Splitting the Difference: Freud's Disavowed Theory of Antisemitism

Abstract

Abstract:Sigmund Freud undertook his most significant discussion of the different sources of antisemitism in the first part of the final essay of his last completed work, Moses and Monotheism (1939). After analyzing what Freud does and does not say about antisemitism in Moses, this article turns back to his discussion of neurotic development with its new theorization of defense against trauma in terms of disavowal and splitting of the ego (rather than in terms of repression and deferred action). There it locates the fetishistic remains of another theory of antisemitism that, in the face of its implication of the possible onset of collective psychosis—against which his psychoanalysis would be defenseless—and consequent genocidal telos, Freud may have traumatically disavowed.