Freud and the figure of Moses: the Moses of Freud.

Moses was a lifelong preoccupation of Freud, representing a double and idealized self and object. Freud identified with different aspects of Moses during different periods of development, from concrete hero to abstract ideal. He turned to Moses in the concluding phase of his relationship with Fliess and his self-analysis, and then at other times of crisis. The Moses recreated by Freud is important to the evolution of the concepts of the superego, and his Moses studies simultaneously illuminate the developmental significance of internalization, identification, and abstract symbolic thought. Latently autobiographical, the Moses motif is related to the analysis of unconscious conflict and trauma and to issues of Jewish identity and analytic ideals.     

The Perennial Freud: Method versus Myth and the Mischief of Freud Bashers

Nowadays Freud bashing is not only à la mode, in certain circles it has become de rigueur. Once a name of respect, Freud has become a name of ridicule. But like any scientific method, body of knowledge, and therapeutic procedure, psychoanalysis should be subjected to critical scrutiny. The recent crop of hostile Freud critics may have filled a vacuum left for decades by a psychoanalytic establishment which, like the Church of yesteryear, shunned all forms of criticism intramural and extramural. A central guiding idea of this essay is the distinction between the psychoanalytic method and psychoanalytic doctrines, hypotheses, and theories. This distinction has been invariably confused by both Freud's adherents and Freud's attackers. Moreover, arguments ad rem have been conflated with arguments ad hominem. A socially responsible criticism must seek to be constructive and not merely destructive. It is the latter course that was taken by the various hostile critics that came to be labeled as Freud bashers. The time has come to take a stand against the more egregious attacks on Freud and the psychoanalytic method.     

Freud: objects and structure

This paper, part of a series exploring the development of Freud's object concept, deals with the concepts of objects and psychic structure in the period from 1915 to 1938. In connection with the increased prominence of object loss and hostility in his clinical material, the role of objects in the building of psychic structure via identification assumed increased importance from 1917 on. After introduction of the ego-id-superego model, Freud asserted for the first time that object choice does take place as early as the oedipal period, and interpolated the phallic-oedipal phase into his sequence of developmental phases. The prominence of structure formation through identification continued, but no new object concepts are discerned.     

To the Apple of God's Eye: Christian Zionist Travel to Israel

This article examines a case of travel to Israel which might further complicate the already blurry line between tourism and pilgrimage: evangelical, Christian Zionist visits to Israel. The Israeli Ministry of Tourism estimates that evangelical Christians account for one third of American visitors to Israel. My research investigates how Christian Zionist travel to Israel is both ‘touristic’ and ‘pilgrimage-like’ and how this case can serve to question some thinking about pilgrimage. Finally, I offer yet another definition of what constitutes pilgrimage, which avoids at least some of the particular hazards. A primary goal of the research is to provide more empirical data and deeper analysis for our understanding of Christian Zionist travel to Israel and thus to contribute additional nuance to discussions of pilgrimage and tourism more generally.     

Freud and film: encounters in the Weltgeist

Freud's antipathy toward film is striking, since film and dreams are formed by similar mechanisms. Nevertheless, Freud occasionally and unavoidably encountered film. This paper details some of these encounters. Ten years after viewing time-lapse photography, a fore-runner of moving pictures, at the Salpêtrière, he was conceptualizing a model of the mind and of the formation of dreams that in some ways parallels the film apparatus invented by the Lumière brothers in December 1895. On his visit to America in 1905, Freud saw movies in New York City. In 1925, he refused a lucrative offer to consult on a film, and he discouraged Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs from consulting on the first psychoanalytic film, Pabst's Secrets of a Soul (1926). He was, however, once sighted viewing an American double feature in Vienna. The paper closes with a critique of his acting in home movies.     

Psychic determinism: Leibniz and Freud

You ask me to say a number, any number, and I say ‘127’. Have I answered freely?

“Of course”, says Hume: no‐one compelled me—the fact that my choice was necessitated is irrelevant.

“Yes”, says Leibniz: my choice was not necessitated—the fact that it was determined ( = ‘inclined') is not enough to make it unfree.

“No”, says Freud: my choice was determined—the fact that it was not necessitated is not enough to make it free.

The paper examines the interplay between these answers.     

Freud and the Visual Arts

Freud was more interested in literature than painting and sculpture, as Louis Fraiberg and Richard Sterba note. The question is how this affected his analysis of Leonardo's paintings and Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses The author argues that because he regarded them as intellectual puzzles to be psychoanalytically deciphered, he reduced them to a species of literature, suggesting his reluctance to recognize their aesthetic significance, and perhaps his inability to do so. The visual work of art becomes something to be read rather than seen. Its sensuousness is given short shrift. For example, Freud makes no mention of chiaroscuro and sfumato in his study of Leonardo—just those elements for which his art is famous as art. As Freud said, his analytic turn of mind kept him from obtaining any pleasure from what he could not rationally explain. The author traces Freud's elevation of the literary over the visual, and with that of the analyzable over the unanalyzable, to his critique of Charcot, whom he described as a visuel,' a man who sees his patients (and photographed them) rather than listens to them. Finally, Freud's dislike of modern art is contrasted with Karl Abraham's appreciation of its sensuous uniqueness. The general point is made that Freud didn't understand that the key to art was the artist's engagement with the medium.