Freud’s Psychoanalysis as a Translation of Judaism
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Despite Sigmund Freud’s lack of religious belief, his psychoanalysis is deeply rooted in Jewish religious culture, the product of a hybrid, “Hellenistic” Judaism. Above all, his self-analysis, which is essentially inscribed in The Interpretation of Dreams, shows how, proceeding from an invented Egypt, an imagined Athens, and a dreamed-up Rome, Freud developed a theory in fin-de-siècle Vienna – a cosmopolitan city, his Jerusalem – that deeply sublimated the personal into theory. Religion, as an arsenal of symbols, played a considerable role in this work. The aim is to gain new insights into Freud’s theory, but beyond that into elements for a theory of religion—one that accounts for the dialectics of secularization between disenchantment and re-enchantment of the world.
CV
Martin Treml is a senior research fellow at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin and currently an IFK_Senior Fellow.
Publications
gem. mit Zaal Andronikashvili u. a. (Hg.), Die Ordnung pluraler Kulturen. Figurationen europäischer Kulturgeschichte, vom Osten her gesehen, Berlin 2014; gem. mit Sabine Flach und Pablo Schneider (Hg.), Warburgs Denkraum. Materialien, Motive, Formen, München 2014; gem. mit Silvia Horsch (Hg.), Grenzgänger der Religionskulturen. Kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zu Gegenwart und Religion der Märtyrer, München 2011.
