Ansky’s The Dybbuk, Freud’s Future of an Illusion, Watson’s “Little Albert,” and Supernatural Horror in Literature

Abstract

Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature mentions Ansky’s supernatural drama, The Dybbuk, and proceeds to succinctly trace the origins of the Jewish mystical imagination. In 1927, Freud published The Future of an Illusion, denouncing religion and linking supernaturalism to an infantile need for an all-nurturing, omnipresent mother, among other things. This chapter traces the history of The Dybbuk and examines why it endures and appeals long after Lovecraft’s dubious praise of it, while Freud’s psychoanalysis has come to seem closer to superstition than science.