[Freud's Moses study as day dream].

Abstract

Starting from a description of the Moses-manuscripts and an examination of certain peculiarities in the published text, the author interprets Freud's last book as a day-dream. She reads therein indications of a crisis precipitated by the Nazi persecution, which Freud mastered by day-dreaming and through self-analysis. Considering the Moses study in this way it becomes clear that Freud's late discoveries concerning archaic mechanisms of defense were essentially the outcome of self-analysis--as were his first insights into the laws of dreaming in the beginnings of psychoanalysis. In his old age, Freud took up this work again in dialogue with Arnold Zweig and Thomas Mann; it also led him to an immersion in the tora and the Philippson bible commentary, familiar to him from his childhood.