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Authors: Sigmund Freud

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5072

A COMMENT ON ANTI-SEMITISM

(1938)

5073

Intentionally left blank

5074

A COMMENT ON ANTI-SEMITISM

In the course of examining the remarks in the
press and in literature provoked by the recent persecutions of the
Jews, I came upon one essay which struck me as so unusual that I
made
précis
of it for my own use. What its author
wrote was approximately as follows:

‘By way of preface I must
explain that I am not a Jew and therefore I am not driven into
making these observations by any egoistic concern. Yet I have felt
a lively interest in the anti-semitic excesses of to-day and have
directed my particular attention to the protests against them.
These protests come from two directions - ecclesiastical and
secular - the former in the name of religion, the latter appealing
to the claims of humanity. The former were scanty and came late;
but they
did
come in the end, and even His Holiness the Pope
raised his voice. I confess that there was something I missed in
the demonstrations coming from
both
sides - something at
their beginning and something else at their end. I will try now to
supply it.

‘All these protests, I
think, might be preceded by a particular introduction, which would
run: "Well, it’s true,
I
don’t like Jews
either. In some sort of way they seem strange to me and
antipathetic. They have many disagreeable qualities and great
defects. I think, too, that the influence they have had on us and
our affairs has been predominantly detrimental. Their race,
compared with our own, is obviously an inferior one; all their
activities argue in favour of that." And after this what these
protests do in fact contain could follow
without any
discrepancy
: "But we profess a religion of love. We ought
to love even our enemies as ourselves. We know that the Son of God
gave His life on earth to redeem
all
men from the burden of
sin. He is our model, and it is therefore sinning against His
intention and against the command of the Christian religion if we
consent to Jews being insulted, ill-treated, robbed and plunged
into misery. We ought to protest against this, irrespectively of
how much or how little the Jews deserve such treatment." The
secular writers who believe in the gospel of humanity, protest in
similar terms.

A Comment On Anti-Semitism

5075

‘I confess that I have not
been satisfied by any of these demonstrations. Apart from the
religion of love and humanity there is also a religion of truth,
and it has come off badly in these protests. But the truth is that
for long centuries we have treated the Jewish people unjustly and
that we are continuing to do so by judging them unjustly. Any one
of us who does not start by admitting our guilt has not done his
duty in this. The Jews are not worse than we are; they have
somewhat other characteristics and somewhat other faults, but on
the whole we have no right to look down on them. In some respects,
indeed, they are our superiors. They do not need so much alcohol as
we do in order to make life tolerable; crimes of brutality, murder,
robbery and sexual violence are great rarities among them; they
have always set a high value on intellectual achievement and
interests; their family life is more intimate; they take better
care of the poor; charity is a sacred duty to them. Nor can we call
them in any sense inferior. Since we have allowed them to
co-operate in our cultural tasks, they have acquired merit by
valuable contributions in all the spheres of science, art and
technology, and they have richly repaid our tolerance. So let us
cease at last to hand them out favours when they have a claim to
justice.’

It was natural that such
determined partisanship from some one who was not a Jew should have
made a deep impression on me. But now I have a remarkable
confession to make. I am a very old man and my memory is no more
what it was. I can no longer recall where I read the essay of which
I made the
précis
nor who it was who was its author.
Perhaps one of the readers of this periodical will be able to come
to my help?

A whisper has just reached my
ears that what I probably had in mind was Count Heinrich
Coudenhove-Kalergi’s book
Das Wesen des
Antisemitismus
, which contains precisely what the author I am
in search of missed in the recent protests, and more besides. I
know that book. It appeared first in 1901 and was re-issued by his
son in 1929 with an admirable introduction. But it cannot be that.
What I am thinking of is a shorter pronouncement and one of very
recent date. Or am I altogether at fault? Does nothing of the kind
exist? And has the work of the two Coudenhoves had no influence on
our contemporaries?

Sigm.
Freud

5076

LOU ANDREAS-SALOMÉ

(1937)

On February 5 of this year Frau Lou
Andreas-Salomé died peacefully in her little house at
Göttingen, almost 76 years of age. For the last 25 years of
her life this remarkable woman was attached to psycho-analysis, to
which she contributed valuable writings and which she practised as
well. I am not saying too much if I acknowledge that we all felt it
as an honour when she joined the ranks of our collaborators and
comrades in arms, and at the same time as a fresh guarantee of the
truth of the theories of analysis.

