of these systems can in a strange way serve to illuminate their true nature. The general criticism of religion is that it is a wish-fulfillment fantasy generated by an infantile sense of dependence. The criticism of philosophy is that it exaggerates the powers of intuition and inference, itself motivated by the illusion of the possibility of having a seamless and coherent mental picture of the world.
Thus religion springs from a wish to be safe, philosophy springs from a secondary formation, the intellectual sublimation of that wish to be safe, the wish to know what's going on (dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty, which the intellect generally finds unbearable—as they are to the intellect what death is to the whole being: its annihilation and impossibility). There is something refreshingly "pre-theoretical" about Freud's criticisms, and something rather great-souled, even if ultimately devilish, about the intellectual power it takes to stand back and demolish them from the outside, without taking even a moment to consider any of their claims on their own terms.
While I think that CS Lewis' counterargument to Freud's wish fulfillment thesis ("If there is something in us that wants what nothing on earth can satisfy, we are not made for this earth") is quite mistaken (even on the religious picture, evil desires are not amenable to any real satisfaction), I do think that the human desire and capacity for some kind of transcendence is innate (but again, it would be almost universal—and thus appear to be innate—on Freud's picture, because the infantile sense of dependence is universal). The stronger counter-argument is that any science is always-already metaphysical, at least implicitly, in that it seeks truth (which is itself an immaterial, non-empirical thing). This second criticism serves to defend some philosophy and at minimum the possibility of religious truth—provided that both are trimmed of the artifacts of merely-human pretensions.
Nevertheless, Freud's criticisms can serve to critique the many instances where religion is warped by solipsistic self-interest or the many philosophies which overstate their own powers of explanation (in other words, "philosophy" in the degraded form of ideology, worldview which serves to obscure the world, rather than illuminate it).
Another interesting tidbit I picked up was that Freud entertained the belief that two unconsciouses could communicate to each other without the mediation of a conscious bridge. Basically, telepathy. On the one hand it seems astonishing that someone so hard-nosed would even entertain an investigation into something so silly (let alone believe it). But in reality, that is the true scientific attitude—no hypothesis is so ridiculous that it is not at least worth looking into (in fact to some extent, the hypothesis at which our reason recoils most automatically is probably the least-examined. This was sort of Freud's whole method, that he swam against the current of the mind until he was able to see something of what was upriver).
I would even go so far as to say that it would be intellectual prejudice on our part to see Freud's belief in telepathy as some quixotic, trivial artifact independent of his general system of thought. I mean, maybe it was (he himself seemed to believe so—he said that his own belief in telepathy was "inessential" to psychoanalysis)—but at the risk of sounding servile, I think that when a very great thinker is captivated by a problem, it would be mistaken or rash to reject it out of hand. Although the modern world alternatively represses or misprisions him, Freud has taught us all a lot through what he discovered, and he came to what he discovered through a remarkable clarity of mind and what I would concede was an authentically scientific (even if ultimately one-sided) attitude. For all his mistakes and errors, he was a real scientist, or at least thought he was. Thus we should see if we can break any ground on the subject of telepathy without falling into the trap of naive new-age Jungian obscurantism...
I think it's also worth mentioning that Peter Gay, a guy who didn't set foot in the United States until he was 18 years old, writes so eloquently and with such a broad vocabulary that I frequently had to look up his terms.
The book also pointed me towards Gregory Zilboorg, some thinker who seems to share my opinion that psychoanalysis ultimately ends up supporting religion in that it brings to light some truth of the soul in its negativity, and thus ends giving evidence for the doctrine of original sin. This, to me, seems to be half of the value of the science, that it exposes something of the true depth of human evil, which earlier in human history was known, but not so well-known as it is when rendered up empirically through the psychoanalytic method.
The other half (in my opinion) is that a new disease cried out for a new cure—that psychoanalysis was necessary to defuse a certain inauthenticity which had crept into souls in the modern period. As Chesterton puts it:
^ This is the kind of tendentious, over-simplified, overly-coherent picture of the world that I was looking for in this book, but I didn't find it. Maybe I'll just read Chesterton...
The impression it gives is a bunch of naive, irenic mice (we could say blind mice) making peace offerings to a cat, who cooly devours them one by one...
All that said, it was interesting to go over Freud's arguments against religion and philosophy. The hyper-summary dismissals he gives of these systems can in a strange way serve to illuminate their true nature. The general criticism of religion is that it is a wish-fulfillment fantasy generated by an infantile sense of dependence. The criticism of philosophy is that it exaggerates the powers of intuition and inference, itself motivated by the illusion of the possibility of having a seamless and coherent mental picture of the world.
Thus religion springs from a wish to be safe, philosophy springs from a secondary formation, the intellectual sublimation of that wish to be safe, the wish to know what's going on (dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty, which the intellect generally finds unbearable—as they are to the intellect what death is to the whole being: its annihilation and impossibility). There is something refreshingly "pre-theoretical" about Freud's criticisms, and something rather great-souled, even if ultimately devilish, about the intellectual power it takes to stand back and demolish them from the outside, without taking even a moment to consider any of their claims on their own terms.
