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Click here for An Interview with Sanford Drob on Kabbalah and Psychotherapy. Kabbalah
and Psychotherapy: Dialogue "THIS
IS GOLD”: FREUD, PSYCHOTHERAPY AND THE LURIANIC KABBALAH Click here
for pdf version SANFORD L.
DROB, Ph.D.* Freud’s
reported interest in the Lurianic Kabbalah is explored from both theoretical
and psychotherapeutic points of view.
The Lurianic symbols are understood both as important historical
antecedents to psychoanalysis and as a significant source of both insight and
inspiration for contemporary psychotherapists. David Bakan, in the paperback edition of his work, Sigmund Freud and The Jewish Mystical
Tradition relates a story which, I believe, bears repeating. It’s a fascinating story. I'm not sure if it's true, but even as an
apocryphal tale it should command our attention. The story involves two rabbis by the name
of Chayyim, two rabbis by the name of Bloch, Bakan, and Sigmund Freud. In his book, first published in the 1950s,
Bakan had argued that Freud had either consciously or unconsciously made use
of Jewish mystical ideas in formulating psychoanalysis [1]. After the book’s publication Bakan received a letter from a Rabbi
Chayyim Bloch, who had been an acquaintance of Freud some years back. Bloch had read Bakan's book and informed
Bakan that he had some information that might be of interest to him. According to Bloch, many years earlier he
had been asked by his own mentor, the eminent Rabbi Joseph Bloch, to do
a German translation of the works of
Chayyim Vital, a 16th century rabbi
who had been the most important student of Isaac Luria, the great master of
the theosophical Kabbalah [2]. Bloch
told Bakan that he'd begun work on the
translation but soon lost interest and ceased work altogether when Joseph
Bloch died in 1923. Sometime later,
however, Chayyim Bloch had a dream in which Joseph Bloch came to him and
asked him why he had not finished the project. Chayyim Bloch then completed the
translation but felt he needed someone to write a forward to the book and to
help assume responsibility for its publication. Apparently
Bloch had some understanding of the psychological significance of Chayyim
Vital's work, because he decided to approach his acquaintance, Sigmund
Freud. Freud agreed to read the
manuscript, and upon doing so exclaimed to Bloch "This is gold!"
and wondered aloud why Chayyim Vital's work had never been brought to his
attention in the past. Freud agreed to
write the forward to the book and also agreed to assist in securing its
publication. At this point, Freud informed
Bloch that he too had written a book that was relevant to Judaism, and
hurriedly presented Bloch with the manuscript of what was to become Moses and Monotheism. Freud and
Bloch were meeting in Freud's library,
and Bloch quickly perused Freud's manuscript. The work, however, incensed
Bloch, who, saw that Freud had not
only denied that Moses was Jewish but had placed responsibility for Moses'
death on the Jewish people. Bloch
exclaimed that the Christian world had always blamed the Jews for the death
of their Christ, and now Freud would blame the Jews for the death of their
own liberator, Moses. Freud himself
was deeply angered by Bloch's reaction and left the room, leaving Bloch alone
in Freud's library for a period of time.
During that time Bloch reports that he had nothing to do but to browse
through the books on Freud's shelf, amongst which was a French translation of
the classical Kabbalistic text, the Zohar, as well as several German
language books on Jewish mysticism [1]. What
we might ask, was the gold that Freud had seen in the pages of Bloch's
translation of Chayyim Vital's work?
Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, David Bakan in his own book
on Freud and Jewish mysticism work barely even mentions Vital or Luria. This is the case even though it should be
plain to anyone familiar with the Lurianic Kabbalah that it is a system of
thought which is far more dynamic and, I would daresay, far more
psychoanalytic, than any other aspect
of the Jewish tradition. Chayyim
Vital (1542-1620) was 20 years younger than Isaac Luria and outlived him by
50 years, but during the period of time when the two of them were together in
Safed, Vital acted as Luria's Boswell, taking down his words as if they were
the words of a prophet. Indeed, Luria
was one of the greatest Kabbalistic masters, who taught his mystical and
theosophical doctrine to a few select pupils in one of Judaism’s four holy
cities. Those who have had an
opportunity to visit Safed in modern day Israel cannot fail to be
impressed. Perched above the Galilee
it is a tranquil and remote site of ancient synagogues and mosaics. Luria himself was a poet whose odes to the
Sabbath adorn even today's Jewish
prayer books. On Friday nights he
would lead his followers in spirited song greeting the "Sabbath
Queen" outdoors as the sun set on the horizon of Palestine. Luria's ideas were little known outside orthodox Jewish
circles, however, until Gershom Scholem brought them to the attention of
western intellectuals in the 1930s [3,4,5].
Since that time, Scholem, a number of his students, and others have
catalogued and commented upon the works of Luria's disciples including Vital
[6]. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy
that even Carl Jung
, who himself professed more than a passing interest in the Kabbalah, and
whose works are filled with references to Kabbalistic ideas, only became
aware of the Lurianic Kabbalah in 1954.
Judging from Jung's letters it is fair to say that he himself found
gold in Luria's ideas, commenting in particular that he was impressed by
Luria's notion that it is man's divinely appointed task to help restore the
broken vessels of a shattered cosmos [7].
Several years later Jung commented that "a full understanding of
the Jewish origins of psychoanalysis would carry us beyond Jewish Orthodoxy
into the subterranean workings of Hasidism and then into the intricacies of
the Kabbalah which still remain unexplored psychologically" [8]. The
Lurianic Kabbalah is a relatively late development in Jewish mysticism. The locus
classicus of the Kabbalah, is, of course, the Zohar which contemporary scholars date to the 13th century but
which Jewish Orthodoxy insists goes back to the 2nd century and was authored
by the rabbinic sage, Simeon Bar Yohai
[9]. Many of the ideas in the Lurianic
Kabbalah are dynamic developments of concepts and symbols that appear in the Zohar. One can also find many ancient Gnostic themes reappearing
suddenly in the Lurianists, and the study of both Christian and Jewish
Gnostic sources is invaluable as a background to the ideas of the Kabbalah
[10,11,12] (see Gnosticism). Lurianic ideas are also prominent in the
17th century messianic movement surrounding Sabbatei Zevi in Poland [5]. They are also to be found amongst the
Lubavitch Hasidim, whose psychological interpretation of the Kabbalah is
invaluable for our own contemporary understanding of this tradition
[13]. Those who wish to pursue a study
of the Kabbalah are referred to the valuable works by Gershom Scholem and
Isaiah Tishby[4,5,6,9]. The latter's
recent compilation and translation of
the Zohar is unparalleled,
finally making this work truly accessible to the English speaking public.
Unfortunately, none of the works of Chayyim Vital have as yet been translated
into English. His Sefer Etz Chayyim is extremely rewarding in the original but
requires a knowledge not only of Hebrew but also a familiarity with the
specialized Kabbalistic terminology [2].
There is also a Christian Kabbalah, which is detailed in English in
the esoteric Holy Kabbalah of Waite
[14] and which, in the Latin writings of Knorr Von Rosenroth, was heavily
relied upon by Jung in his interpretation of alchemy [15,16]. The Kabbalah also echoes and is echoed by
many of the themes in Platonism and Neoplatonism, Christian mysticism,
German Idealism (particularly Hegel); and, interestingly, both in Hindu and
Buddhist thought (see Indian Philosophy). A full contemporary understanding of the Kabbalah would indeed
take into consideration these and many
other mystical, theological and philosophical movements. The Kabbalah is also, as I have intimated,
a subtext to Jung's prolific work on alchemy.
This is because the alchemists themselves were greatly influenced by,
and implemented, Kabbalistic ideas in their work. Indeed it can be argued that Jung's spiritual
and psychological reinterpretation of alchemy is nothing more than a return
to alchemy's Kabbalistic roots. There
have, of course, been numerous works which treat of the presumed Jewish
pedigree to psychoanalysis [1,17,18].
