During the last ten years historians have begun to reinterpret nearly every aspect of Nazi history. Many of their conclusions are very fruitful indeed. But there has as yet appeared no satisfactory reinterpretation of Nazi ideology. The study of Nazi ideology presents some apparently intractable problems; many scholars believe, moreover, that political thought played a relatively unimportant part in the rise (and fall) of the Third Reich. For these and other reasons, some of the most important source material for the study of Nazi ideology has been almost totally neglected. This is the large quantity of writings and programs published by the various Nazi leaders before 1933.

While on vacation in Rome during the fall of 1913, Freud mentioned in a letter that his visit to the eternal city had restored his zest for work and that in addition to several other pieces he had written the preface to his book Totem and Taboo. In this preface he modestly notes that essays “represent a first attempt on my part at applying the point of view and the findings of psycho-analysis to some unsolved problems of social psychology,” but taken as a whole the four essays in fact present as bold and ingenious a theory on the nature and origins of human civilization as that proposed in Rousseau's Second Discourse a century and a half earlier. Rome was, in every sense, an appropriate place to launch such an ambitious undertaking, and as a connoisseur of jokes and irony Freud may well have chosen his vacation residence, the Eden Hotel, at least in part because of its name. However, the picture Freud draws of primitive man's first steps toward the establishment of civilization is far from edenic. Near the end of Totem and Taboo Freud conjures up a description of the primal crime on which human culture rests: “One day the brothers who had been driven out came together; killed and devoured their father and so made an end of the patriarchal horde. United, they had the courage to do and succeeded in doing what would have been impossible for them individually.”

Relying heavily upon Freud's greatest work, The Interpretation of Dreams, Professors Carl Schorske and William McGrath have attempted to increase our understanding of the origins of psychoanalysis. Both authors feel that the key to Freud's discoveries lies in his reaction to the sociopolitical realities of late nineteenth-century Vienna, and while the articles differ somewhat in emphasis their arguments are sufficiently similar so that they can be treated together. To Schorske and McGrath psychoanalysis had its origins in Freud's decision to give up his initial desire to mount a direct political (even revolutionary) attack on the inequities of the existing society for a “counter-political” psychology which enabled him to adjust to the existing political situation and even achieve a measure of scientific success. As a youth Freud had radical political aspirations and was even active in radical political organizations. However, the hopelessness of the liberal position in Vienna and the rise of anti-Semitic popular movements led Freud to believe that direct political action would not be successful. By reducing political conflict to father-son conflict Freud, like other liberals, would ignore the reality of the political and learn to live (albeit imperfectly) in a world which he could not influence. A career in science could bring recognition and at least partial acceptance, and thus a minimum of satisfaction at least.

After reading the comments of Rothman and Isenberg on my article I knew what it must have felt like to be the woman who went before Solomon to complain that her baby had been stolen. They begin by claiming that the “false premise” on which my article (and Schorske's) is based is that Freud's psychoanalytic theory “was essentially counterpolitical or nonpolitical.” The whole point of my article, however, is, as I say on page 52, to show “how closely Freud's theory was related to the world of politics.” In my view the important question is not whether or not it was political, but rather the changing directions in which the political-psychological relationships operated over the course of Freud's development. After oversimplifying my argument to suggest that I claim Freud disowned his early revolutionary impulses, they counter with the claim that his theory is “revolutionary (and radical) in the most significant sense of the term.” Yet on page 46 I do in fact refer to his “revolutionary sexual theories,” and the point of my argument is to show just how his early revolutionary political impulses are transformed into such revolutionary scientific theories (see p. 57). However, to argue as the commentators do that Freud's theories represented an “attack on the existing social order” as effective or “even more effective” than that of Marx (pp. 59–60) is surely a fine example of an academic perception of reality.