Freud as Talmudist(jewishreviewofbooks.com)
jewishreviewofbooks.com
Freud as Talmudist
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-history/13912/freud-as-talmudist/
100 comments
Disappointed this link isn't available in the UK due to GDPR according to the site.
The article misinterprets what the Talmud does, and the author does so in order to try to draw a parallel with Freud.
Along with the written Torah there was also an oral tradition, that oral tradition would have included the info of 2,000 amaos that the article references.
What does the Talmud do? It works under the principle that everything in the oral tradition is also hinted to in the written Torah, and then it goes looking for it.
The article incorrectly claims that the Talmud derived this number from the written Torah - this is false and backwards. The people who wrote the Talmud already knew this number, their goal was to find where it was hinted to.
They were able to do so for virtually every part of the oral Torah to the extent that they even recorded every time they were unable to do so with the term "Halacha mi Moshe be Sinai". (A law direct from Moshe on Sinai, i.e. as distinct from a law that could be derived from the written Torah.)
This is such a fundamental misunderstanding of the Talmud that it kind of fails the entire point of the article.
Along with the written Torah there was also an oral tradition, that oral tradition would have included the info of 2,000 amaos that the article references.
What does the Talmud do? It works under the principle that everything in the oral tradition is also hinted to in the written Torah, and then it goes looking for it.
The article incorrectly claims that the Talmud derived this number from the written Torah - this is false and backwards. The people who wrote the Talmud already knew this number, their goal was to find where it was hinted to.
They were able to do so for virtually every part of the oral Torah to the extent that they even recorded every time they were unable to do so with the term "Halacha mi Moshe be Sinai". (A law direct from Moshe on Sinai, i.e. as distinct from a law that could be derived from the written Torah.)
This is such a fundamental misunderstanding of the Talmud that it kind of fails the entire point of the article.
Reading Freud, Wittgenstein said "now here is something new."
Freud emerged at a time in history when there was an extraordinary demand for a particular service that had been lost over the course of 300 years: auricular confession to a priest.
Since most Protestant sects since 1517 had been consistently rejecting and deprecating the practice of auricular confession, men around the world, especially in Europe, were bursting with secrets. There is a basic human need to disclose our secrets to God, and to feel cleansed and regenerated and relieved of the burdens they've become.
So Freud and his colleagues designed psychoanalysis as a comfortable, secular, drop-in replacement for auricular confession, and established a new priestly class among the Protestant laity. Now it's great to fill a void, but of course Catholics and Orthodox had never ceased the original practice, and so it was clear that psychoanalysis was explicitly designed to usurp and work at crossed-purposes to the religiously-branded type.
In the past two centuries, the new priesthood has succeeded in establishing a secular church, even in disestablishmentarian jurisdictions such as these United States. By medicalizing defects of mind, and applying a "disease model" of diagnosis and treatment (but never cures) even to vices such as substance addiction, the new priesthood has established religious control over the populace in unprecedented ways (okay, maybe they are definitely precedented). The most recent expansion of this religion is from "mental" to "behavioral" health; i.e. not only your internal thoughts, but also your outward actions, are under scrutiny and subject to control.
It is interesting that recent developments have seen Roman Catholicism take an approach of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and wholly embrace psychoanalysis, psychology and psychiatry as their own, even going so far as to accept theories of homosexuality and "orientation" as givens and psychological facts. There are now explicitly branded Catholic practitioners of mental health, where you can go for drugs, psychoanalysis, and support groups, because two churches are better than one, I suppose.
Since most Protestant sects since 1517 had been consistently rejecting and deprecating the practice of auricular confession, men around the world, especially in Europe, were bursting with secrets. There is a basic human need to disclose our secrets to God, and to feel cleansed and regenerated and relieved of the burdens they've become.
So Freud and his colleagues designed psychoanalysis as a comfortable, secular, drop-in replacement for auricular confession, and established a new priestly class among the Protestant laity. Now it's great to fill a void, but of course Catholics and Orthodox had never ceased the original practice, and so it was clear that psychoanalysis was explicitly designed to usurp and work at crossed-purposes to the religiously-branded type.
