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thought of liberal or enlightenment Jews such as Jakob Freud, who interpret Judaism primarily as a kind of ethical monotheism.1 There is no evidence that the idea of the Devil was ever part of Freud’s Jewish education. Second, and more importantly, there is not a single explicit reference by Freud to any of the writings of the Jewish mystical tradition. Bakan’s case is based mostly on some similarities in preoccupations between the writings of Freud and those of the Jewish mystics—and, indeed, in large part on what he considers to be the general Jewish character of Freud’s thought. That there may have been some slight connection is possible, but a major one is most unlikely. My skeptical response has apparently been that of most of Bakan’s readers.2
There is still another reason for doubting that Judaism had anything to do with Freud’s “demonic” preoccupation. As Trachtenberg3 has documented, there was a well-established anti-Semitic tradition linking the Jews to the Devil and to magician figures like Faust. This linkage was especially strong in Germanic and Central European popular cultures, and it was used to justify all kinds of persecutions. A Jew would normally actively avoid anything connected to such a dangerous stereotype. Now if the Devil is a fairly minor figure in the Jewish tradition, he certainly looms large in much of Christianity—as do various themes connected with him, such as damnation and Hell. Hell was a topic of very considerable concern to Protestants and Catholics alike in the 19th century, as in preceding centuries. Certainly the New Testament clearly sets out the Christian view that Heaven and Hell exist, and frequent references are made to the Devil or Satan.4 Since Christianity does have a serious concern with the Devil, and since Freud was (as already shown) strongly influenced by Christian concepts, it is a reasonable a priori assumption that Freud’s relationship with the Devil was also significantly conditioned by the religion of his early childhood and of the surrounding environment. Before returning to Bakan’s thesis and the question of Freud’s “pact” with the Devil, I examine the extensive evidence, in sources typically overlooked by his biographers, of Freud’s Christian connections to the Devil. His Nanny and the DevilWhere and when did Freud first hear of the Devil? There can be little doubt that his Catholic nanny, who taught him about Heaven and Hell, also told him about the Devil. It is almost impossible to talk about Heaven and Hell without also talking about God and the Devil; in any case, the kind of sophisticated theological discourse that can describe Hell without mentioning the Devil would have been well beyond a simple peasant woman instructing a young child. Within Christian theology, Hell only |