The Freudian Exodus redefines the traumatic experience that Freud argued was the origin of Judaic monotheism, the murder of Moses. Focusing instead on the Babylonian Exile, the study explores a series of topics understood as the aftershocks of that cultural trauma. Among these are the nature of anti-Semitism, Christianity’s vexed relationship to Judaism, the fantasmatic status of subjectivity, the cultural function of Torah, and Freud’s escape at the end of his life from Nazi-controlled Austria. The in-depth analysis of these topics aims for a new understanding of psychoanalysis, conceived more as a philosophy than as a mode of therapy.
