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PARTISAN REVIEW
(mostly unconscious) prejudices of former Nazis. Ostow begins by sum–
marizing previous psychoanalytic takes on the subject, most of these
mentioning the etiological factors Freud had noted already before the
Holocaust. These include that Jews disavow the murder of the father,
God, while Christians admit it; Jews are aliens within their environment;
are convenient scapegoats for communal hostility; usually manage to be
successful in spite of oppression. Still, Ostow's group had trouble even to
define anti-Semitism. After all, a philo-Semite may evolve into an anti–
Semite, an individual may have no interest in Jews yet tum against them
in the presence of anti-Semitic friends; an Israeli military action may re–
verse a previously positive attitude; and anti-Semitic hostility could be
imbued by a range of intensity. In addition, anti-Semitism is embedded in
the mythology of Christianity; fictions such as
The Protocols
if
the Elders
if
Zion
keep being revived; criticism of Jewish behavior is being justified
when instances of these myths seem to recur; and Jewish self-hatred -
which externalizes the qualities Jews themselves find hateful - adds to it,
as Ostow observed in his own patients.
As we know, psychoanalytic theory delves into the earliest experi–
ences of the individual, and assumes that attitudes to groups are derived,
primarily, from interactions learned on the mother's lap, and at her breast.
Among other things, they found that anti-Semitic characters had trouble
controlling their anger in general; that they tended to displace inner con–
flicts onto the outside world; that Jews sometimes became the recipients
of negative qualities of a parent; and that anti-Semitic comments would
surface most strongly during the negative transference. About half of this
book is about the anti-Semitic myths we know - stretching forward from
biblical times to the present - and the fantasies, along with their psycho–
logical roots and the rationalizations associated with them.
Ostow separates the pogrom mentality from the anti-Semitism of
prejudice and discrimination, which he ascribes to individuals. He sug–
gests, I believe correctly, that an ideal group identity, such as the one
created in Leni Riefenstahl's film,
Triumph of the Will,
is conducive in
furthering an image of unity, of a movement's history rooted in the glory
of the nation. Hitler was embodied as a hero, a savior, and the progenitor
of a new Germany. Under his aegis, Germans became submissive and
loyal to the group, thereby involving themselves in a fantasy of shared
community - which in the film was enacted to the tune of Wagnerian
music and radiant light. The "party line" was revealed, and it aroused pa–
triotism, so that Germans accepted the dictum that "a nation that does
not value its racial purity will perish."
Altogether, concludes Ostow, apocalyptic movements start by ho–
mogenizing their members psychologically, then attract sympathizers, and
