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Freud, opponent and victim of circumcision
Freud took a stand against circumcision as soon as 1909, attributing to it the
cause of Judeophobia:
"The castration complex is the deepest unconscious root of anti-Semitism; for even in the
nursery, little boys hear that the Jews have something cut off in their penis – a piece of their
penis, they think – and this gives them a right to despise the Jews."1
He will renew that thought at various times:
"… among the customs by which the Jews made themselves separate, that of circumcision has
made a disagreeable, uncanny (unheimlich) impression, which is to be explained, no doubt, by
its recalling the dreaded castration..."from 2,
"It seems indubitable to me that circumcision…, is an equivalent of castration and comes to take
over it."3
"... fear of castration is one of the commonest and strangest motives for repression and
thus for the formation of neuroses. The analysis of cases in which circumcision though
not, it is true, castration, has been carried out on boys as a cure or punishment of
masturbation (a far from rare occurrence in Anglo-American society) has given our conviction
a last degree of certainty."4
"The conclusion strikes me as inescapable that here we may also trace a root of those hatreds
of the Jews (Judenhasses) which occur in such primary ways and lead to such irrational beha-
viour among the nations of the West. Circumcision is unconsciously equated with castration."5
But his most radical condemnation dates from the end of his life:
"The results of the threat of castration are multifarious and incalculable; they affect the whole of
a boy's relations with his father and mother and subsequently with men and women in general."6
The following footnote discreetly suggests, that circumcision is one of those destructuring
threats:
1 Analysis of a phobia on a five-years-old boy (Little Hans). 1909. London: The Hogarth press ltd.; 1955.
S.E., X, p. 36, n.
2 Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood. 1910. London: The Hogarth press ltd.; 1957. S.E.,
XI. p. 95, n. 3.
3 Introductory lessons to psychoanalysis. 1916-17. London: The Hogarth press; 1961. S.E., XV, 164.
4 New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. 1933. London: The Hogarth press ltd.; 1964. S.E., XXII,
p. 86.
5 Moses and monotheism. 1936. London: The Hogarth press ltd.; 1964. S.E., XXIII, p. 91.
6 An outline of psychoanalysis. 1938. London: The Hogarth press ltd.; 1964. S.E., XXII, p. 189-191.
"(1) … The primaeval custom of circumcision, another substitute for castration, can only be
understood as an expression of submission to the father's will… " (p. 190),
Rarely emphasized, that drastic condemnation is little known, but it is very deba-
table. Circumcision is not a symbolic wound but a very real mutilation. Neither is it a
threat of castration; it is a threat of eviration that was invented by the primitive patriarchy,
at the time of harems, to prevent grown-up sons from coveting young wives. Nowadays,
it is not submission to the father but to society, notably grandparents under the threat of
being disinherited. It instils the law of might into males and submits them to the esta-
blished order by a trauma all the more effective that it is amnesied.
Above all, Freud was a great victim of his own circumcision that provoked grave
mistakes in his clinic and theory7.
But he also was a victim of circumcision in his sexual life.
7 Bertaux-Navoiseau M. "Oedipus without complex"... of castration! (as blind as Oedipus, Freud distorts
Sophocles' myth).