In the past two centuries, the new priesthood has succeeded in establishing a secular church, even in disestablishmentarian jurisdictions such as these United States. By medicalizing defects of mind, and applying a "disease model" of diagnosis and treatment (but never cures) even to vices such as substance addiction, the new priesthood has established religious control over the populace in unprecedented ways (okay, maybe they are definitely precedented). The most recent expansion of this religion is from "mental" to "behavioral" health; i.e. not only your internal thoughts, but also your outward actions, are under scrutiny and subject to control.
It is interesting that recent developments have seen Roman Catholicism take an approach of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and wholly embrace psychoanalysis, psychology and psychiatry as their own, even going so far as to accept theories of homosexuality and "orientation" as givens and psychological facts. There are now explicitly branded Catholic practitioners of mental health, where you can go for drugs, psychoanalysis, and support groups, because two churches are better than one, I suppose.
There is no basic need to disclose secrets to God. The need to confess is carefully erected in the souls of the laity on top of the twin pillars of Catholicism, Shame and Guilt.
So by your logic, Europeans should have been gladly liberated from all that nonsense, yet they chose to reinvent and re-embrace it after only 300 years of freedom. Bizarre!
What’s bizarre is how you lump people born hundreds of years apart into one big “they”
Interesting, if weird, idea. Many things to take issue with, but I will take just one: ``The most recent expansion of this religion is from "mental" to "behavioral" health; i.e. not only your internal thoughts, but also your outward actions, are under scrutiny and subject to control.``
Behavioral health is arguably a shift _away_ from policing the internal state of the person to instead focus on specific behaviors that interfere with a patient's life. It is bizarre to suggest this places behavior under "scrutiny and control." You may have noticed that, in fact, all of our behaviors are already under personal, legal, and social scrutiny and control. The point of behavioral health is to help people cope with _that_ reality without engaging unnecessarily with psychological narratives which, as you and others have pointed out in this thread, may not be evidence based.
Also, "In the past two centuries, the new priesthood has succeeded in establishing a secular church". This may be true in some sense, but psychoanalysis and its descendant practices have nothing like the cultural and political dominance of Catholicism in its heyday. I guess its possible to think of psychoanalysis as a church if you allow "church" to mean just any collection of ideas around which people organize and in which people believe without a level of scrutiny they apply to other kinds of ideas, but that covers quite a lot of ground.
"psychoanalysis was explicitly designed to usurp and work at crossed-purposes to the religiously-branded type." I'm genuinely interested in whether Freud ever wrote anything that suggested that he was trying to usurp Catholic confession.
Behavioral health is arguably a shift _away_ from policing the internal state of the person to instead focus on specific behaviors that interfere with a patient's life. It is bizarre to suggest this places behavior under "scrutiny and control." You may have noticed that, in fact, all of our behaviors are already under personal, legal, and social scrutiny and control. The point of behavioral health is to help people cope with _that_ reality without engaging unnecessarily with psychological narratives which, as you and others have pointed out in this thread, may not be evidence based.
Also, "In the past two centuries, the new priesthood has succeeded in establishing a secular church". This may be true in some sense, but psychoanalysis and its descendant practices have nothing like the cultural and political dominance of Catholicism in its heyday. I guess its possible to think of psychoanalysis as a church if you allow "church" to mean just any collection of ideas around which people organize and in which people believe without a level of scrutiny they apply to other kinds of ideas, but that covers quite a lot of ground.
"psychoanalysis was explicitly designed to usurp and work at crossed-purposes to the religiously-branded type." I'm genuinely interested in whether Freud ever wrote anything that suggested that he was trying to usurp Catholic confession.
>not only your internal thoughts, but also your outward actions, are under scrutiny and subject to control.
Uhh... your outward actions have always been under scrutiny? What are you getting at?
Uhh... your outward actions have always been under scrutiny? What are you getting at?
