Rubin - Anti-Semitism: a Disease of the Mind

ALSO BY THEODORE ISAAC RUBIN:

Lisa and David

Compassion and Self-Hate

Real Love

Copyright 2009 by Theodore Isaac Rubin

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Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-453-5

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I n loving memory of my father, Nathan, whose own father was murdered in a pogrom in the Ukraine.

I would like to thank Dr. Louis de Rosis for his encouragement. His own interest in the subject will surely cast much light.

Many thanks to Dr. Marvin Weitz for support and constant reminders of the importance of this investigation.

I would like to thank Dr. Robert Schuller, a great Christian, for his kind words and concern with this most difficult problem.

I t is of utmost importance to note that this book is in no way a criticism of Christianity.

Indeed, it is not possible for a Christian to be an anti-Semite or an anti-Semite to be a Christian. Bigotry, including anti-Semitism, and Christianity are antithetical. The disease called anti-Semitism destroys Christian principles and values as it promotes chronic hatred and inhumanity.

Unfortunately, stereotyping, bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, and ethnic murder continue virtually unabated.

The projection of self-hate is easy, especially so by highly suggestible people. Ruthless, manipulative psychopaths know that hate, in its sick way, binds people in efforts to destroy perceived enemies. Using this psychological dynamic is commonplace for power-hungry fearmongers. Killing the parent religion is insanely and unconsciously believed to be a self-freeing process.

Hating Jews is very much in evidence now as ever, and is a major player in this contagious, malignant disease.

However, there is little research dedicated to insight or remediation as regards this dangerous malady. Even following the Holocaust, the disease is ever present.

This book is about Jew hatred, but much of it applies to irrational hatred of any group. Perhaps shedding some light on the possible dynamics of this illness will awaken interest in the problem as well as motivation to understand and eradicate it.

Theodore Isaac Rubin
New York City, 2008

M y interest in anti-Semitism is rooted in my identification. Let me identify myself!

I am a human being. I am a father and grandfather. I am a Jew, and I am a psychiatrist.

As a human being I am deeply concerned with the eradication of bigotry wherever it exists.

As a Jew I have experienced personal hurt, pain, and fear as a consequence of Jew hating. Many of my most painful memories go back to early childhoodyes, here in America where I was born!

As a father and grandfather I am concerned for all children regardless of religion or color. I would like them to be free of the disease of bigotry. I am convinced that bigotry constricts and destroys the hosts as well as their victims.

As a psychiatrist I am concerned that we are in fact dealing with a diseasea malignant emotional illness. Eradication of this, as with other illness, cannot be accomplished without understanding. Since this is a psychiatric illness it is necessary to understand the psychodynamics involved. I have developed the system I call symbol sickness in order to facilitate understanding these dynamics. Symbol sickness is especially applicable to all bigotry illness. But it can also help to understand any emotional illness. For example, I deal here rather extensively with envy, one of the most self-corrosive of human emotional poisons. This system and the dynamics of anti-Semitism are the result of much clinical experience, personal experience, and thought. This problem has been on my mind nearly all my life. As a child I could not understand why people hated me and my family only because we were Jews. Later on I found out other groups were hated, too.

But I also found out that anti-Semitism has a history almost as old as Western Civilization itself. As with other diseases, it has gone through periods of relative quiescence as well as acute and severe flare-ups. It has been decidedly chronic (never having gone away), pandemic (worldwide), and incredibly destructive. Socioeconomic, political, and historical dynamics play a role and have been written about extensively. But there has been very little done in terms of psychodynamics. I hope to fill this gap a bit and to encourage others in this endeavor because I fervently believe we are in fact dealing with a disease of the mind. Unfortunately people sick with this disease can be very dangerous and even murderous but are not treated accordingly. Understanding this disease and these people will, I hope, make some contribution to preventing another Holocaustthe ultimate horror. I also hope it will help to stop the victimization of all people who are the victims of bigotry all their lives.

I shall summarize my goals in the next few pages.

W e are all familiar with the disturbance. It seems to have always been with us. It is pandemic, having touched multitudes of people in every corner of the globe.

Its effects are devastating. It ravages its hosts and its hosts destroy their victims.

It is metastatic, attacking every area of our lives. Even as it springs from emotional disturbance, it feeds emotional disturbance.

I believe that Jew hating or anti-Semitism is a nonorganic disease of the mind. I believe that it cannot be understood or eradicated unless it is viewed as the grievous psychodynamic disorder that it is.

Though there are, as in all emotional illnesses, sociopolitical, economic factors, and effects, this is primarily a psychiatric problem. Unfortunately, it is not contained as such in the various compendiums of psychiatric syndromes. It does not appear in the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , Third Edition or later editions.

As with all other psychiatric disturbances, here, too neurotic, psychotic, and sociopathic mechanisms abound. Projection, paranoia, phobias, rationalization, thought disorder, delusions, compartmentalization, and all other defenses are commonplace. But, as with other psychiatric illnesses, these neurotic and psychotic defenses come together in a particular combination so as to make the illness unmistakably identifiable.

This illness, however, of all its siblings, reaches the most people, is the most contagious, the most destructive, and the most difficult to treat and eradicate. But it is not hopeless! However, treatment cannot be effective unless we recognize that we are in fact dealing with psychiatric pathology and that we must continue the struggle to understand the psychodynamics involved. Medication will help! The organically sound mind is capable of producing behavior infinitely more bizarre and destructive than the organically brain-damaged mind.