Presented by Nathan Szajnberg

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Click here to purchase The Secret Symmetry of Maimonides and Freud from the publisher (use the code FLE22 for a 20% discount).
Click here to purchase Szajnberg’s other new book, Psychic Mimesis From Bible and Homer to Now: Inner Lives Over Time from the publisher (use the code LXFANDF30 for a 30% discount).

Nathan Szajnberg’s new book The Secret Symmetry of Maimonides and Freud presents the parallels between The Guide of the Perplexed and The Interpretation of Dreams, considering how Maimonides might be perceived as anticipating Freud’s much later work.

Through the interpretive traditions of psychoanalysis, literary criticism, and Judaism, Szajnberg demonstrates the similarities between these two towering Jewish intellectual pillars, explaining how Maimonides and Freud each used their understanding of human psychology to embed secrets in their texts that would be revealable for the observant reader. Using concepts of esoteric literature from the Torah and later texts, he analyzes their ideas on concealing and revealing to gain a new perspective on Freud’s view of dreams. Throughout, Szajnberg articulates the challenges of reading these works in translation and how these pitfalls can be addressed.

Nathan M. Szajnberg is a training analyst and retired Sigmund Freud Professor of Psychoanalysis at The Hebrew University in Israel. Szajnberg was born in Germany, grew up in Rochester, and attended college and medical school at the University of Chicago. He is the editor of Educating the Emotions: Bruno Bettelheim and Psychoanalytic Development, and the author of many books, including Reluctant Warriors: Israelis Suspended Between Rome and Jerusalem; Sheba and Solomon’s Return: Ethiopian Children in Israel; Lives Across Time/Growing Up (with Henry Massie); and Psychic Mimesis From Bible and Homer to Now: Inner Lives Over Time.