c. 2005 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Next year marks the 150th anniversary of Sigmund Freud’s birth in Freiberg, now part of the Czech Republic. Although psychoanalysis, Freud’s landmark creation, has come under attack from many critics in recent years, there is little doubt about the truth of his central discovery that it is the lack of control over ourselves that creates human unhappiness, dread and pain _ not simply the blind forces of nature.
It was Freud who first ripped open the sealed inner bundle of emotions and drives that we usually hide from families, friends and especially from ourselves. Freud, the controversial explorer of our inner lives, identified that concealed psychological package and helped us gain some understanding and perhaps control over it.
He began his long life in May 1856 when Kaiser Franz Joseph ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And he died in exile in London in September 1939 a few weeks after another Austrian, Adolf Hitler, began World War II. Despite Vienna’s overt anti-Jewish environment, Freud lived and worked in the city for 79 years, but ultimately Nazi anti-Semitism forced him from Austria’s capital in June 1938. Tragically, Freud’s sisters were not so fortunate; four of them were murdered in Nazi death camps a few years later during the Holocaust.
I kept thinking of Freud, the physician and victim of anti-Semitism, as I read about another famous Jewish doctor: Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, better known as Moses Maimonides (1138-1204). Sherwin Nuland, a professor of surgery at Yale, has written an excellent biography of Maimonides, the religious scholar, philosopher, community leader and, of course, physician. The book is the first in the new Jewish Encounters series.
Nuland, the author of the best-seller “How We Die,” describes how Maimonides ministered not only to his patients’ bodies, but also to their emotions and souls. Nuland correctly notes that even in Maimonides’ religious writings there is a keen awareness of the “diseases of the soul.” The great rabbi-physician wrote, “The soul can be healthy or diseased, just as the body is either healthy or diseased.”
Did Maimonides practice an early form of psychiatry 700 years before Freud? Who knows? But if those two great doctors ever meet in heaven, they will have many medical ideas and patients’ histories to share.
Like Freud, Maimonides faced anti-Jewish persecution and exile. Moshe ben Maimon was born in Cordoba, Spain, but when he was a young man Maimonides’ family was forced to flee that city because a violent Muslim group, the Almohads, took control of much of Spain. He moved to Fez, Morocco, a safer residence for Jews. After a visit to the land of Israel (where he is buried), Maimonides finally settled in a Cairo suburb, where he became Judaism’s greatest sage and scholar.
Both Freud and Maimonides were enormously busy as practicing physicians (the sultan in Egypt was the rabbi’s chief patient) as well as prolific authors. Freud’s collected papers fill five large volumes, and he authored more than 15 books and countless letters to professional colleagues. He was also a husband and the father of many children.
Maimonides’ literary output is also staggering in both quantity and quality. His commentaries on sacred Jewish texts, letters of spiritual encouragement to distant and beleaguered Jewish communities, the world-famous “Guide for the Perplexed” and his 10 volumes of medical writings are overwhelming. Little wonder Moses Maimonides is considered the greatest Jewish lawgiver since his biblical namesake.
But Freud and Maimonides differed in one significant area. The father of psychoanalysis was not an observant Jew; indeed, he had harsh words for all religions. While Maimonides was a philosophic admirer of Aristotle, he was always faithful to Jewish teachings and tradition. But happily, the Jewish tent is big enough to include both gifted physicians.
Finally, Freud and Maimonides abounded in supreme self-confidence when their ideas and beliefs were attacked.
Freud wrote: “Psychoanalysis is regarded (by a repressed society) as a … `social danger.’ This resistance can not last forever. … No human institution can in the long run escape … fair criticism.”
When the “Guide for the Perplexed” was attacked, Maimonides responded, “I do not presume to think this treatise settles every doubt in the minds of those who understand it, but I maintain it settles the greater part of their difficulties.”
Thank you, doctors!
MO/PH END RNS
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is distinguished visiting professor at Saint Leo University.)
Editors: To obtain a photo of Rabbi Rudin, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.
