Lecture

Freud's Meshuggeneh Footnote
A Clipping from Little Hans' Nursery

• Sunday, January 14, 2007 at 2 pm

Sigmund Freud inserted a curious footnote into his 1909 case study of a five-year-old boy with a phobia of horses. He proposed an unconscious source of anti-Semitism: that hatred of Jews is a consequence of castration anxiety aroused by circumcision. There is no mention of anti-Semitism, circumcision, or his patient's religion prior to this footnote. Complicating matters further, the patient, Herbert Graff (aka Little Hans), although Jewish, was apparently not circumcised.

In what is certain to be a fascinating presentation, Freud scholar Jay Geller explores this intriguing footnote in relationship to Freud's work and to Jewish life in twentieth-century Vienna.

This is the inaugural Horwitz Family Lecture in Jewish History, generously endowed by the Horwitz Charitable Fund.

Lunch & Learn

Not "Is Psychoanalysis a Jewish Science?" but is it a Jewish Joke?

• Monday, January 15, 2007 12 noon - 1:30 pm

Sigmund Freud was a collector and regaler of Jewish jokes. These jokes would crop up in the most unlikely places. He employed one—the Schnorrer and the damaged kettle—to illustrate the logic underlying his most famous dream, The Dream of Irma's Injection. Jay Geller's Lunch & Learn presentation will propose several explanations for the emergence of this dream, and how it relates to Freud's struggle with Jewish identity.

Soloman Goldman lecture

Impossible Neighbors
Reflections on Freud and Judaism

• Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 2 pm

In his writings, Freud expressed the view that cultural development was hindered by religious belief and practice. Yet he never ceased to identify with his Jewish heritage. Eric Santner discusses how Freud cannot be fully defined as a cultural Jew, one who doesn't believe but continues to cultivate links to tradition. He explores the connection between Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and the ethical demand to love your neighbor, a central concept of Judaism.