With the exception of Bakan none of them deal specifically with Jewish mysticism and most understand Freud's
Judaism as a kind of general impetus to his work in psychoanalysis. Rice, for example, has argued that the
social position of the Jew as an outsider enabled Freud to make a
breakthrough in an otherwise conservative scientific climate [17]. Gay, in his book Freud: A Godless Jew, argues that it was not Freud's Judaism but
rather his godlessness, his atheism, which enabled him to make the
discoveries leading to psychoanalysis [18].
Gay comments that all of the comparisons between, for example, the
methods of dream interpretation in the Talmud and psychoanalysis are
superficial and coincidental, and that there is no real theoretical thread
that can link psychoanalysis with any specific Jewish or other religious
phenomenon. I am, unlike Bakan, not of
the firm opinion that Freud consciously or unconsciously borrowed Kabbalistic
or Jewish themes in creating psychoanalysis; this may or may not be the
case. What is more interesting,
however, is the light that can be shed both on psychoanalysis and Jewish
mysticism through a dialog between them.
It is nevertheless significant that Gay, neither in his work on
Freud's Judaism nor in his major biography of Freud [19], takes any
cognizance of the Lurianic Kabbalah and its potential relevance to
psychoanalytic thought. The same is true for each of the other authors who
have written about the impact of Judaism on psychoanalysis. However, if there is a specific convincing
relationship between Jewish mysticism and psychoanalysis it is to be found in
the work of Luria and Vital, the very
work which Freud himself presumably declared to be gold. The
Lurianic Metaphors The Lurianic Kabbalah
is extremely complex. However, in
basic outline it can be understood as a grand myth or metaphor about the
origin and destiny of the universe [20,21].
According to Luria the creation of the universe is the manifestation
of a cosmic drama involving the emanation, channeling, structuring, and containment
of God's infinite energy or light.
This light is referred to as Or Ein-sof, and is conceived of by Luria in sexual
terms, as divine sexual energy.
According to Luria, the original creation process, involved a
contraction, withdrawal and concealment of God's infinite presence. This act
is known in the Lurianic Kabbalah as Tzimtzum, a notion which expresses the
view that creation is essentially a negative, rather than a positive
act. The tzimtzum resulted in a void within which a finite world could be
created. The initial act of creation involved a process which might be
described as being analogous to the creation of a detailed scene by
interposing obstructions (e.g. a series of "negatives" in an
otherwise uniform plenum of light. In
this manner, God is said to have emanated a series of ten archetypal
structures known as the Sefirot which are understood as
crystallized representations of God's intellectual, spiritual and emotional
characteristics. These
structures were meant to become vessels for the further emanation of God's
creative energy. But because they were
disjoint, they were not strong enough to contain the light of the Infinite
and a majority of them shattered, causing a portion of the Infinite’s light
to cling to and become entrapped within the broken shards which were then
dispersed throughout the world. The
resulting pieces, known in Hebrew as Kellipot
(nutshells or husks) become in the Lurianic system the
metaphysical source of all that is dark, negative, alienated and evil. These kellipot
are said to have exiled a portion of God's infinite light from its source
and to have thus given rise to an alienated, evil realm, the sitra achra, what the Kabbalists call
"the forces of the other side."
At the same time, the breaking of the vessels resulted in a disruption
of the flow of divine procreative energy throughout the cosmos, and,
particularly, in a disturbance in the normal conjugal relations between the
masculine and feminine aspects of the godhead. As a result, much of the divine sexual
energy was entrapped in the “husks” of the “other side”. It is mankind's divinely appointed task,
through proper ethical, spiritual and psychological conduct to discover the kellipot as they manifest themselves
in our world, and to free or raise the
sparks of light within them (known in Hebrew as netzotzim), in order that they
may return to their proper place as forces serving the divine
will. In so doing, mankind is said to
liberate the “feminine waters” necessary for the renewed sexual union within
God. The act of liberating the divine
light or energy and restoring it to the service of the infinite God is known
in the Lurianic literature as Tikkun ha-Olam , the restoration of the
world. On a personal level, each
individual is enjoined to liberate the sparks within his own soul in order
that he may ultimately achieve his personal restoration and divine destiny. The
Kabbalists themselves recognize this cosmic drama, to be a metaphor for
deeper theological and also psychological events, and if we examine this
metaphor from a contemporary psychological perspective we discover it to be
strikingly psychoanalytic in nature.