While I think that CS Lewis' counterargument to Freud's wish fulfillment thesis ("If there is something in us that wants what nothing on earth can satisfy, we are not made for this earth") is quite mistaken (even on the religious picture, evil desires are not amenable to any real satisfaction), I do think that the human desire and capacity for some kind of transcendence is innate (but again, it would be almost universal—and thus appear to be innate—on Freud's picture, because the infantile sense of dependence is universal). The stronger counter-argument is that any science is always-already metaphysical, at least implicitly, in that it seeks truth (which is itself an immaterial, non-empirical thing). This second criticism serves to defend some philosophy and at minimum the possibility of religious truth—provided that both are trimmed of the artifacts of merely-human pretensions.
Nevertheless, Freud's criticisms can serve to critique the many instances where religion is warped by solipsistic self-interest or the many philosophies which overstate their own powers of explanation (in other words, "philosophy" in the degraded form of ideology, worldview which serves to obscure the world, rather than illuminate it).
Another interesting tidbit I picked up was that Freud entertained the belief that two unconsciouses could communicate to each other without the mediation of a conscious bridge. Basically, telepathy. On the one hand it seems astonishing that someone so hard-nosed would even entertain an investigation into something so silly (let alone believe it). But in reality, that is the true scientific attitude—no hypothesis is so ridiculous that it is not at least worth looking into (in fact to some extent, the hypothesis at which our reason recoils most automatically is probably the least-examined. This was sort of Freud's whole method, that he swam against the current of the mind until he was able to see something of what was upriver).
I would even go so far as to say that it would be intellectual prejudice on our part to see Freud's belief in telepathy as some quixotic, trivial artifact independent of his general system of thought. I mean, maybe it was (he himself seemed to believe so—he said that his own belief in telepathy was "inessential" to psychoanalysis)—but at the risk of sounding servile, I think that when a very great thinker is captivated by a problem, it would be mistaken or rash to reject it out of hand. Although the modern world alternatively represses or misprisions him, Freud has taught us all a lot through what he discovered, and he came to what he discovered through a remarkable clarity of mind and what I would concede was an authentically scientific (even if ultimately one-sided) attitude. For all his mistakes and errors, he was a real scientist, or at least thought he was. Thus we should see if we can break any ground on the subject of telepathy without falling into the trap of naive new-age Jungian obscurantism...
I think it's also worth mentioning that Peter Gay, a guy who didn't set foot in the United States until he was 18 years old, writes so eloquently and with such a broad vocabulary that I frequently had to look up his terms.
The book also pointed me towards Gregory Zilboorg, some thinker who seems to share my opinion that psychoanalysis ultimately ends up supporting religion in that it brings to light some truth of the soul in its negativity, and thus ends giving evidence for the doctrine of original sin. This, to me, seems to be half of the value of the science, that it exposes something of the true depth of human evil, which earlier in human history was known, but not so well-known as it is when rendered up empirically through the psychoanalytic method.
The other half (in my opinion) is that a new disease cried out for a new cure—that psychoanalysis was necessary to defuse a certain inauthenticity which had crept into souls in the modern period. As Chesterton puts it:
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage.
^ This is the kind of tendentious, over-simplified, overly-coherent picture of the world that I was looking for in this book, but I didn't find it. Maybe I'll just read Chesterton...
January 2, 2023
Das schmale Bändchen ist ein Jahr vor Peter Gays monumentaler Freud-Biographie erschienen und liest sich wie eine kleine Vorstudie. Gay resümiert gegen Ende, dass er seiner Fragestellung, warum - nach Selbstauskunft Freuds - ein "gottloser Jude" die Psychoanalyse gefunden habe, sich nur negativ annähern konnte. Systematisch verwirft Gay Vereinnahmungsversuche Freuds durch Religionswissenschaftler und hält damit dem atheistischen Aufklärer Freud die Treue. Die Argumentation überzeugt, denn der Antagonismus, den Freud zwischen Wissenschaft und Religion ausmachte, kann nicht beiseite gewischt werden. Der Fragestellung des Buches hilft das natürlich nicht weiter, weshalb Gay ohne größere eigene Überzeugung zum Schluss noch die soziologische These rekapituliert, Freud habe als Jude im antisemitischen Österreich unter höherem Leistungsdruck gestanden. Es bleibt Ratlosigkeit und das ist vielleicht nicht die unvernünftigste Antwort.
September 25, 2010
Simple, but also informative and brief. This concise and approachable book is part biography (of Freud) and part intellectual history (of psychoanalysis, religion, anti/Semitism).
For example: the part about Jewish outsider-ness was a no-brainer, but I hadn't known that Freud had used some of the same principles of inherited traits used by scientists to explain 'racial' differences (and hierarchy). It makes sense, but for some reason I figured Freud was above all that nonsense.
For example: the part about Jewish outsider-ness was a no-brainer, but I hadn't known that Freud had used some of the same principles of inherited traits used by scientists to explain 'racial' differences (and hierarchy). It makes sense, but for some reason I figured Freud was above all that nonsense.
March 6, 2013
A pretty good read, particularly the first chapter.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews