ABSTRACT
The authors anticipated that the psychoanalytic method could usefully be applied to the phenomenon of antisemitism since antisemitism seems to be largely irrational. Its ubiquity and persistence cannot be explained by any realistic considerations. Antisemites often justify their prejudice by offering myths that persist in form and remain similar in content or intent over generations and centuries, in many places, and in diverse cultures. This chapter exemplifies the application of psychoanalytic thinking to social and cultural issues; applied psychoanalysis the discipline is called. Allusions to antisemitism appear in many autobiographical sections of Sigmund Freud's writings. All of Freud's comments about antisemitism were written before the Holocaust, and in fact before the Holocaust was imaginable. Moses and Monotheism itself might be regarded, although it was begun in the 1920s, as having been inspired and directed towards the gathering Holocaust.
