freud

What to teach rabbinical students in two sessions on Sigmund Freud? One obvious point of interest is Freud's biography, particularly his identity struggles as a Jew. There is a fairly extensive secondary literature on this topic and it makes for fascinating reading. In particular, one can check out work by Sander Gillman, Jay Geller and Daniel Boyarin. A really interesting element is the way gender studies sheds light on and intersects with an exploration of Freud's Jewishness. The key person to see for the gender critique is Judith van Herick.

On the other hand, I was convinced by James Dittes, a professor at Yale in the Divinity School and the Psychology Department, that the most relevant and important legacy of Freud, at least for those entering the clergy, is Freud's wisdom, shared toward the end of his life, on how to live.

Dittes has an essay in which he outlines Freud's "homily."

He writes, "These are the tools and premises, the theorems and the strategies with which one negotiates the daily adventures and risks of life...how to tolerate reality, how to survive and, yes, even how to aspire to an abundant life."

Dittes finds this teaching primarily in Civilization and its Discontents(1930) and Moses and Monotheism(1938). Toward the end of his life, Freud wrote less and less about the ideas he is most famous for--the Oedipus complex,etc. Rather, he began to write about the "big questions."

Some people teach Freud's view of religion by having the class read The Future of an Illusion(1927) but Dittes argues that this is a mistake. Why have the class argue about Freud's "adolescent critiques of conventional religion" when "he poses such vibrant and robust, if unsystematic, alternatives?"

In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud wrote that there is a "spot in every dream at which it is unplumbable, a navel as it were, that is its point of contact with the unknown."(Standard Edition, Vol 4, p.111)

Here is a film of Freud, age 81, actually speaking(the only audio recording he ever made)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGsjQ_0l54