"Psychoanalysis and Antisemitism" | Something that's in all of us

"Why Antisemitism?" This is the brief title of the first of Ilka Quindeau's three Adorno lectures from 2023, which also correspond to the three chapters in his book "Psychoanalysis and Antisemitism." This sets the tone for the study; by asking about the purpose, the author places herself in the tradition of early Critical Theory , which sought psychodynamic explanations of susceptibility to antisemitism . In doing so, the sociologist and practicing psychoanalyst steps outside the definitional and categorical mode of current debates. The fact that Quindeau's lectures, delivered before the momentous October 7, 2023, and subsequently published in book form this year, advocate for self-criticism instead of blame or definitions of antisemitism , does not make them apologists for the (new) antisemites. Rather, the psychoanalyst's cognitive interest is in the root, function and persistence of anti-Semitic opinions, which in their unconscious form occur everywhere in society, not only among "ideological anti-Semites."

This approach is also due to the author, who works not only as a theorist but also as an analytic therapist, sharing this with readers through illustrative anecdotes from her practice. With an ideological critique, the book builds on the interweaving of psychoanalysis and social criticism, from which Theodor W. Adorno hoped, not quite 100 years ago, to "full insight into the cohesion of social totality." At the same time, Quindeau subjects central paradigms of the Frankfurt School—such as the authoritarian character or the thesis of the defense against guilt, which became canonized explanatory models in the anti-Semitism discourse in Germany—to a thorough critique.

Strange and contradictory

Quindeau's mediating efforts should not be understood as a desire for harmony or a naive idealization. She recommends a clear approach to dealing with antisemites: social ostracism. However, her focus is on the question of what it means that criticism of antisemitism seems to have given way to accusations of antisemitism. This is where Quindeau's critical reconsideration of the attempt to bring together psychodynamic and sociocritical perspectives begins: What function might the defense against the antisemitism of others serve?

In the first part, the author traces Adorno's and Max Horkheimer's turn to psychoanalysis from the history of ideas. While she criticizes Adorno for seeking to abolish the unconscious in the name of reconciliation with the damaged subject, Quindeau advocates for understanding psychoanalysis as an epistemological discipline. Thus, it is a science that does not merely seek to gain knowledge about something, but methodically engages reflection on its own cognitive interest and the conditions of possibility for knowledge. The unconscious, as the irrational other of the enlightened subject, cannot be dissolved and overcome, as the illusion of rationality suggests. The author applies to this idea a concept of alterity (from the Latin alter, "the other"), derived from the French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche. In this, the stranger, the other, assumes a constitutive role for the subject, which must be maintained—both in the form of the counterpart and in the form of the unconscious. These are considerations that also appear in Adorno's "Negative Dialectics," but, according to the author, are neglected in studies of antisemitism.

Quindeau's deconstruction of the traditional concepts of the Frankfurt School first addresses the "authoritarian personality," the authoritarian character originally developed by Erich Fromm. Reducing antisemitic attitudes to fixed personality structures no longer has any explanatory power today and narrows the view to forms of antisemitism that appear anti-authoritarian. Quindeau argues that susceptibility to antisemitic opinions should be understood by considering that these supposed solutions to conflicting desire structures are offered. The decisive factor here is a person's intolerance of ambiguity: the (in)ability to emotionally, cognitively, and morally endure complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Unlike, for example, the psychoanalyst Else Frenkel-Brunswik, the author understands this not as a personality expression, but as a fluid psychological position that is constantly updated (not only in childhood) in the processing of ambiguity conflicts.

The experience of contradiction has increased in a society that increasingly outsources its conflicts to the individual.

While contradiction is a fundamental human experience, Quindeau, following authors such as Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey, argues that it has increased in quantity and intensity in modernity – in a society that increasingly outsources its conflicts to the individual. The growing ambiguity about what constitutes "one's own" and what constitutes the foreign, the other, in a global society with a changing working world and liberalized gender concepts, while simultaneously maintaining the ideal of the self-determined subject with a clearly defined identity, makes people vulnerable to antisemitic semantics. These semantics offer "the Jew" as a counter-stencil to be combated by transforming him into a projection surface for the rootless non-identity that embodies everything that is warded off within itself. As a result, the enemy image, especially since the modern era, has acquired a psychologically stabilizing character as well as a power-stabilizing one.

Psychological or strategic defense?

In the second main section, Quindeau addresses the motif of guilt defense, which is of central importance in the analysis of antisemitism. Her counter-thesis is that this defense is not directed against feelings of guilt, but against the accusation of guilt. To support her argument, she draws on transcripts of the group experiment, a large-scale empirical study conducted by the Institute for Social Research immediately after Horkheimer, Pollock, and Adorno returned from exile in the United States. The experiment, co-financed and commissioned by US authorities, was a methodologically revolutionary group discussion procedure for investigating the collective mentality of post-war West German society.

Although she conducts interdisciplinary research herself, Quindeau criticizes the conflation of disciplines and their terminologies in the interpretation of the results by Adorno and colleagues. She clearly distinguishes between psychological and strategic defenses and, through a systematic re-evaluation of the recordings, concludes that the study participants seem to lack the underlying (unconscious) feelings of guilt that would trigger psychological defenses in the first place. Consequently, the author shifts the focus in interpreting the participants' statements: from the thesis of guilt defense, she moves to the thesis that the clearly evident emotional attachments to National Socialism obscured the awareness of guilt.

Quindeau devotes the final chapter to contemporary antisemitic dynamics. She analyzes how unconscious social codes are translated into public discourse and in which forms the strategic denial of responsibility of post-war Germans continues to exist today. This occurs, for example, in the instrumental acknowledgment of guilt—both where it accompanies the demand for an end to the past and where "German guilt" is claimed to be the sole reason for attitudes of solidarity with Israel. Quindeau's concluding thesis, that "antisemitism as a potentiality resides in all of us," reinforces the author's advocacy of psychoanalysis as an epistemological method. While this might not put the specter of antisemitism to rest, it might clarify the debate about guilt, defense, and projection.

"Psychoanalysis and Antisemitism" proves to be a good example and, at the same time, a convincing plea for an enlightened cognitive enterprise that unites psychoanalytic and social-theoretical perspectives. Quindeau manages to maintain the boundaries of individual disciplines while still keeping a view of the social totality.

Ilka Quindeau: Psychoanalysis and Antisemitism. Frankfurt Adorno Lectures 2023. Suhrkamp 2025, 284 pp., paperback, €32.