Cyril Hubert Levitt

Professor Emeritus, Sociology

Cyril Levitt is a member of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association. He trained as a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis and is currently the Chair of the Library Committee. He is interested in the history of psychoanalysis, applied psychoanalysis in the social sciences and humanities and in psychoanalytic metapsychology. Cyril Levitt is currently completing a study of the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach on the thinking of Sigmund Freud. He has just translated a paper written by Feuerbach in 1862 entitled: "The Mystery of Sacrifice or Man is What he Eats." Levitt is currently doing a comparative study of Durkheim's "Elementary Forms of Religious Life" and Freud's "Totem and Taboo."

Professor Levitt has had an abiding interest in race and ethnicity. In his co-edited book "Under the Shadow of Weimar", he examines the use of criminal and civil law against racial incitement in different countries. The impact of these laws and their effects are given serious consideration. He is also the co-author of “The Riot at Christie Pits” which examines the background of an antisemitic riot in Toronto during the summer of 1933. Levitt is currently a member of the Committee on Racism and Antisemitism of the International Psychoanalytic Assocation. Cyril Levitt had a fruitful collaboration with the late Professor Lawrence Krader, former Director of the Institut für Ethnologie at the Freie Universität Berlin. Levitt has been editing several of Krader's manuscripts for posthumous publication, including Krader's "Noesis" or thinking and knowing.