In this book, Rosine Jozef Perelberg offers a profound psychoanalytic exploration of antisemitism, revealing how unconscious mechanisms such as projection, splitting and the uncanny have contributed to historical prejudice.
Drawing on Freud's concepts of the murdered father and the dead father, Perelberg introduces the notion of the "murder of the dead father" to illuminate how antisemitism targets not merely individuals but the very foundations of symbolic order. Through her rigorous analysis of historical antisemitism and the Holocaust, readers gain insight into the psychic mechanisms underlying prejudice and the destruction of temporality and filiation. Perelberg traces the persistence of these mechanisms from historical prejudice to contemporary political discourse, showing how projection, splitting, and envy converge in antisemitic formations. By integrating psychoanalytic theory with historical evidence, literary interpretation, and survivor testimony, Perelberg reveals the profound connections between individual psychic life and collective violence, making complex ideas accessible to both specialists and general readers interested in psychology, history, and social justice.
This book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, historians, scholars of Jewish studies and students of Holocaust studies seeking to understand the psychological dimensions of prejudice, racism, and contemporary antisemitism through a rigorous theoretical lens.