Book Description: Theodore Rubin, Anti-Semitism, a disease of the mind

Bibliographic Information 
Rubin, T.I., 2014. Anti-Semitism: a Disease of the Mind. Skyhorse Publishing, New York.
ISBN: 978-1-62914-858-8

Summary

Rubin is a psychiatrist. He presents an analysis of antisemitism as an expression of mental illness.

Context

Curiously, Rubin’s first expression of concern is to clarify that his book is “in no way a criticism of Christianity.” His intended audience appears to be mental health professionals, Jews seeking to understand their experiences with antisemitism, and Christians seeking to prevent it. His work precedes the current (2021) wave of antisemitism, which lends the book a certain air of prescience. He relates to the phenomenon on the level of the individual antisemite asking a potent, important question. What is the psycho-dynamic going on in the mind of the Jew-hater? Unfortunately, Rubin’s analysis, deeply immersed in the professional context of Freudian psychoanalysis, fails to incorporate insights from other fields of research. This book lacks a deeper understanding of theological ideas, the way theology functions socially to help people to navigate their moral universe, and the historiography of antisemitism. For example, the pioneer in conceiving antisemitism as a mental illness was the 19th Century Russian-Jewish physician Dr. Leo Pinsker. In his seminal pamphlet, Autoemancipation, published in 1882, years before Freud, Pinsker declared antisemitism a phobia. His insight does not figure in Rubin’s book, so Rubin doesn’t clarify how the earlier work might relate to current events.

Style

Rubin’s total immersion in the Freudian world of ideas may make his work hard to understand for people who do not have some grounding there. At its worst, his writing can seem full of in-group jargon.

Classroom

To use this book, students will need to understand Freudian ideas. Some may have difficulty dealing with Rubin’s use of a word like “victim” to describe antisemites. However, it makes a certain sense in the context of his central point that antisemitism is a mental illness. Like all writing on ideas of mental health, his summary of symptoms of mental disturbance may be uncomfortable reading for students, especially if part of what he has to say may apply to their mental make-up. While this book is not useful as a study of the broad foundations of antisemitism and their histories, it does have its place as an interesting approach to the mental health aspects of problems this particular bigotry causes.