That's a good question; thank you for asking.
Historically, with a church established with the state, the Church was in charge of the behavioral health of their subjects. The state could make temporal laws and punish people for crimes in various ways, but the thoughts and ideas of citizens was controlled by the Church, and if citizens acted against Church teachings, this was a danger to the stability of the state. Heretics were basically traitors, in other words, and heresy needed to be dealt with, in order to preserve domestic tranquility. In the best of times, the Church held the State's best interests closely, and good churchgoers were also good citizens. Of course, this could also be a love-hate relationship.
Due to widespread distestablishmentarianism, the States are still in charge of crime and punishment and they have prisons for criminals, but they were somewhat unable to deal with heretics and wrongthink. People of mental defect, lunatics, and the criminally insane are also dangerous to domestic tranquility, and so, having lost the relationship to its Behavioral Health provider, the State has established a new religion to supplant it.
When psychiatric drugs were new, they were heralded and celebrated as a release from chains: they are indeed a method of restraint that is viewed as "more humane" because they are invisible and chemical. But this is all they are: a newfound method of restraint and control. They are not intended to cure or treat diseases, just make the people's behavior more manageable.
The Church of Psychiatry is authorized to imprison those whose behavior is not manageable. So, outward actions that are not... illegal... or subject to criminal prosecution, are still subject to scrutiny and control by the psychiatric priesthood. The power of the State is vested in them to drug, imprison, sterilize, and euthanize, just as it was in the before times.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Historically, with a church established with the state, the Church was in charge of the behavioral health of their subjects. The state could make temporal laws and punish people for crimes in various ways, but the thoughts and ideas of citizens was controlled by the Church, and if citizens acted against Church teachings, this was a danger to the stability of the state. Heretics were basically traitors, in other words, and heresy needed to be dealt with, in order to preserve domestic tranquility. In the best of times, the Church held the State's best interests closely, and good churchgoers were also good citizens. Of course, this could also be a love-hate relationship.
Due to widespread distestablishmentarianism, the States are still in charge of crime and punishment and they have prisons for criminals, but they were somewhat unable to deal with heretics and wrongthink. People of mental defect, lunatics, and the criminally insane are also dangerous to domestic tranquility, and so, having lost the relationship to its Behavioral Health provider, the State has established a new religion to supplant it.
When psychiatric drugs were new, they were heralded and celebrated as a release from chains: they are indeed a method of restraint that is viewed as "more humane" because they are invisible and chemical. But this is all they are: a newfound method of restraint and control. They are not intended to cure or treat diseases, just make the people's behavior more manageable.
The Church of Psychiatry is authorized to imprison those whose behavior is not manageable. So, outward actions that are not... illegal... or subject to criminal prosecution, are still subject to scrutiny and control by the psychiatric priesthood. The power of the State is vested in them to drug, imprison, sterilize, and euthanize, just as it was in the before times.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Like I said in my previous comment, you can certainly characterize the current state of affairs this way. There is a certain qualitative similarity (an inevitable one, if you ask me, since _all_ societies require ways to manage anti-social behavior).
But qualitatively things are also profoundly different. Most people who take psychoactive drugs do so willingly and involuntary commitment is relatively rare. In the United States and other places the criteria for such is typically danger to self or others and the process is subject to legal review. Compare that to the circumstances of the Catholic Church before reformation and secularization: the Church was not just a mechanism by which the state exerted a limited control of citizens. It was, in fact, a totalizing worldview which, for the average citizen, was as immovable as the earth. As you have pointed out, it even operated in parallel with, instead of as a subject to, the state. In some sense it was also a state or a meta-state. Psychology, in contrast, is hardly more than a disorganized cultural force with some minor powers given to it by the state and subject to its review. The average citizen is only vaguely aware of it and many people (I'd hazard a guess that most people) have no real interaction with its ideas or apparatuses. I would argue that even where psychology is given some temporal power to restrain citizens, this is done so not out of a blind acceptance of its content as true (or even a cynical assertion of its absolute truth by those in power), but as an attempt to "do the best we can" with our limited understanding of what makes human beings and human societies function or even what functioning might mean.