Indeed, the metaphors of psychoanalysis and the Kabbalah are so
similar that if it were not for the fact that the Lurianic Kabbalah antedated
Freud by 300 years we would be tempted to call the entire scheme a
"psychoanalysis of God". Luria
and Freud According
to Freud ,
the development of the individual involves the channeling of procreative
energy, which is itself modified into structures, the ego and superego, whose
function it is to channel and modulate further emanations of the individual's libido, much as the sefirot were designed as vessels for
channeling the light and energy of God's light, energy and will. For reasons which are inherent in the
structure of the conflict between instinct and culture these structures (the
ego and the superego) are not consistently able to maintain and modulate the
libidinous energy in ways that are most adaptive to the individual. There is, one might say, a partial
shattering of each of these structures, which results in a splitting off or
alienation of ideas and emotions from the main fabric of the individual's
personality, just as, in the Lurianic system, divine sparks are
separated or exiled from their main source in God. This psychological splitting of f
occurs, for example, when the
individual becomes aware of an impulse, thought, or desire which his
conscious self finds unacceptable. The
impulse or idea, and its associated affect, is repressed and subsequently
exists in a nether psychological realm known as the unconscious, which is
quite analogous to Luria's sitra achra or
"other side". Once in the
unconscious these complexes of thought and affect, which are akin to the
Kabbalist's kellipot, are
inaccessible to the individual. They
are, in a sense, exiled psychosexual energy which becomes a source of all
manner and variety of psychological mischief which the individual experiences
as depression or other neurotic symptoms, in the same way as the kellipot entrap the divine sexuality
and become the source of negativity and evil on a cosmic level. The job of the analyst is to make these
unconscious complexes conscious and,
more importantly, to free the libidinal energy attached to them so
that it can again be made available to the individual for his life goals; just as in Kabbalah the energy trapped in
the sitra achra must be freed and
made available for the service of God.
From a kabbalistic perspective, the psychoanalytic endeavor is itself
a form of tikkun or restoration,
which brings an end to a galut or
exile of aspects of the individual's personality, and ushers in a geulah or psychological redemption. Philosophy,
Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis We
might be tempted, at this juncture, to look upon the Lurianic Kabbalah in the
same way that Jung looked upon alchemy, that is, as a dimly understood projection
of the Kabbalists' own psychological processes onto the cosmos as a
whole. Indeed, the Hasidim understood
the Lurianic Kabbalah in essentially this way. On their view the human mind, the
microcosm, perfectly mirrors the divine mind or macrocosm, and the events
which the Kabbalah had described as cosmic events were understood by the
Hasidim as transpiring within the individual's own psyche or soul. While I believe that this is a fruitful
approach, it is not the only one, and a reverse perspective,
one which raises the application of psychoanalytic concepts to the cosmos as
a whole, may be fruitful as well. Such
a perspective will be attractive to those who refuse to draw sharp
distinctions between psychology, philosophy, and theology, and who hold, as
did the Kabbalists, that our deepest
psychological insights can also satisfy many of our philosophical and
theological urgings as well. My
experience is that many individuals who are attracted to psychoanalysis (as
opposed, for example, to behavioral or cognitive psychology) hold just such a
view, and, in spite of Freud's well known disavowal, regard psychoanalysis as
a weltanschauung with profound
cultural, political, and philosophical significance.
