Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
-
J Am Psychoanal Assoc · Dec 2014
Historical ArticleFreud's Jewish identity and psychoanalysis as a science.
Ludwik Fleck, the Polish philosopher of science, maintained that scientific discovery is influenced by social, political, historical, psychological, and personal factors. The determinants of Freud's Jewish identity are examined from this Fleckian perspective, as is the impact of that complex identity on his creation of psychoanalysis as a science. ⋯ Yet it represented at the same time his ineradicable relationship with that inheritance. It encapsulated both the ambivalence of his Jewish identity and the creativity of his efforts to resolve it.