Freud, Psychoanalysis and Antisemitism

Abstract

Central to any understanding of the relationship of psychoanalysis to the history of political antisemitism in the modern world is the need to understand all theoretical models as responding to the scientific and political world in which they are formulated. Freud’s own view, shaped by theories of the masses before World War I, shifts radically in the context of the politics in Austria, first during the Republic and then under Austro-fascism and the rise of the Nazis. Wilhelm Reich’s views were best formulated at that point and reshaped the discourse of psychoanalysis. With émigré analysts, these changes are in turn reshaped in Great Britain and the United States. By the end of the 20th century still further views began to try to tease out how antisemitism is the same as or radically different from other forms of xenophobia.