Judaism and the Psychoanalytic Revolution - The 92nd Street Y, New York

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Marx, Herzl and Freud: Nearsighted Visions of Redemption?

Judaism and the Psychoanalytic Revolution

Oct 17, 1989


Dennis B. Klein, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, speaks about the relationship between Judaism, Sigmund Freud, and the development of psychoanalysis. This is the first part of a three-part series, “Marx, Herzl and Freud: Nearsighted Visions of Redemption?” Klein contends that psychoanalysis has a strong and complicated relationship with Judaism–before 1906 all the members of the psychoanalytic movement were both Viennese and Jewish. Within the early decades of the 20th century, however, it also became a distinctly international movement. Klein argues that the recognition of this connection has involved “denying it on one hand and overestimating it in the other.” It was for example, overestimated by the Nazis, who “tagged psychoanalysis as a Jewish science.” Following the lecture, Rabbi Paul Joseph moderates a discussion with Klein, including questions from the audience.

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