Freud: On Torah mi'Sinai

Sigmund Freud was not a religious Jew. To the contrary - he was avowedly anti-religious. He wrote several books on the subject: most notably, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Civilization and its Discontents (1930), and Moses and Monotheism (1939). Freud's opinion on religion can be summed up by these quotations:

"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires."

"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis." 

"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities."

That said, it might come as a shock that Freud does a fine job giving over the proof of Torah mi'Sinai. 

That's right. By "the proof of Torah from Sinai" I am referring to the rational argument for the Torah's divine origin. If you're not familiar with the proof, I highly recommend reading this, or this, or this (in that order of priority). 

Here is an excerpt from Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanlaysis (1916). Freud discusses an obstacle faced by psychoanalysis, in contrast to other medical practices: 

In medical training you are accustomed to see things. You see an anatomical preparation, the precipitate of a chemical reaction, the shortening of a muscle as a result of the stimulation of its nerves. Later on, patients are demonstrated before your senses-the symptoms of their illness, the products of the pathological process and even in many cases the agent of the disease in isolation. In the surgical departments you are witnesses of the active measures taken to bring help to patients, and you may yourselves attempt to put them into effect. Even in psychiatry the demonstration of patients with their altered facial expressions, their mode of speech and their behaviour, affords you plenty of observations which leave a deep impression on you. Thus a medical teacher plays in the main the part of a leader and interpreter who accompanies you through a museum, while you gain a direct contact with the objects exhibited and feel yourselves convinced of the existence of the new facts through your own perception. 

In psycho-analysis, alas, everything is different. Nothing takes place in a psycho-analytic treatment but an interchange of words between the patient and the analyst. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences and present impressions, complains, confesses to his wishes and his emotional impulses. The doctor listens, tries to direct the patient's processes of thought, exhorts, forces his attention in certain directions, gives him explanations and observes the reactions of understanding or rejection which he in this way provokes in him. The uninstructed relatives of our patients, who are only impressed by visible and tangible things-preferably by actions of the sort that are to be witnessed at the cinema-never fail to express their doubts whether 'anything can be done about the illness by mere talking'. That, of course, is both a short-sighted and an inconsistent line of thought. These are the same people who are so certain that patients are 'simply imagining' their symptoms. Words were originally magic and to this day words have retained much of their ancient magical power. By words one person can make another blissfully happy or drive him to despair, by words the teacher conveys his knowledge to his pupils, by words the orator carries his audience with him and determines their judgements and decisions. Words provoke affects and are in general the means of mutual influence among men. Thus we shall not depreciate the use of words in psychotherapy and we shall be pleased if we can listen to the words that pass between the analyst and his patient." 

But we cannot do that either. The talk of which psychoanalytic treatment consists brooks no listener; it cannot be demonstrated. A neurasthenic or hysterical patient can of course, like any other, be introduced to students in a psychiatric lecture. He will give an account of his complaints and symptoms, but of nothing else. The information required by analysis will be given by him only on condition of his having a special emotional attachment to the doctor; he would become silent as soon as he observed a single witness to whom he felt indifferent. For this information concerns what is most intimate in his mental life, everything that, as a socially independent person, he must conceal from other people, and, beyond that, everything that, as a homogeneous personality, he will not admit to himself. 

Thus you cannot be present as an audience at a psychoanalytic treatment. You can only be told about it; and, in the strictest sense of the word, it is only by hearsay that you will get to know psycho-analysis. As a result of receiving your instruction at second hand, as it were, you find yourselves under quite unusual conditions for forming a judgement. That will obviously depend for the most part on how much credence you can give to your informant.s

Freud compares this dilemma to that of the historian, who must establish the existence of facts "through hearsay," without firsthand knowledge that they occurred. It is here that Freud presents a rational argument for assessing historical claims - an argument which, if applied to the Revelation at Sinai, would affirm its validity. However, at the very last moment, Freud states a caveat. 

Let us assume for a moment that you were attending a lecture not on psychiatry but on history, and that the lecturer was telling you of the life and military deeds of Alexander the Great. What grounds would you have for believing in the truth of what he reported? At a first glance the position would seem to be even more unfavourable than in the case of psycho-analysis, for the Professor of History no more took part in Alexander's campaigns than you did. The psycho-analyst does at least report things in which he himself played a part. 

But in due course we come to the things that confirm what the historian has told you. He could refer you to the reports given by ancient writers, who were either themselves contemporary with the events under question or, at any rate, were comparatively close to them-he could refer you, that is to say, to the works of Diodorus, Plutarch, Arrian, and so on. He could put reproductions before you of coins and statues of the king which have survived and he could hand round to you a photograph of the Pompeian mosaic of the battle of Issus. 

Strictly speaking, however, all these documents only prove that earlier generations already believed in Alexander's existence and in the reality of his deeds, and your criticism might start afresh at that point. You would then discover that not all that has been reported about Alexander deserves credence or can be confirmed in its details; but nevertheless I cannot think that you would leave the lecture-room in doubts of the reality of Alexander the Great. 

Your decision would be determined essentially by two considerations: first, that the lecturer had no conceivable motive for assuring you of the reality of something he himself did not think real, and secondly, that all the available history books describe the events in approximately similar terms. If you went on to examine the older sources, you would take the same factors into account the possible motives of the informants and the conformity of the witnesses to one another. 

The outcome of your examination would undoubtedly be reassuring in the case of Alexander, but would probably be different where figures such as Moses or Nimrod were concerned. 

Freud hits all of the fundamental steps of the argument, but balks at the suggestion that his argument could be applied to "Moshe and Nimrod." Freud doesn't even provide any basis for his assertion. He just asserts it.

The question is: Why doesn't Freud apply his reasoning to "Moshe and Nimrod"? There are two paths we can take in approaching this question:

1. We can assume that Freud did not have any intellectual reason for differentiating between Moshe Rabbeinu and Alexander the Great, but rather, his exclusion was prompted by psychological causes within Freud's own psyche.
   
   
2. We can assume that Freud did have an intellectual (if mistaken) basis for making this distinction. 

If the former, then we can sit here speculating as to why Freud was resistant to accepting the historicity of Moshe and Nimrod. If the latter, then our duty is to understand the basis of Freud's differentiation "where figures such as Moses or Nimrod were concerned."

What do you think? 

(Hint: I think this is related to the question of why, for over two thousand years of our history, none of the breakaway movements from Judaism have doubted or denied the historicity of the Revelation at Sinai, until the rise of the Reform Movement in the 19th century. What changed? I think the answers to these two questions are related.)