Freud’s Jewish Identity and Views on Sexual Morality

Sigmund Freud is widely considered to be one of the most influential thinkers of

the twentieth century.

But what motivated Freud and his theories?

Born to a Jewish family in Austria in 1856, Freud's

life and work was driven by a strong Jewish identity.

In his first major work, The Interpretation of Dreams,

first released in

German in 1899,

Freud describes his childhood discovery that he was a member of an alien race

and his identification with Hannibal as a Semitic commander determined

to conquer Rome, which to Freud symbolized Christian

society

and the cultural dominance of the Catholic Church.

By early childhood, Freud would frequently fantasize about

taking revenge

against all anti-Semites.

Viewing Christian authority as the main obstacle to full Jewish integration,

Freud adopted the liberal worldview because, as Jewish Freud

biographer Peter Gay puts it, it was good for the Jews.

Jewish novelist Jacob Wasserman would describe Vienna in the late nineteenth

century by noting that all public life was dominated by the Jews.

The banks, the press, the theater, literature, social functions,

all was in the hands of the Jews.

Nor was Freud interested in an integration with Gentile society.

By the time he was a student at the University of Vienna, Freud had abandoned

any pretense of assimilation, deciding that isolation as a Jew

would serve him well.

By 1886, he described himself as neither Austrian

nor German, but

as a Jew.

Privately, Freud would speak of the superiority of

the Jewish race, and in

Moses and Monotheism, he would write that beneath their thin Christian veneer,

Gentiles are the same polytheistic barbarians they have always been.

In 1897, Freud would join the B'nai B'rith Jewish

fraternal

order so that he could feel welcomed by like-minded Jews.

B'nai B'rith, a Jewish supremacist organization,

would go

on to found the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the powerful

Jewish organization now commonly known as the ADL.

How did Freud intend to conquer Rome?

By subverting Christian sexual morality.

By 1893, Freud had identified sexuality as the

primary

cause of neuroses and prescribed healthy sexuality to

society,

which he defined as free sexual intercourse between unmarried young men

and

women.

He would later write, sexual morality as society,

and at its most

extreme, American society, defines it, seems very despicable to

me. I stand for a much freer sexual life.

By the logic of Freud's arguments, the lack of sublimation of instincts would

cause

the rapid disintegration of civilization.

It is very telling that Freud was prescribing this loosening of moral

restraints, not to the Jewish community

that he identified with,

but to the Gentile society he felt alien from and had

fantasized about conquering since he was a child.