An Analysis of Jewish Culture

T H E psychology of cultural antipathies, often erroneously miscalled racial prejudices, while subtle, is not difficult to understand once the true nature of culture and its relationship to personality is fully grasped. The almost infinite number of behavior patterns which the human organism is capable of forming under the guidance of a rich cultural background is only less amazing than the variety of organization which these patterns may assume. Thus, although we recognize as fellow-humans the products of strange cultures, for we recognize familiar behavior patterns in them, nevertheless they seem slightly out of focus to us because their organization is strange. We do not feel completely at home with members of other cultures, and this is the basic psychological substratum for our fears and antipathies. The old idea that personality was something inherent within the organism which was simply educed by outer surroundings has given way, under the impact of the analyses of men like Baldwin, Cooley, Dewey, Mead, and Bernard, to a more socialized theory in which personality is seen to lie to a great degree in our responses to the people and things about us. According to this view, personality consists in a complex set of relationships between the organism and its setting. The people and things which surround us contribute as much to our personalities as we do, and any violent truncation of these outer