There is one other critical difference (if you ask me): Catholicism and Christianity (religion and spirituality in general) is freighted with a tremendous amount of utter bullshit. Physical and metaphysical claims which are transparently false or absurd. By positioning itself as scientific, and by making substantially fewer claims about the fundamental nature of the universe and the human condition, psychology is, though imperfect, substantially better than what was, if anything, an even more disordered pile of fabulation, fantasies and weird ass ideas.
But qualitatively things are also profoundly different. Most people who take psychoactive drugs do so willingly and involuntary commitment is relatively rare. In the United States and other places the criteria for such is typically danger to self or others and the process is subject to legal review. Compare that to the circumstances of the Catholic Church before reformation and secularization: the Church was not just a mechanism by which the state exerted a limited control of citizens. It was, in fact, a totalizing worldview which, for the average citizen, was as immovable as the earth. As you have pointed out, it even operated in parallel with, instead of as a subject to, the state. In some sense it was also a state or a meta-state. Psychology, in contrast, is hardly more than a disorganized cultural force with some minor powers given to it by the state and subject to its review. The average citizen is only vaguely aware of it and many people (I'd hazard a guess that most people) have no real interaction with its ideas or apparatuses. I would argue that even where psychology is given some temporal power to restrain citizens, this is done so not out of a blind acceptance of its content as true (or even a cynical assertion of its absolute truth by those in power), but as an attempt to "do the best we can" with our limited understanding of what makes human beings and human societies function or even what functioning might mean.
There is one other critical difference (if you ask me): Catholicism and Christianity (religion and spirituality in general) is freighted with a tremendous amount of utter bullshit. Physical and metaphysical claims which are transparently false or absurd. By positioning itself as scientific, and by making substantially fewer claims about the fundamental nature of the universe and the human condition, psychology is, though imperfect, substantially better than what was, if anything, an even more disordered pile of fabulation, fantasies and weird ass ideas.
The Horrors of Freud - Stefan Molyneux
Could the general success of Jewish people as an ethnic group be partly attributable to the Talmud and general tenets of Jewish culture helping adapt the mind to difficult circumstances and wrestling with complexity?
Ashkenazi Jews have a higher IQ by a whole stddev over the general population, regardless of religiosity or socioeconomic factors [0]. It's possible the Talmud played a role in selective reproductive pressures toward this outcome, sure: learned men in Jewish culture tended to be desirable mates. But there are other historical factors at play too.
[0] https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jb...
[0] https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jb...
This could easily be survivorship bias. The less driven often stayed behind in the old country to be wiped out.
> although a recent review concludes that the
advantage is slightly less, only half a standard deviation Lynn (2004).
From the paper you linked. Most of the studies cited were pretty flawed in implementation iirc. The paper you linked also fails to mention the most probable reason for Jewish success, which imo is the community itself. More specifically, the n-word, nepotism. I have a very Jewish name, and I've experienced preference for it. I think this also presents unique opportunities for access to early, high value education, regardless of socioeconomic status, which definitely skews the IQ results.
From the paper you linked. Most of the studies cited were pretty flawed in implementation iirc. The paper you linked also fails to mention the most probable reason for Jewish success, which imo is the community itself. More specifically, the n-word, nepotism. I have a very Jewish name, and I've experienced preference for it. I think this also presents unique opportunities for access to early, high value education, regardless of socioeconomic status, which definitely skews the IQ results.
Do you mean successful in many areas such as science, art, or business? Comparing to their population size. Genuinely asking.
Both, though in this case science in particular.
It is obviously impossible to generalize because there is also a lot of diversity in the community.
You can see that very visually when you have jewish orthodox people and near them the pride parade. Also, when you see some religious people smoking pot before sabbath... or orthodox women movements. All these seems contradictory.
