Fear of circumcision (Jewish children)

“Post-operational” care takes several days even weeks. Numerous deaths are described as having occurred in the old days, e. g. tuberculosis, beginning on the little penis, which the rabbi would put into his infected mouth in order to gather the blood. In animal medicine, these methods have long been banned. In “Serenity and other human possibilities” “…”, Suhrkamp, Leo Rangell tells of a repeated circumcision on a 12year-old patient which his mother had had done because he had masturbated. “Cruelly and forcibly” the doctor had performed this. According to Rangell, this trauma resulted in fears of castration which lasted into adulthood and made psychoanalysis necessary. In this particular case, the concept fear of castration even makes sense to me.

In the Near East, a cruel version existed: The skin on the boy’s penis and testicles was stripped and into the wound salt would be rubbed. It was always God as the giver of orders who had to take the blame for such rituals and who bore full responsibility when complications occurred. That was practical. The matter does prove, however, that we human beings are the craziest animal species on this earth.

Circumcision as trauma was one reason to make the inventor of psychoanalysis, S. Freud, as sexually driven as one can derive from his theories on analysis, which can be related to human beings who have not been circumcised. It must be horrendous for Jewish children to have to attend the circumcision of their younger brothers.

“Hands off his foreskin” one wants to shout out to Jahwe. For me personally, that would be no celebration. Anything insane and brutal however is easier to put up with if it is labelled a celebration by the Church. With “God” we even like going to war. Freud was also considered to be driven by sexual interpretations due to the following fact: Young, pretty women were expected to suddenly speak completely openly and as if they were lying in bed about their sexual habits, dreams and fantasies, and they did this as happily as lightly dressed during summertime. The therapists often sat at the head end. That way, a potential erection (even therapists are only human) would not become apparent.

Sexuality - a sin? >