“Psychoanalysis and anti -Semitism” – something that is in all of us

“Why anti-Semitism?” The title of the first of Ilka Quindaus is three adorno lectures from 2023, which also correspond to the three chapters in his book “Psychoanalysis and Anti-Semitism”. This specifies the direction of the examination; With the question of the purpose, the author arises in the tradition of the early critical theory, which was looking for psychodynamic explanations of reception for anti -Semitism. The sociologist and practicing psychoanalyst is thus emerging from the definition and allocation mode of current debates. The fact that Quindaus, which was held in front of the serious October 7, 2023 and then (nevertheless) published in book form this year, do not make them apologies of the (new) anti -Semites instead of blame or anti -Semitism definitions. Rather, the knowledge interest of the psychoanalyst of the root, function and persistence of anti -Semitic opinions applies, which in their unconscious form occur socially everywhere, not only in the “ideological anti -Semites”.

The approach is also thanks to the author of the author, who works not only as a theorist, but also as an analytical therapist, how to let readers participate in her practice with illustrative anecdotes. With ideology -critical intentions, the book ties in with the interlinking of psychoanalysis and social criticism, from which Theodor W. Adorno hoped for “full insight into the cohesion of social totality” less than 100 years ago. At the same time, Quindeau undertakes central paradigms of the Frankfurt School – such as the authoritarian character or the thesis of the defense of guilt, which became canonized explanatory patterns in the anti -Semitism discourse in Germany – an in -depth criticism.

Foreign and contradictory

Quindenaus mediating use should not be understood as a need for harmony or naive transfiguration. To deal with anti -Semite, she recommends a clear procedure: social ostracism. For them, however, the focus is on what it means that anti -Semitismcriticism anti -Semitismaccusation seems to have gone. This is where Quindaus comes up critical view of the experiment to bring together psychodynamic and socially critical perspectives: Which function may also fulfill the defense against the anti -Semitism of others?

In the first part, the author, historically, traces Adornos and Max Horkheimer’s turn to psychoanalysis. While she criticizes that Adorno wants to abolish the unconscious in the name of the reconciliation of the damaged subject, Quindeau is positive for understanding psychoanalysis as an epistemological discipline. So it is about a science that does not just want to be a knowledge of something, but rather the reflection on one’s own interest in knowledge and the conditions of possibility of knowledge methodically claims. The unconscious as the irrational other of the enlightened subject cannot be dissolved and overcome, as the illusion of rationality pretends. The author sets this idea a concept of alterity obtained with the French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (from Latin age, “the other”) in contrast to. In it, the stranger, the other, has a constitutive role for the subject that needs to be maintained – both in the form of the other person and in the form of the unconscious. These are considerations that also occur in Adorno’s “negative dialectic”, but are neglected in the investigations into anti -Semitism.

Quindenaus DekonstrauT The traditional concepts of the Frankfurt School first meets the “Authoritarian Personality”, originally developed by Erich Fromm, the authoritarian character. The reduction of anti -Semitic attitudes to fixed personality structures no longer has an explanatory power and pretended to look at the forms of anti -Semitism, which are used by anti -authoritarian. Quindeau advocates understanding the reciprocity for anti -Semitic opinions that these supposed solutions offer for conflicting desire structures. The decisive factor here is the ambiguity intolerance of a person: to endure the (un) ability, complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity emotionally, cognitive and morally. This understands this, unlike, for example, psychoanalyst Else Frenkel-Brunswik, but also not as a personality expression, but as a fluid psychological position, which is permanently updated in the processing of ambiguity conflicts (not only in childhood).

The experience of contradictions has increased in a society that increasingly outsources its conflicts to the individual.

Contradiction is a basic human experience, but in modernity, in it, Quindau follows author like Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey, in quantity and intensity – in a society that increasingly outsources their conflicts to the individual. The growing uncertainty about what in a global society with a changed world of work and liberalized gender ideas “one’s own” and what the stranger is, others, with simultaneously ideal of self -determined, clearly defined subject, makes susceptible to anti -Semitic semantics. These offer “the Jews” as counter-templates to be fought by making it the projection surface of the rootless non-identity that embodies all of this in themselves. As a result, the enemy has a mentally stabilizing character, especially since modernity, as well as a stable.

Psychological or strategic defense?

In the second main part, Quindeau takes the motive of the defense of guilt, which is of central importance in the analyzes of anti -Semitism. Their opposite is that the defense is not directed against feelings of guilt, but against the accusation of guilt. To underpinning it, she uses the group experiment to protect the group, a large-scale empirical investigation that the Institute for Social Research carried out immediately after the return of Horkheimer, Pollock and Adorno from the US exile. The experiment that is co-financed by US authorities and commissioned was a methodically revolutionary group discussion procedure for investigating the collective mentality of the German post-war society.

Although she herself researches interdisciplinary, Quindeau criticizes the mixture of the disciplines and its terminologies in the interpretation of the results by Adorno and colleagues. It clearly distinguishes between psychological and strategic defense and, when the records are systematically re -evaluated, comes to the conclusion that the participants of the study seem to lack the underlying (unconscious) feelings of guilt that would cause a mental defense at all. As a consequence of this, the author moves the focus when interpreting the statements made by the participants: from the thesis of the defense of guilt, she comes to the thesis that the clearly translucent emotions of the National Socialism adjusted the awareness of guilt.

The final chapter dedicates Quindeau to the anti -Semitic dynamics of the present. She analyzes how unconscious social codes are translated into public discourse and in which forms the strategic responsibility of post -war Germans continues to exist today. This is done, for example, in the instrumental recognition of guilt – both where it is accompanied by the demand for an end of the past, as well as where “German Guilt” would be claimed as the only reason for Israelidaric attitudes. Quindenaus conclusion thesis that “anti -Semitism is as potentiality in all of us” confirms the author’s entry for psychoanalysis as an epistemological method. So the ghost of anti -Semitism could not be rested, but the debate about guilt, defense and projection could not be specified.

“Psychoanalysis and anti -Semitism” proves to be a good example and at the same time convincing plea for an enlightening knowledge company that combines psychoanalytic and socio -theoretical perspectives. Quindeau manages to maintain the individual scientific borders and nevertheless to get social totality into account.

Ilka Quindeau: Psychoanalysis and Anti -Semitism. Frankfurt Adorno lectures 2023. Suhrkamp 2025, 284 p., Br., € 32.