Join us for a lecture, discussion, and exhibit in celebration of Naomi Seidman's new book: Translating the Jewish Freud: Psychoanalysis in Hebrew and Yiddish.
Psychoanalysis for Diabetics: Freud in the Popular Jewish Press
The Viennese critic Karl Kraus declared that "psychoanalysis was the disease of assimilated German-speaking Jews; Eastern European Jews make do with diabetes." Drawing from her new book, in this lecture Naomi Seidman will trace what Freud meant for Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews, who in fact did catch the Freudian "disease" in the interwar period, when Freud was a regular staple of the Yiddish press and lecturers traveled through Poland satisfying the "Freud craze" that gripped Jewish society and beyond.
The lecture will be accompanied by remarks from Yael Segalovitz (HDI, Comparative Literature) and Roni Masel (Comparative Literature), as well as Naomi Seidman's small travelling exhibit of rare Hebrew and Yiddish books on psychoanalysis published between the 1920s to the 1940s.
Naomi Seidman is the Jackman Professor of the Arts at the University of Toronto. Her fifth book, Translating the Jewish Freud: Psychoanalysis in Hebrew and Yiddish, appeared in 2024 and emerged from the Taubman Lectures she delivered in 2019 at the Magnes Collection for Jewish Life and Art. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016. Her 2022 podcast, Heretic in the House, won a Signal Award.
Tuesday, March 18, 2025 @ 5:00-6:30pm
3335 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley
RSVP to attend the lecture in person.