nalysis, Freud argued against a Jew's appointment and for the naming of a non-Jew, Jung in particular.
Freud's own comments indict him as a man who did not feel strongly enough about his Jewishness to fight against anti-Semitism by an appointment of a Jew.
Freud declared to his fellow psychoanalysts that "Most of you are Jews and therefore you are incompetent to win friends for the new teaching. Jews must be content with the modest role of preparing the ground. It is absolutely essential that I should form ties in the world of general science. I am getting on in years and am weary of being perpetually attacked. We are all in danger" (Freeman 69).
If Freud were old, it was even more of a reason to expect him to take a stand for Jewishness---if he were as supportive of Jewishness and Jewish causes as Freeman claims---but he did not, placing the future of psychoanalysis above the future of the fight against anti-Semitism in Europe.
Young-Bruehl's biography of Freud's daughter Anna includes
the claim that Freud's primary interest in religion was focused on his application of psychoanalytic principles to the development of the particular religion.
With respect to Jewishness in particular, Young-Bruehl writes that "Freud's history of the Jews (as expressed in the story of Moses) was, in effect, a history of a defense mechanism that was undone not by therapy but by a group process: the group's memory of the patricide would not stay repressed. But, on the other hand, the neurotic outbreak allowed the Jews to realize that Moses had created them as a people, as Jews; he had chosen them to be his followers, to be the worshipers of the One God" (Young-Bruehl 206).
As impressive as Freud's analysis of the history of Jewishness might have been in psychoanalytic terms, however, it does not give evidence that Freud was comfortable with his own Jewishness.
In fact, the cool objectivity with which he examines the history of...