Civilization and Its Discontents Summary

How significant was Jewish culture and religion for Freud’s life and work?

Jewish culture and religion inevitably left a mark on Sigmund Freud’s life and work. Even though Freud himself openly and consistently labels himself being an atheist, it could be seen from his writings about how Jewish culture influenced his life and career as a psychoanalytic theorist. This can be probably rooted from his parents who are both Jewish and the presence of Jewish scriptures that have been also an integral part of his early education.

Early in his life, that he became conscious of important dilemmas such as the aftereffects of anti-Semitism to Jewish people. Freud himself stated the pressure he went through as a student: “I found that I was anticipated to feel myself inferior and an alien because I was a Jew” (1989, p. 13). Aside from his experiences within the university, anti-Semitism caused him to struggle in order to gain more opportunities as a scholar. In his work titled Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud emphasized that despite the contributions made by the Jews during history, they've been continuously afflicted by various kinds of aggression. That he also connected this violence to his assertions regarding identity formation. Because of this personal attachment to the Jewish experience, many scholars have claimed that numerous aspects of Jewish culture have now been subtly incorporated into his works as a psychoanalyst.

Freud managed to publish a work titled Moses and Monotheism which expounded his psychoanalytic theory and explored Moses, one of the most essential Jewish figures. However , in because of atheistic tendencies, Freud claimed in this work that the Jewish religion cannot be merely perceived as redemptive but rather, an enslaving force (Drob, 1989). Although Jewish culture and religion became influential for Freud, his rejection of dominant religious tenets still remained.

Works Cited

Drob (1989). Freud and Chasidim: Redeeming the Jewish Soul of Psychoanalysis. The Jewish Review 3 (1).
Freud, S. (1989). An autobiographical study. NY: W. W. Norton & Co.
Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its own Discontents. NY: Norton.