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tion," always operated in Freud's relations withJung. Jung appeared
an excellent choice to succeed Freud because he was a respectable
Gentile . That is, Freud felt that this son of a Protestant Swiss pastor
would help bring psychoanalysis a measure of legitimacy in the
Christian world and visibility in the psychiatric universe. Under
Jung's guidance, Freud hoped, psychoanalysis would exit from its
ghetto-like seclusion , overcome its taint of Jewishness, and hence
become more widely diffused in medical and scientific circles . In
short, resistance to the theory would not center around the Jewish–
ness of the theory's founder and its chief practitioners.
After the rupture with Freud, Jung characterized psycho–
analysis as a 'jewish psychology ." There is abundant, and, I think,
irrefutable evidence that Jung made anti-Jewish and pro-Nazi
statements during the era of the Third Reich, asserting, for exam–
ple, that the Jewish unconscious lacked the vitality, universalism,
rootedness, and creative depths of the Germanic people . From 1934
to 1940, J ung served as editor of the National Socialist controlled
Zentralblatt fur Psychotherapie,
writing inflammatory letters against the
"corrosive" nature of the Jewish point of view in psychology and
castigating Freud for his "soulless materialism ." The Spielrein
documents illustrate that Jung's anti-Semitism played a critical and
dissolving role in the Freud-Jung relationship long before Hitler
entered the historical stage .
As a non-Jewish Jew who came into consciousness in anti–
Semitic Vienna, Freud's Jewishness was an integral part of his sub–
jective and professional identity. While not observing Jewish rites,
or harboring any form of Jewish nationalism , Freud never denied
his J ewishness , never opted for strategies of assimilation. Nor did he
accept the anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews that pervaded many
stratas of Viennese society and culture , including the university . For
him Jewishness was a metaphor for pride, for thinking rigorously
and independently. In brief, being Jewish allowed Freud to think
against himself and to risk thinking against the scientific and moral
biases of his contemporaries . He also associated Jewishness with a
vague kind of "ethical" consciousness, a commitment to honesty in
human relations , to candor in the practice of psychoanalysis.
Jewishness , lastly, provided Freud with a limited sense of community
and fraternity; despite his unpopularity and isolation, certain Jewish
colleagues made him feel welcome, understood, and at home .
During her liaison withJung, Spielrein had a recurring fantasy
of bearing Jung a son . She named the boy child Siegfried, picturing
