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CHAPTER 10 The Last Testament of Dr. Sigmund Freud On the occasion of his seventieth birthday in 1926, Sigmund Freud wrote to his friend and disciple Marie Bonaparte with a characteristic touch of irony: The Jewish societies in Vienna and the University of Jerusalem (of which I am a trustee), in short the Jews altogether, have celebrated me like a national hero, although my service to the Jewish cause is confined to the single point that I have never denied my Jewishness. The official world—the University [of Vienna], Academy, Medical Association—completely ignored the occasion. Rightly, I think; it was only honest, I could not have looked upon their congratulations and honors as sincere.1 In the same letter, Freud singled out the celebration of the Jewish lodge “to which I have belonged for twenty years” and the speech in his honor made there by his private physician Professor Ludwig Braun, “which cast a spell over the whole audience, including my family.” Braun, who joined the Viennese lodge of the B’nai B’rith in 1900 (three years after Freud) and had known the founder of psychoanalysis for nearly forty years, defined him in this celebrating speech as a Ganzjude.2 Freud’s quality of wholeness, his ability to recognize the unity of nature and mind behind discordant surface phenomena, his independence from religious dogma or conventional taboos and especially his courage in opposing the rest of society, had stamped him as a genuine Jew. In his spiritual “optimism,” tenacious persistence, dignity, and composure in the face of social rejection he had exhibited precisely those traits which explained why Jews had always been in the forefront of the fight for freedom. These same characteristics, Professor Braun suggested, had naturally drawn Freud to B’nai B’rith and its humanitarian ideals. They had also been expressed in his brainchild, the new science of psychoanalysis, which Braun described as an “authentically Jewish conception of life” (Lebensanschauung ), devoted to seeking the general laws of nature and fearlessly exploring the depths of the mind.3 The Last Testament of Dr. Sigmund Freud 259 Freud’s own address to the B’nai B’rith on 6 May 1926 with its strong affirmation of his “Jewish nature,” of the humanist goals of the Viennese lodge, and its importance as a forum for independent-minded men of principle, amplified Braun’s remarks and demonstrated his high regard for the fraternity. Beyond that, it also provided an important testimony to his personal development, beliefs, and the nature of his Jewish identification. Freud recalled that his attraction to the lodge crystallized in the years after 1895 when he had been like a virtual pariah in Vienna. On the one hand I had gained the first insight into the depth of human instinct, had seen many things which were sobering, at first even frightening; on the other hand the disclosure of my unpopular discoveries led to my losing most of my personal relationships at that time. I felt as though outlawed, shunned by all. This isolation aroused in me the longing for a circle of excellent men with high ideals who would accept me in friendship despite my temerity. Your lodge was described to me as the place where I could find such men. That you are Jews could only be welcome to me, for I was myself a Jew, and it has always appeared to me not only undignified, but outright foolish to deny it. What tied me to Jewry was—I have to admit it—not the faith, not even the national pride, for I was always an unbeliever, have been brought up without religion, but not without respect for the so-called “ethical” demands of human civilization. Whenever I have experienced feelings of national exaltation, I have tried to suppress them as disastrous and unfair, frightened by the warning example of those nations among which we Jews live. But there remained enough to make the attraction of Jews and Judaism irresistible, many dark emotional powers (Dunkelmächte) all the stronger the less they could be expressed in words, as well as the clear consciousness of an inner identity, the familiarity of the same psychological structure (die Hemlichkeit der gleichen seelischen Konstruktion).4 According to Freud, this “uncanny” primordial feeling of solidarity, with its particularist ethnic nexus and common psychic structure had nothing to do with Jewish religious identity. Though he could not define it, these “dark emotional powers” were in fact profoundly rooted in the Galician...

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