ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the horizon of the “Freudian Orient” with the objective to produce a first generic map of its narrative landscapes and their conceptual properties. The full extent of Sigmund Freud’s references to the Orient includes other worthy grounds besides his strictly psychological works. In German, “Morgenland” designates an Orient incessantly appropriated by so many Western adventurers, from intrepid crusaders to ambitious Orientalists. Freud’s identification with a romanticised Orient by way of bringing in his Jewish “forebears” is strongly reminiscent of the pedigreed, proud, and even fierce Orientalism of Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield. The endless proliferation of Orients, from “Semitic” to “Assyrian” to “biblical” to “psychoanalytical” to “Jewish” to “Egyptian and archaeological”, ushers regularly in Freud’s response to the anti-Semitic stereotype. Freud’s Orients, as they unfold in his mature correspondence, are traversed by two recurring and interwoven themes: Jewish identity and the “anti-Semitic challenge”.
