Freud's Moses

Freud's Moses PDF Author: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300057560
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Moses and Monotheism, Freud's last major book and the only one specifically devoted to a Jewish theme, has proved to be one of the most controversial and enigmatic works in the Freudian canon. Among other things, Freud claims in the book that Moses was an Egyptian, that he derived the notion of monotheism from Egyptian concepts, and that after he introduced monotheism to the Jews he was killed by them. Since these historical and ethnographic assumptions have been generally rejected by biblical scholars, anthropologists, and historians of religion, the book has increasingly been approached psychoanalytically, as a psychological document of Freud's inner life--of his allegedly unresolved Oedipal complex and ambivalence over his Jewish identity. In Freud's Moses a distinguished historian of the Jews brings a new perspective to this puzzling work. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi argues that while attempts to psychoanalyze Freud's text may be potentially fruitful, they must be preceded by a genuine effort to understand what Freud consciously wanted to convey to his readers. Using both historical and philological analysis, Yerushalmi offers new insights into Freud's intentions in writing Moses and Monotheism. He presents the work as Freud's psychoanalytic history of the Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish psyche--his attempt, under the shadow of Nazism, to discover what has made the Jews what they are. In the process Yerushalmi's eloquent and sensitive exploration of Freud's last work provides a reappraisal of Freud's feelings toward anti-Semitism and the gentile world, his ambivalence about psychoanalysis as a "Jewish" science, his relationship to his father, and above all a new appreciation of the depth and intensity of Freud's identity as a "godless Jew."

Freud's Moses

Freud's Moses PDF Author: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300057560
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
Moses and Monotheism, Freud's last major book and the only one specifically devoted to a Jewish theme, has proved to be one of the most controversial and enigmatic works in the Freudian canon. Among other things, Freud claims in the book that Moses was an Egyptian, that he derived the notion of monotheism from Egyptian concepts, and that after he introduced monotheism to the Jews he was killed by them. Since these historical and ethnographic assumptions have been generally rejected by biblical scholars, anthropologists, and historians of religion, the book has increasingly been approached psychoanalytically, as a psychological document of Freud's inner life--of his allegedly unresolved Oedipal complex and ambivalence over his Jewish identity. In Freud's Moses a distinguished historian of the Jews brings a new perspective to this puzzling work. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi argues that while attempts to psychoanalyze Freud's text may be potentially fruitful, they must be preceded by a genuine effort to understand what Freud consciously wanted to convey to his readers. Using both historical and philological analysis, Yerushalmi offers new insights into Freud's intentions in writing Moses and Monotheism. He presents the work as Freud's psychoanalytic history of the Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish psyche--his attempt, under the shadow of Nazism, to discover what has made the Jews what they are. In the process Yerushalmi's eloquent and sensitive exploration of Freud's last work provides a reappraisal of Freud's feelings toward anti-Semitism and the gentile world, his ambivalence about psychoanalysis as a "Jewish" science, his relationship to his father, and above all a new appreciation of the depth and intensity of Freud's identity as a "godless Jew."

Moses and Monotheism

Moses and Monotheism PDF Author: Sigmund Freud
Publisher: Leonardo Paolo Lovari
ISBN: 8898301790
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
The book consists of three essays and is an extension of Freud’s work on psychoanalytic theory as a means of generating hypotheses about historical events. Freud hypothesizes that Moses was not Hebrew, but actually born into Ancient Egyptian nobility and was probably a follower of Akhenaten, an ancient Egyptian monotheist. Freud contradicts the biblical story of Moses with his own retelling of events, claiming that Moses only led his close followers into freedom during an unstable period in Egyptian history after Akhenaten (ca. 1350 BCE) and that they subsequently killed Moses in rebellion and later combined with another monotheistic tribe in Midian based on a volcanic God, Jahweh. Freud explains that years after the murder of Moses, the rebels regretted their action, thus forming the concept of the Messiah as a hope for the return of Moses as the Saviour of the Israelites. Freud said that the guilt from the murder of Moses is inherited through the generations; this guilt then drives the Jews to religion to make them feel better.

Moses and Civilization

Moses and Civilization PDF Author: Robert A. Paul
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300064285
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
And he details the way Freud's myth corresponds to the unconscious fantasy structure of the obsessional personality - a style of personality dynamics Paul sees as essential to maintaining the bureaucratic institutions that comprise Western civilization's most distinctive features.

