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      • Judaism: life & practice
        January 2014

        Breaking and Mending

        A Hassidic Model for Clinical Psychology

        by Dr. Baruch Kahana

        The book 'Breaking and Mending', written by Baruch Kahana, a clinical psychologist and a researcher of Jewish Kabala and Hassidism, is truly a revolution in the fields of human psychology, even though it is appears to treat classic old texts and contents. The essence of this book is an inspiring meeting between the western psychology, as developed in the 20th century following the theories of Sigmund Freud and his tutors, and the Hassidic spiritual anthropology, a heritage of the great Hassidic Masters – the Ba'al-Shem-Tov, the Maggid of Mezritch, Rabbi Shneor-Zalman of Liadi, Rabbi Nachman of Breslev, and others. In his book, Dr. Kahana surveys and peruses through the developments of modern psychology, and describes the theoretic and clinical crisis that the psychology is going through during the postmodern age. Following that analysis, he suggests the Hassidic psychology as a psycho-therapeutic model, which views the human soul from an utterly inverse angle from that which is customary in the western psychology. Hence, Kahana asserts, the Hassidic psychology can focus on different dimensions of the soul and use a whole different set of treatment tools. The Hassidic psychology is displayed in varied details, through a comprehensive investigation of many Hassidic texts that results in a description of a sophisticated, organized mental and spiritual model. Nonetheless, these old-new psychological tools are not supposed to denounce the achievements of the modern western psychology, but rather to become integrated with them, to enrich them and to complete them, as demonstrated in the book. Dr. Kahana does not only transmit to the reader a general image of the subject; he gives the reader a meticulous description of the ways in which the Hassidic psychology can and should contribute to the more accepted and familiar western treatment. He goes over a series of psychological distresses, complexes and disturbances, as they are described in the DSM and the ICD, and shows how the Hassidic psychology would deal with them differently. A series of stories from Dr. Kahana's clinic brings the book to its end. Through those stories, that are well told and in detail, he demonstrates how Hassidic Psychology actually works. While doing so, Dr. Kahana gives the reader an amazingly organized model of the Hassidic anthropology and psychology in which he arranges the varied sources into one firm theory. Dr. Baruch Kahana is a clinical psychologist and a clinical psychology counselor. He teaches in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Ya'akov Herzog College and in the Rothenberg Center for Jewish Psychology

      • Philosophy
        January 2013

        Introduction to the Psychology of Self Contraction (Tsimtsum)

        by Prof. Mordechai Rotenberg

        Similar to many innovative “life projects”, the discovery of the “tsimtsum” (contraction) psychology emanated from an incidental chain of events. During the sixties, when Prof. Rotenberg was a doctoral student at the University of California in Berkeley, he became immersed in the famous anti Vietnam movement which disseminated from this campus. The anti establishment aura, which imbued this social revolution also seemed to have nourished the anti psychiatric fad which claimed that labeling people as cureless schizophrenics is primarily a stigmatic act of discrimination. Following Max Weber’s sociology of religion Rotenberg then developed a counter thesis arguing that it is the Protestant- Calvinistic theology of deterministic predestination and not an elitist ideology which underlies Western irreversible diagnostic systems in psychiatry. Since the discovery that a hidden theology underlies Western psychology raised considerable controversial disputes among western psychotherapists, Rotenberg felt pressed to uncover the psychology embedded in Jewish theology. As a result, he delved during the subsequent 35 years into Jewish hermeneutic literature in order to develop the Jewish Midrashic and mystic psychological system which he constructed according to the Kabbalistic-Hasidic notion of “tsimtsum”. In the ten books which Rotenberg wrote he subsequently tried to demonstrate how the Kabbalistic theodicy that maintains that God’s voluntary contraction into himself in order to make space for the world of “others”, may serve as an alternative dialogical psychology which differs radically from the prevailing Western Darwinistic psychology of egocentrism.

      • Philosophy
        January 2015

        Saving Monotheism

        Why the most cruel despotic wars burst out in monotheistic societies

        by Prof. Mordechai Rotenberg

        In his new book Saving Monotheism, Prof. Rotenberg claims that the answer to the existential question` why the most cruel despotic wars burst out in monotheistic societies, may be found in the fatal distortion of this divine idea which was supposed to unite the believers in one god. Accordingly. Rotenberg divides the world into masculine “raping missionaries” who impose on others their definition of socio-religious norms because They” know what god wants”. However, according to the alternative feminine “conversive” definition of monotheism, people have to seek the invisible god via romantic creative inter human interactions. The feminine romantic model is derived from the biblical story of Ruth the Moabite mother of David’s Kingdom which may be used as a metaphorical pattern for nonviolent social relations. Hence the Ruthian feminine romantic model may disseminate such egalitarian ideas as “my god is your god” and “my people are your people”, because only “women who do not rape” may enhance friendly social relations. For applicable possibilities Rotenberg proposes the “couching” system according to which a potential virtuous in music, sports or a new religion, joins free willingly a romantic training program which is grounded on a dialogic contract between the coach and his novice. The outlined romantic model includes also a new expanded framework for intimacy by rereading the story of the maiden Avishag and the aging King David as an anti phallocentric system for erotic relations. Prof. Mordechai Rotenberg books in English: Author's books in English: Damnation and Deviance: the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Failure, New York: The Free Press, Macmillan 1978. Also published in Japanese, Tokyo: Heibon Sha 1986. New English Edition: New Brunswick, Transaction, 2003. Dialogue with Deviance: The Hasidic Ethic and the Theory of Social Contraction Philadelphia: ISHI Publications 1983. Second edition, University Press of America, 1993. Also published in Portuguese, Brazil, Imago Press, 1999. Hasidic Psychology: Making Space for Others, New Brunswick: Transaction, 2003. Re-Biographing and Deviance: Psychotherapeutic Narrativism and the Midrash New York: Praeger Publishers, 1987. Dia-Logo Therapy: Psychonarration and “PaRDeS” New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991. The “Yetzer”: A Kabbalistic Psychology of Eroticism and Human Sexuality, Northvale: Jason Aronson Inc., 1997. The Trance of Terror: Psycho-religious Funda-MENTALISM, Jerusalem: Rubin Mass Pub. 2006.

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