title: "Bildung" or the formation of the psychoanalyst.
abstract: As a number of Sigmund Freud's patients and followers in the crucial formative years of psychoanalysis were from the German- and Austrian-Jewish educated class, and as the then prestigious humanistic tradition was considered essential for the formation of analysts, the paper gives a historical account of various discourses of "Bildung"so as to explain the particularity of the Freudian psychoanalyst. Amongst others, his humanistic aspirations are compared with Thomas Mann's re-examination of the tradition of "Bildung." It is argued that Freud's specific cultural milieu -- the German-Jewish assimilation -- conditioned the form his psychological knowledge adopted and the way the analyst was fashioned: the demand of breaking away from one's alienating individuality by the objectifying effect of a symbolic system. The Freudian ideals of purity and neutrality, the Freudian method of self-formation, and the Freudian expert subject thus produced were historically and culturally determined and thus subject to variation.
authors.affiliation: Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Wen-Ji
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000069:Acculturation / Q000266:history; D001317:Austria / Q000208:ethnology; D003466:Cultural Characteristics / Q000266:history; D004493:Education / Q000266:history; D005619:Freudian Theory / Q000266:history; D005858:Germany / Q000208:ethnology; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006808:Humanism / Q000266:history; D007206:Individuality; D010551:Personality; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D012922:Social Change / Q000266:history; D012923:Social Class / Q000266:history; D012924:Social Conditions / Q000266:history