Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

P Loewenberg

Publications and source records attributed to P Loewenberg.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

[The psychodynamics of anti-Judaism in the historical perspective].

In the author's view, anti-Jewishness is the expression of covert anti-Christianism, which in its turn conceals an unconscious revolt against Christ. Unconscious aggression is unleashed against the Jews, who thus become scapegoats against whom three constantly recurring accusations are levelled: the killing of Christ; the desecration of the Host; and the ritual murder of children. The author traces the history of these accusations from the Middle Ages to the present. The search for scapegoats is a universal phenomenon not limited to anti-Jeweshness but encountered more generally in situations of social and political uncertainty. To substantiate his claims, the author draws upon historical documents from the Second World War dealing with the threat to China from Japan's armed forces, and also makes reference to the race riots in Los Angeles early this year.

Christianity↗

An historical, biographical, literary, and clinical consideration of Freud's 'Analysis Terminable and Interminable' on its fiftieth birthday.

Freud's paper is re-examined and placed in biographical and historical context, Moses and monotheism (1934-1938) is treated as a parallel text. Freud's ironic scepticism is viewed against the background of Thomas Mann's 1936 idealization of psychoanalysis. Freud was a sick and dying man in 1937 with every reason for personal pessimism. The political setting was the triumph of fascism in Austria and the impending seizure of Austria by Hitler. Freud fantasized the protection of psychoanalysis by the Roman Catholic Church. The paper is a polemic against the theories of Ferenczi, Adler, and Rank. Contemporaneous defence of prophylactic analysis by Fenichel is reviewed. Freud's political judgement of the moral equivalence of Social Democracy and fascism is critiqued. Freud's injunction to periodic re-analysis and his vision of analysis as 'unending' is supported. The possibility of intergenerational prophylaxis is presented.

Austria↗