Sigmund Freud and the B'nai B'rith

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the racism against the African Americans and the Jews in America that had also entered the Lodges, provoked a crisis in the Jewish Freemasons who felt the need to create an organization with rituals, an initiatory path and values similar to those used in Freemasonry with the aim of combating anti-Semitism and promoting an educational and philanthropic activity to help Jewish immigrants of different origins and traditions to integrate into American society. The B’nai B’rith was founded in 1843 in New York by twelve German Jewish immigrants, some members of Freemasonry and of the Odd Fellows fraternity. The B’nai B’rith fraternity was immediately active even outside the United States, in fact the Great Lodges were opened in Europe and in Jerusalem. On September 23, 1897, Freud was initiated in the Lodge “Wien”, presented by the physician Edmund Kohn. This Viennese lodge was inaugurated at a time when anti-Semitism was spreading in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (see Katz, 1970). On December 7, 1897, Freud expounded his dream theory (Knöpfmacher, 1979, p.42) at a B’nai B’rith meeting, at least two years before the Traumdeutung was printed; Freud was a forty-one-year-old physician who was developing his theory, anticipated and presented at the Viennese Lodge of the B’nai B’rith, to a non-specialist audience who welcomed it enthusiastically. Why Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and one of the most illustrious figures of the twentieth century, felt the need to be initiated at the B’nai B’rith and remained in the brotherhood throughout life? What were the reasons that led him to enter into this fraternity of Masonic inspiration and with a strong Jewish identity? The communication will try to provide some answers to these questions. Bibliography Cicciola, E. (2018). Scienza e Massoneria. Storia e storiografia (Science and Freemason. History and Historiography). Physis. Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza, 53, 184-210. Freud, S. (1926). Sigmund Freud Papers: General Correspondence, 1871-1996. B’nai B’rith, mss39990, box 18, Library of Congress. Grusd, E.E. (1966). B’nai B’rith: The Story of the Covenant. New York: B’nai B’rith. 204 Katz, J. (1970). Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723-1939, Cambridge: Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. Knöpfmacher, H. (1979). Sigmund Freud and the B’nai B’rith. Journal of American Psychoanalysis Association. 27(2), 441-449. Meghnagi, D. (1992). Il padre e la legge: Freud e l’ebraismo (The father and the law: Freud and Judaism). Venezia: Marsilio. Szafran, A.W. (2001). Freud and the lodge B’nai B’rith “Wien”: the modernity of the reflections on Jewish identity. Archives of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. 3, 71-79