Freud and Monotheism

Freud and Monotheism PDF Author: Gilad Sharvit
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823280047
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Over the last few decades, vibrant debates regarding post-secularism have found inspiration and provocation in the works of Sigmund Freud. A new interest in the interconnection of psychoanalysis, religion and political theory has emerged, allowing Freud’s illuminating examination of the religious and mystical practices in “Obsessive Neurosis and Religious Practices,” and the exegesis of the origins of ethics in religion in Totem and Taboo, to gain currency in recent debates on modernity. In that context, the pivotal role of Freud’s masterpiece, Moses and Monotheism, is widely recognized. Freud and Monotheism brings together fundamental new contributions to discourses on Freud and Moses, as well as new research at the intersections of theology, political theory, and history in Freud’s psychoanalytic work. Highlighting the broad impact of Moses and Monotheism across the humanities, the contributors hail from such diverse disciplines as philosophy, comparative literature, cultural studies, German studies, Jewish studies and psychoanalysis. Jan Assmann and Richard Bernstein, whose books pioneered the earlier debate that initiated the Freud and Moses discourse, seize the opportunity to revisit and revise their groundbreaking work. Gabriele Schwab, Gilad Sharvit, Karen Feldman, and Yael Segalovitz engage with the idiosyncratic, eccentric and fertile nature of the book as a Spӓtstil, and explore radical interpretations of Freud’s literary practice, theory of religion and therapeutic practice. Ronald Hendel offers an alternative history for the Mosaic discourse within the biblical text, Catherine Malabou reconnects Freud’s theory of psychic phylogenesis in Moses and Monotheism to new findings in modern biology and Willi Goetschel relocates Freud in the tradition of works on history that begins with Heine, while Joel Whitebook offers important criticisms of Freud’s main argument about the advance in intellectuality that Freud attributes to Judaism.

Freud and the Legacy of Moses

Freud and the Legacy of Moses PDF Author: Richard J. Bernstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521638777
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Freud's last book, Moses and Monotheism, was published in 1939 during one of the darkest periods in Jewish history. This difficult book has frequently been vilified and dismissed because Freud claims that Moses was not a Hebrew but an Egyptian, and that the Jews murdered Moses in the wilderness. Richard Bernstein argues that a close reading of Moses and Monotheism reveals an underlying powerful coherence in which Freud seeks to specify the distinctive character and contribution of the Jewish people. It is this character that has enabled the Jewish people to survive despite persecution and virulent anti-Semitism, and Freud proudly identifies himself with it. In his analysis of Freud's often misunderstood last work, Bernstein goes on to shows how Freud expands and deepens our understanding of a religious tradition by revealing its unconscious dynamics.

Freud and the Non-European

Freud and the Non-European PDF Author: Edward W. Said
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859845004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
Reveals Saidâe(tm)s abiding interest in Freudâe(tm)s work and its important influence on his own.

From Oedipus to Moses

From Oedipus to Moses PDF Author: Marthe Robert
Publisher: Garden City, N.Y. : Anchor Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description


Early Freud and Late Freud

Early Freud and Late Freud PDF Author: Ilse Grubrich-Simitis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134752601
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, well-known as a Freud scholar and editor of Freud's works, has long advocated a return to his original texts in order to comprehend fully the power and innovative force of his theories. In Early Freud and Late Freud she examines the earliest psychoanalytic book, Studies on Hysteria, which Freud wrote together with Breuer, and Moses and Monotheism, Freud's last book. The essay on Studies on Hysteria reveals to the reader why that book is indeed the 'primal book' of psychoanalysis. Not only does it offer a moving and dramatic account of the birth of the psychoanalytic method, but by introducing the key concept of trauma it establishes a foundation on which much of modern psychoanalysis has been built. Freud was to return to his original theory of trauma in his last book, Moses and Monotheism, where he developed it further in the light of his intervening researches. On the basis of her study of the Moses manuscripts and by applying the psychoanalytic method, Ilse Grubrich-Simitis shows how contemporary traumatic events in Nazi Germany may have influenced this return to the beginning and the intensification of Freud's self-analysis. This in turn was to lead to new insights into archaic forms of defence, pointing the way forward for modern psychoanalysis. Elegantly constructed and persuasively argued, Early Freud and Late Freud re-establishes the importance of two major Freudian texts, offering a new understanding of their significance.

Socrates and the Jews

Socrates and the Jews PDF Author: Miriam Leonard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226472477
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Taking on the question of how the glories of the classical world could be reconciled with the Bible, this book explains how Judaism played a vital role in defining modern philhellenism.

The Moses Complex

The Moses Complex PDF Author: Ute Holl
Publisher: Diaphanes
ISBN: 9783037346235
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In 1974, Straub and Huillet created their cinematic adaptation of the opera Moses and Aron, which Arnold Schoenberg had written in the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, on his way into exile. Film and opera devise homogeneous aesthetic spaces out of equal elements, thus challenging established hierarchical forms of hearing, seeing, perceiving. They invent forms of perception "before the law," thus introducing resistance into musical and cinematic thinking. Both works propose models of communication for next societies. Against simplistic notions of monotheism and the prohibition of images, Schoenberg and Straub/Huillet realize projects of modernity consisting in incessantly contriving and creating differences. They prompt their audiences to generate resistance in setting primordial distinctions: for instance in distinguishing a voice in an apparent force of noise, as in a burning bush. Based on major works on the figure of Moses, particularly referring to Sigmund Freud, Arnold Schoenberg, as well as to Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, the book explores the relation of media, migration and politics. Ever since Moses has brought tablets inscribed with commandments from the Sinai, new media and new laws have simultaneously emerged. Freud adds the issue of historiography and memory to the complex. The mission of liberating a people connected to it has been negotiated in different cultural forms. Psychoanalysis, music or cinema have described exodus, exile and encampment as a process of force. This is persisting today in Europe's treatment of foreigners, strangers, or aliens. The works of Freud, Schoenberg and Straub/Huillet engage with the return of violence in times of crisis.