When David Bakan’s Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition was first published in 1958, the author wrote a preface in which he argued that we cannot fully appreciate the development of psychoanalysis unless we view it against the history of Jewish mystical thought. There are indeed many similarities between kabbalistic writings and psychoanalysis: dream interpretation, symbolism, an interest in sexuality, and close attention to language. Kabbalists study the texts of holy books in much the same way as psychoanalysts study people. In both cases, small things-minute details-matter. Bakan’s problem, however, was that there wasn’t much direct evidence to support his thesis. That is, until he was contacted by Chaim Bloch, an eminent student of Judaism, kabbalah, and Hasidism, and a one-time acquaintance of Sigmund Freud.
Bloch recalled visiting Freud and, when left alone, taking the opportunity to examine the great man’s books. What he saw was quite remarkable. In Freud’s library was a large collection of Judaica, now absent from official collections and registers. Among these books were several volumes on kabbalah and a French translation of the Zohar (perhaps the most important work of Jewish mysticism).
In subsequent editions of Bakan’s book, he introduced a new preface, and a paragraph that explains the significance of his discovery with particular reference to the Zohar: It is without question the most important work in the Jewish mystical tradition. A number of features in the Zohar strongly suggest relationship to the psychoanalytic movement-among them the concept of man’s bisexuality, and concepts of sexuality in general. There is also in the Zohar the notion that man can be studied by the exegetical techniques associated with the study of Torah; and a theory of the nature of anti-Semitism almost identical with that contained in Freud’s Moses and Monotheism. Perhaps even more important, there is an atmospheric similarity-one which cannot indeed, be conveyed in any brief description.
Freud was anxious to be seen as a scientist and spent most his life distancing himself from religion. It is the greatest of ironies then that this supposedly rational, irreligious man might have been influenced by not just spiritual texts but spiritual texts of a mystical nature. If we accept Bloch’s testimony, and with it Bakan’s thesis, then psychoanalysis might be described as a late kabbalistic school of thought, which makes Freud not a scientist but a closet kabbalist: the last great mage of the Jewish mystical tradition.
I like the idea of Freud poring over his secret collection of magic books. It is a romantic and fitting image. One is reminded of the Talmudic legend of the lamed vavniks, the righteous men. At any given time there are thirty-six righteous men living in the world whose good deeds stop the world from ending. They accomplish their work in secret and are never rewarded. When one dies, another is born. And so it goes on from generation to generation: thirty-six anonymous Jews, standing-thanklessly-between civilization and ruin.