It was known that as a girl she
had kept up an intense friendship with Friedrich Nietzsche, founded
upon her deep understanding of the philosopher’s bold ideas.
This relationship came to an abrupt end when she refused the
proposal of marriage which he made her. It was well known, too,
that many years later she had acted alike as Muse and protecting
mother to Rainer Maria Rilke, the great poet, who was a little
helpless in facing life. But beyond this her personality remained
obscure. Her modesty and discretion were more than ordinary. She
never spoke of her own poetical and literary works. She clearly
knew where the true values in life are to be looked for. Those who
were closer to her had the strongest impression of the genuineness
and harmony of her nature and could discover with astonishment that
all feminine frailties, and perhaps most human frailties, were
foreign to her or had been conquered by her in the course of her
life.

It was in Vienna that long ago
the most moving episode of her feminine fortunes had been played
out. In 1912 she returned to Vienna in order to be initiated into
psycho-analysis. My daughter, who was her close friend, once heard
her regret that she had not known psycho-analysis in her youth.
But, after all, in those days there was no such thing.

Sigm.
Freud

February, 1937.

5077

FINDINGS, IDEAS, PROBLEMS

(1941 [1938])

London, June.

June 16
. - It is
interesting that in connection with early experiences, as
contrasted with later experiences, all the various reactions to
them survive, of course including contradictory ones. Instead of a
decision, which would have been the outcome later. Explanation:
weakness of the power of synthesis, retention of the characteristic
of the primary processes.

July 12
. - As a substitute
for penis-envy, identification with the clitoris: neatest
expression of inferiority, source of all inhibitions. At the same
time disavowal of the discovery that other women too are without a
penis.

‘Having’ and
‘being’ in children. Children like expressing an
object-relation by an identification: ‘I am the
object.’ ‘Having’ is the later of the two; after
loss of the object it relapses into ‘being’. Example:
the breast. ‘The breast is a part of me, I am the
breast.’ Only later: ‘I have it’ - that is,
‘I am not it’ . . .

July 12
. - With neurotics
it is as though we were in a prehistoric landscape - for instance,
in the Jurassic. The great saurians are still running about; the
horsetails grow as high as palms (?).

July 20
. - The hypothesis
of there being inherited vestiges in the id alters, so to say, our
views about it.

July 20
. - The individual
perishes from his internal conflicts, the species perishes in its
struggle with the external world to which it is no longer adapted.
- This deserves to be included in
Moses
.

Findings, Ideas, Problems

5078

August 3
. - A sense of
guilt also originates from unsatisfied love. Like hate. In fact we
have been obliged to derive every conceivable thing from that
material: like economically self-sufficient States with their
‘
Ersatz
products’.

August 3
. - The ultimate
ground of all intellectual inhibitions and all inhibitions of work
seems to be the inhibition of masturbation in childhood. But
perhaps it goes deeper; perhaps it is not its inhibition by
external influences but its unsatisfying nature in itself. There is
always something lacking for complete discharge and satisfaction -
en attendant toujours quelquechose qui ne venait point¹ - and
this missing part, the reaction of orgasm, manifests itself in
equivalents in other spheres, in
absences
, outbreaks of
laughing, weeping, and perhaps other ways. - Once again infantile
sexuality has fixed a model in this.

August 22
. - Space may be
the projection of the extension of the psychical apparatus. No
other derivation is probable. Instead of Kant’s
a
priori
determinants of our psychical apparatus. Psyche is
extended; knows nothing about it.

August 22
. - Mysticism is
the obscure self-perception of the realm outside the ego, of the
id.

¹
[‘Always waiting for something which
never came’]

5079

ANTI-SEMITISM IN ENGLAND

(1938)

20
Maresfield Gardens

London,
N.W.3.

16.11.1938.

To the Editor of
Time and Tide
.

I came to Vienna as a child of 4
years from a small town in Moravia. After 78 years of assiduous
work I had to leave my home, saw the Scientific Society I had
founded, dissolved, our institutions destroyed, our Printing Press
(‘Verlag’) taken over by the invaders, the books I had
published confiscated or reduced to pulp, my children expelled from
their professions. Don’t you think you ought to reserve the
columns of your special number for the utterances of non-Jewish
people, less personally involved than myself?

In this connection my mind gets
hold of an old French saying:

Le bruit est pour le fat

La plainte est pour le sot;

L’honnête homme trompé

S’en va et ne dit mot.
¹

I feel deeply affected by the
passage in your letter acknowledging ‘a certain growth of
anti-semitism even in this country’. Ought this present
persecution not rather give rise to a wave of sympathy in this
country?

Respectfully yours

Sigm.
Freud.

¹
[‘A fuss becomes the Fop

A
Fool’s complaints are heard;

A
Gentleman betrayed

Departs without a word.’]

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