Judaism: life & practice
January 2014
A Hassidic Model for Clinical Psychology
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
