Chris Green wrote: >It is true that Jews were barred from various professions >in Germany (which is why, for instance, Freud moved from >neurology to medicine).
Not so! Diligent readers may recall my comment in a recent post (in response to one by Chris, ironically): "In Freud's case, claims of opposition motivated by anti-Semitism have tended to be over-stated (the Nazi period excluded, of course). In his monumental volume *The Discovery of the Unconscious* Henri Ellenberger noted: 'The [Freud] legend considerably exaggerates the extent and role of anti-Semitism, of the hostility of the academic world, and of alleged Victorian prejudices' (1970, p. 547)…." In *An Autobiographical Study* Freud wrote of his career change: "The turning point came in 1881, when my teacher [Ernst Brücke], for whom I had the highest possible esteem, corrected my father's generous improvidence by strongly advising me, in view of my bad financial position, to abandon my theoretical career. I followed his advice, left the physiological laboratory and entered the General Hospitial as an Aspirant [Clinical Assistant]. I was soon afterwards promoted to being a Sekundart [Junior of House Physician]." Freud's "official" biographer, Ernest Jones, notes in the context of Freud's wanting to marry his fiancée Martha Bernays : "[Freud's] economic prospects were certainly dark enough. Both the Assistants [in Brücke's physiology laboratory] were only ten years older than Freud himself and so would not be likely to vacate such a position for him for years to come... Furthermore, the salary paid to an Assistant was so exiguous that he could hardly support himself without private means, and certainly could not found a family." (*Sigmund Freud: Life and Work*, vol. 1, p. 67 [Brit. ed.]) Freud does not suggest anti-Semitism played any role in his deciding to change his career, and nor to biographers Ernest Jones, Ronald Clark or Peter Gay, so I'm left wondering where Chris got his mistaken notion from. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [email protected] http://www.esterson.org ----------------------------------------------------- [tips] Peirce smart; Wundt nazi? Christopher D. Green Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:03:19 -0700 Marc Carter wrote: > Too true. His paper was "The Fixation of Belief," not knowledge. I > teach that paper as "ways of coming to believe," but many texts use > "ways of coming to know." > > That's such a great paper. Those guys were *smart*. Indeed, Charles Sanders Peirce (note the spelling) may have been the smartest man in America in the second half of the 19th century. One article (Cadwallader, /JHBS/, 1974) claims he was the first experimental psychologist in the US (for his color vision research in 1877), among his many other professions: astronomer, gravitational researcher, mathematician, logician, pragmatic philosopher). But he was also a bit of a whack-job, and was so successful in pissing off so many powerful people that, after his father died, his career rapidly whithered to nearly nothing. Charles W. Eliot, the president of Harvard, wouldn't allow Peirce on campus (even though he had graduated from there, and both his father and brother were professors there). Simon Newcomb regularly went out of his way to undermine Peirce's job prospects. Daniel C. Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins, fired him (to a first approximation) because he moved in with his (future) second wife before finalizing the divorce from his first wife (the first of the big three psych-related sex-scandal firings from Hopkins -- Baldwin, Watson). It was the last academic position he ever held. G. Stanley Hall got the Hopkins professorship instead. When William R. Harper, the president of U. Chicago, considered hiring Peirce (with Wm. James' recommendation), Harvard philosopher George H. Palmer warned Harper off him. John Dewey got that job instead. By the 1900s, the only friends Peirce seemed to have left were his former student, Christine Ladd Franklin (who thought he had begun to lose his mind in the 1890s) and William James (who would periodically solicit donations on Peirce's behalf to enable him to keep body and soul together at the increasingly decrepit rural Pennsylvania farm to which he had retreated). A very sad story. ================= Michael Sylvester wrote: Thought I read about this or something similar from Christopher Green.Didn't the German philosophers like Nietsche (sp) and others had this idea of a master race. Btw,Leipzig was a hot bed of anti-semitism long before the rise of the Nazism.The German intellectual circles excluded many jews from participation. Nope. Not from me. Anti-semitism was fairly widespread in Germany, and indeed the rest of Europe (I give you the Dreyfus Affair in France). I don't know that Leipzig was a particular hotbed (and Wundt wasn't from Leipzig anyway, he just ended up there. He was raised in Baden and educated mostly in Heidelberg). It is true that Jews were barred from various professions in Germany (which is why, for instance, Freud moved from neurology to medicine). Solomon Diamond says that, as a child, Wundt regularly visited a Jewish family and sometimes even went to Temple with them (in Rieber & Robinson, _Wilhelm Wundt in history_). Hugo Muensterberg was a student of Wundt. He had been born Jewish, but converted to Lutheranism before going to university (I think). I'm not sure if there were other Jewish students in Wundt's lab. George Mandler's _History of Modern Experimental Psychology_ says that Wundt was quite liberal, even radical, in his early days. He served in a local parliament for a term under the banner of the Progress Party. But he grew increasingly conservative and nationalistic as he aged. In 1914 he signed the "Manifesto of the 93," denying German culpability in the starting of the war. After the war, in late 1918, just a little more than a year before his death, Wundt adopted the /Dolchstoss/ view of Germany's defeat -- that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by its own Social Democrats, Bolsheviks, and Jews (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_legend). This was an explicitly anti-semitic position, and it was later used to great effect by the Nazi party to rouse public anger at Jews, but that ultimate outcome was not at all visible back in 1919. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=5889 or send a blank email to leave-5889-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
