Book Review

Freud, Race, and Gender

N Engl J Med 1994; 330:579-580February 24, 1994

Article

Freud, Race, and Gender
By Sander L. Gilman. 277 pp., illustrated. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1993. $24.95. ISBN: 0-691-03245-9

Psychiatry and psychoanalysis, perhaps more than other branches of medicine, have always made their own history a focus of their research. Among the reasons for this, two stand out. First, as new insights into the mind are gained through clinical experience, they are layered with preceding ones, like the layered and multifaceted psyche itself. Second, the exercise of historical investigation parallels the process of uncovering and reconstructing in the clinical situation proper. These efforts are aimed at recapturing something of the immediacy of past experience, allowing the reader or participant to enter into and make sense of that world. Naturally, studies of Freud's life and work take first place in these historical endeavors. In his scholarly book, Gilman brings this awareness into play as he seeks to understand the scientific and cultural milieu of fin de siecle Vienna. He explores the way in which that society's deeply embedded rhetoric of race influenced Freud and, thus, the language and construction of his theories.

Gilman builds the foundation for his argument at the outset by informing the reader that in the Central European culture of Freud's upbringing and professional life, Jews were perceived as different not only on the basis of religion but also, more important, on the basis of race. Previous writers on the subject of Freud and religion, he believes, have overlooked this aspect of the meaning of Jewishness for Freud and for the dominant Aryan culture of that period. The implications of this view, in terms of the society's belief in a biologic, immutable, and heritable difference, were profound and were used in pseudoscientific anti-Semitic “research” to argue for the inherent inferiority of the Jew. Gilman demonstrates how Freud both imbibed and resisted the biologic determinism of his day and attempted to construct a scientific, universal theory of mental phenomena based on psychological principles, which would eradicate the idea of such racial differences or render them irrelevant. The author refers to many of Freud's works in which these efforts can be traced but pursues his argument most comprehensively in his discussion of the Schreber case and “Moses and Monotheism,” the essay “in which Freud . . . reshape[d] a narrative about the `diseased' and `primitive' nature of the Jew into a study of the origins of anti-Semitism.” Freud believed, in addition, that psychoanalysis itself might be undermined by prejudice against its creator. This concern resulted in his famous statement, quoted by Gilman, in which he voiced concern that “psychoanalysis would founder because it would go down in history as a `Jewish' science.” Freud's apprehension led, in one noteworthy instance, to his decision to promote Jung within the psychoanalytic establishment.

After building this foundation in “Freud and the Epistemology of Race,” the author goes on to explore the protean manifestations of the corruption of the idea of a racial difference: a difference by virtue of the custom of circumcision, ideas about Jewish madness and the sexual characteristics of Jews, and beliefs about the many illnesses to which Jews were thought to be prone (skin diseases, hysteria, neurasthenia, manic-depressive illness, diabetes, tuberculosis, penile cancer, vocalization disorders, distortions of body structure, and more). This issue of circumcision was central, because it was seen as a definitive marker of difference over the centuries, even though it was a difference caused by social custom. Circumcision was seen as linking Jews to the scourges of “sexuality, syphilis, and madness.” Gilman provides an interesting discussion of the Lamarckian speculations at the time on the heritability of this “acquired” trait. He also discusses the difficulties faced by many thinkers, including Freud, who in dealing with these matters partly absorbed the predominant theories (an example of identification with the aggressor) and subsequently displaced the unwanted projected traits onto others. Those others were women (whose “weakness” and “unknowability” were characteristics attributed to Jewish men) and the Ostjuden (Eastern European Jews, who were not acculturated into German society).

This carefully argued and well-documented work enables the reader to grasp the subtle but pervasive iniquity of such influences, which at the time resulted in a true tyranny of ideas. Contemporary physicians and medical scientists, no strangers to the notion of the social misuses to which so-called science may be put, will nonetheless be fascinated by the rationales and strategies of prejudice that are uncovered and explored here. Furthermore, while reading the book one can never be far from an awareness of the atrocities that were to come before the first half of this century was over, which were justified by the findings of “racial science.”

Only at certain times, in his effort to be encyclopedic, does the author try to stretch his otherwise convincing argument. Nevertheless, to the many influences on Freud's language, beliefs, and theories that others have explored, this work adds an indelible perspective. It will be of considerable interest to historians of medicine and science, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and social psychologists.

Gary N. Goldsmith, M.D.
Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, MA 02215