In the "Freud Laboratory": The Yiddish Translation and Reception of Psychoanalysis

Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series See all lectures » Admission: $10 YIVO members & students: $5 Free for Uriel Weinreich Summer Program students. Watch the video

Naomi Seidman | Delivered in English.

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This talk will explore the intersection between the linguistic architecture of modern Jewish psyche, in which Yiddish and other Jewish languages lie "deeper" than European tongues, and Freud's stratified notion of the psyche. It is this intersection that accounts for the formulation that Yiddish is the language of the unconscious (by Max Kohn), or that YIVO is the collective unconscious of American Jewry (Max Weinreich). This paper will explore this ideology and the ways it worked itself out in the translation and reception of psychoanalysis in Yiddish.

About the Speaker

Naomi Seidman is the Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. Her book, Sarah Schenirer and Bais Yaakov: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition, was recently published by Littman Library. Seidman did her research for this book as a Workmen's Circle/Dr. Emanuel Patt Visiting Professor at the YIVO Institute (2012) and an NEH Senior Scholar at the Center for Jewish History (2016-17).