Abstract

Immanuel Velikovsky is a subject worthy of serious consideration not only because of the potential validity of his ideas , and not only because his ideas, correct or incorrect as they may be, have had an impact on the modern American imagination, but also because the reaction to his self-defined role as modern secular prophet reveals something fundamental about American culture in the latter half of the twentieth century. From early on he identified himself strongly with the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament; in middle age, he came also to identify himself with "the seer of our time," Sigmund Freud. From the two systems of thought--Judaism and psychoanalysis--he developed a comprehensive cosmography of his own. Due to the nature of his argument and presentation, he found a receptive audience among some maverick segments of contemporary society while at the same time provoking two generations of the American intellectual establishment into personal abuse of the man and into attempts to suppress the propagation of his ideas. The present study is an interpretive account, first of all, of the biographical and sociocultural factors that predisposed him towards certain modes of thought and, secondarily, of the elements in contemporary American culture which permit "Velikovskianism" to have such an enduring impact