Research Blog 8: Case

 My main case to illustrate my claim that Freud was influenced by Jewish Dream interpretation is a story found in the Talmud involving Rabbi Eliezer, a Jewish sage.

In the story, a woman comes to him, and tells him her dream. The granary of her house cracked. Rabbi Eliezer interpreted it to mean that she would bear a son, and she did. This happened several more times, the same dream and the same interpretation, and she birthed several sons. One day, Rabbi Eliezer was absent, so she brought her dream to his disciples instead. They interpreted the dream to mean that her husband would die, and then he did. Rabbi Eliezer found out what happened and told his students, "You killed that poor man!" From this story in the Talmud, it is learned that the meaning of dreams depends on their interpretation. 

The way this helps my argument, is that this is a story Freud would have learned, as we know he studied the Talmud in his youth. Incidentally, the moral of the story is also Freud's stance on how dream interpretation works. 

The sources i have drawn from are a recounting of this story, from "A Hasidic View of Dreams, Torah-Text, and the Language of Allusion" and a summary of Freud's childhood relationship with Judaism including which texts he studied, "The Hidden Freud : His Hassidic Roots."

Citation: 

Wineman, Aryeh. “A HASIDIC VIEW OF DREAMS, TORAH-TEXT, AND THE LANGUAGE OF

    ALLUSION.” Hebrew Studies, vol. 52, no. 1, National Association of Professors of Hebrew in   

    Institutions of Higher Learning, 2011, pp. 353–62, doi:10.1353/hbr.2011.0031.

H., Berke, Joseph. The Hidden Freud : His Hassidic Roots : His Hassidic Roots, Taylor & Francis Group,

    2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?          

    docID=2068804.



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