The Riddle of Freud: Jewish Influences on his Theory of Female Sexuality

In The Riddle of Freud Estelle Roith argues that certain important elements of Judaic culture were so integral a part of Freud's personality that they became visible in his work and especially in his attitudes to and theories of femininity. Freud's formulation of femininity, which the author contends is mistaken, is seen not as a simple error but as resulting from a complex bias in which personal and social factors are interrelated. The author proposes that the considerable ambivalence expe...