In 1905, the Jewish psychoanalyst Otto Rank published a short essay called “The Essence of Judaism.” Rank, who at the time was one of the students closest to Sigmund Freud, sought to explain the excellence of Jews in the fields of art, journalism and medicine. His explanation was rather surprising. In his view, the Jews were closer to nature than the other European nations, particularly in their sexual habits. In contrast to other peoples, the Jewish sexual drive had not undergone repression over the centuries, he observed. Accordingly, whereas other peoples had become passive or masochistic, the Jews succeeded in resisting neurosis, thanks to which they had survived from antiquity.
In the modern era, Rank maintained, the professions pursued by the Jews embodied an ability to express and exteriorize the sexual drive in diverse ways. This, then, was the Jews’ mission, which they had preserved rigorously: to disseminate among the nations unrestrained, primitive sexuality.
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