I think the short answer is that there was and is a tradition for education and critical thinking. There is that joke about a jewish mother of a president that feels proud of his other son, which is a doctor. There are some variations [1].
[1] https://aish.com/51475757/
You can see that very visually when you have jewish orthodox people and near them the pride parade. Also, when you see some religious people smoking pot before sabbath... or orthodox women movements. All these seems contradictory.
I think the short answer is that there was and is a tradition for education and critical thinking. There is that joke about a jewish mother of a president that feels proud of his other son, which is a doctor. There are some variations [1].
[1] https://aish.com/51475757/
I think the accepted view is that persecution and diaspora pushed Jews into industries like finance that lead to wealth accumulation.
However, I personally don't think that the persecution would be as severe if Jews did not have such an insular culture, organized around the Torah and tradition.
Also, literacy and scholarship is promoted in Jewish culture due to the promotion of reading and debating the Torah and Talmud. This could have helped direct the results of their persecution. Compare the Jewish people to other persecuted peoples such as the gypsies.
I am no sociologist, but I think at the very least we can agree that outcomes result from very complex interactions of culture, geography, history, language, religion, etc.
However, I personally don't think that the persecution would be as severe if Jews did not have such an insular culture, organized around the Torah and tradition.
Also, literacy and scholarship is promoted in Jewish culture due to the promotion of reading and debating the Torah and Talmud. This could have helped direct the results of their persecution. Compare the Jewish people to other persecuted peoples such as the gypsies.
I am no sociologist, but I think at the very least we can agree that outcomes result from very complex interactions of culture, geography, history, language, religion, etc.
Sounds very similar to the conclusions reached by Dr. Kevin MacDonald from the complete opposite perspective.
The biggest problem the talmud has in my opinion is that most people have such a distorted view of religion that the talmud is out of reach.
I find it very worthwhile for framing human interactions and worth more study.
Basing one's philosophy on magic beliefs and unquestionable appeals to authority (book or person) is building a castle on reclaimed land. Religion is a fanciful prison of illusions, delusions, and oft able to rationalize suffering imposed on others as "good".
This is my point illustrated. I can't decide if I should upvote you for helping me prove it. There are no magical beliefs and from a certain point of view the only authority is one's peace of mind.
Obviously your thinking is why to sophisticated for thoughts on human existence evolved over thousands of years.
The only people I see in prisoned by their minds have closed minds. They also like to insist others conform to their narrow view.
Obviously your thinking is why to sophisticated for thoughts on human existence evolved over thousands of years.
The only people I see in prisoned by their minds have closed minds. They also like to insist others conform to their narrow view.
The human struggle with authority or tradition is a part of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish scholarship itself. Off the top of my head, 'Israel' was the name given to Jacob after he wrestled with God. The Book of Job was a reaction to realization that good/evil did not necessarily correlated with prosperity/failure. These are things that the faithful openly talk about.
In the words of Gimli the dwarf; 'You speak evil of that which is fair
beyond the reach of your thought,
and only little wit can excuse you.'
From the article :
"On this view, the fact that a Jew discovered psychoanalysis didn’t mean it was a 'Jewish science,' any more than Einstein’s e = mc2 was a Jewish equation."
This is a strange statement to write because Einstein's relativity was indeed shrugged off as "Jewish Physics" by many antisemitic German physicists prior to WWII, in favour of German (or Aryan) Physics : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
This is a strange statement to write because Einstein's relativity was indeed shrugged off as "Jewish Physics" by many antisemitic German physicists prior to WWII, in favour of German (or Aryan) Physics : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
The writer is alluding to this fact.
It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Freud was not in full agreement with the Nazis on the matter of his relationship with Judaism.
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jb12(9)
I subscribe to Piet Hein's insight: `Everything's either concave or -vex/So everything you dream will be something with sex'.
Basically, if a decision has full agreement, jumping to the conclusion is wrong as it can mean some details were not properly investigated.
https://www.jewishaz.com/religiouslife/the-importance-of-dis...