Translating the Jewish Freud

Naomi Seidman is the Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts at the University of Toronto, a National Jewish Book Award winner, and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow.

"Translating the Jewish Freud is a lucidly argued, innovative, and deeply moving study. It is moving in a double sense: it reframes and moves our understanding of the Jewish Freud away from approaches that seek to 'discover' and 'expose' Freud's Jewishness. Instead, Naomi Seidman surfaces the affective circuits that mobilize and surcharge readerly and writerly desires for Freud's Jewishness. This double movement makes for an utterly compelling experience."—Ann Pellegrini, coauthor ofGender Without Identity "In this book, Naomi Seidman continues her amazing journey into the presence of our pasts, with the reader along for a round-trip ride. Language and its charges—of identity, repression, rebellion, and gender—are her continuing leitmotif. Here she examines the many readings of Freud in Jewish, and the many readings of Freud as Jew—all as clues to the cacophony of known and suppressed desires and repulsions that surround Jewish identification tout court."—Jonathan Boyarin, author of Yeshiva Days "Translating the Jewish Freud... offers a compelling, quasi-sociological view of how Freud's Jewish admirers translated his works as a sign of prideful acceptance, which Freud himself valued."—Benjamin Ivry, The Forward "Naomi Seidman's Translating the Jewish Freud: Psychoanalysis in Hebrew and Yiddish is a conceptually rich account of the many networks that join and disjoin Sigmund Freud from Jewish identity."—Evan Goldstein, Parapraxis "In Translating the Jewish Freud, Seidman guides readers on a fascinating journey through the complexities of translating Freud's ideas toward an understanding of human nature and the human mind.... Recommended."—R. M. Shapiro, CHOICE "Translating the Jewish Freud is enjoyable to read, containing many anecdotes on the library of the author and her research for the book, and is recommended to academic libraries and all interested readers."—Roger S. Kohn, Association for Jewish Libraries News and Reviews