'Said's reading of Freud's reading of the history of the Jewish people is undeniably brilliant'
Times Literary Supplement In this influential lecture Edward Said explores Freud's
foundational work Moses and Monotheism to rethink the relationship between identity politics
and psychoanalysis. The result is a study illuminating both Freud's thinking and that of Said
on whom the great psychoanalyst was a formative influence. Was Moses Jewish or an Egyptian? The
question undermines any simple ascription of identity highlighting the limits of these
categories. Said suggests that such an unresolved nuanced sense of identity might if embodied
in political reality form the basis for a new understanding between Jews and Palestinians. In
contrast Israel's relentless march towards an exclusively Jewish state denies any sense of a
more complex inclusive past. With an introduction by Christopher Bollas and a response by
Jacqueline Rose.