In this regard, it may be worth our while to
compare our own intellectual situation with that of the 19th century in
Germany, in the years, immediately prior to the advent of
psychoanalysis. At that time, German
philosophy had been dominated by the philosophical perspectives of Kant and
Hegel. Kant had attempted to answer
philosophical skepticism through a constructivist doctrine in which certain
presumably universal categories such as space, time and causality were
understood as invariant properties of the human mind, but completely inapplicable
to the noumenal realm or the
"things in themselves".
Hegel had turned Kant on his head, arguing that the very categories of
the human mind which Kant had held to be solely applicable to appearances
were indeed applicable to the real world. Through an understanding of the
dynamic or dialectical relationship amongst these categories, Hegel sought to obtain a synoptic view of
the nature, origins and destiny of the cosmos as a whole. Hegel argued that it made no sense to
confine the Kantian categories to the psychology of man. Any talk about "things in
themselves" which lay behind or which cause our psychological experience, is itself conditioned by that
experience, and it simply makes no sense to speak of such a presumably
unknowable realm at all. If we examine the psychologies of both Freud
and Jung we discover that both take up a position which is very similar to
Kant's, but whereas Kant regarded the categories of the conscious mind as the vehicles through which we construct our
world, Freud and Jung argued that such
construction is at least in part the result of unconscious mental activities, activities like displacement,
condensation, projection, repression and symbolization (and the work of the archetypes in the case
of Jung). I would argue that the
psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung has yet to find its 20th or 21st century
version of Hegel, one who would systematically draw the full philosophical
and theological implications of the theory of the unconscious, and who would
acknowledge what Hegel, if he were alive today, would have readily seen, but
which Freud and Jung refused to consider, that the experience of a God
archetype, for example, is all we can ever mean with the word
"God", and that the depths of our own souls are the only
conceivable windows we have into the depths of the world. Psychoanalysis strikes us as deep and
profound precisely because its categories grant us insight not only into
personal minds but (as the Kabbalists,
in speaking of analogous ideas, intimated) into the nature of the cosmos as a
whole. As James Hillman has affirmed,
when we do psychoanalytic work we are not simply talking about 'you and I'
but have an opportunity to enter into the soul of the world as well [22,23]. As psychotherapists I believe we can find
something of considerable psychological interest in each of the Kabbalistic
symbols, in each phase of their mythical account of the origin and destiny of
the world. Consider, for example, the kabbalistic theme of exile and
redemption, a theme which is not only prominent throughout Jewish history but
which appears to be universal in our own time. That man is somehow exiled from himself is
an assumption which not only pervades psychoanalytic interpretations of
contemporary man but also existentialist and Marxist interpretations as
well. That Freud himself identified
with the Jewish theme of exile and redemption is made clear by his
long-standing preoccupation with the liberator of the Jewish people, Moses. That analysis offers deliverance from man's
self-alienated condition has led some to regard psychoanalysis as a
redemptive movement in the tradition of Judaism [17]. Or consider Ein-sof, the Kabbalist’s term for the
infinite unknowable God, the source of all energy, will and interest. Ein
-sof has its analog in the notion of a primal unknowable unconscious,
what Jacques Lacan sometimes refers to as "Little a," that
primitive scintilla of desire which exists outside of the symbolic order and
about which we therefore cannot speak.
Tzimtzum, the withdrawal
concealment and contraction, by which the Infinite is said by the Kabbalists
to have created the world, has many psychological ramifications which I will
discuss momentarily. The same, we
shall see, can readily be said about the sefirot,
the structures, dimensions or archetypes which are the building blocks of the
cosmos and human personality, the shevirat-hakelim,
the breaking of the vessels, or the necessary destructive process which is
part of all creativity, and tikkun
ha-olam, the process by which man raises the sparks of divine light which
have been trapped in the "other side." Tzimtzum:
"Contraction and Concealment" We
can begin with the Lurianic notion of tzimtzum. This idea, which is unique in the
history of religion and philosophy, involves the notion that creation is
essentially a negative as opposed to a positive act. The Infinite God must
withdraw, conceal, contract himself and, in effect, get himself out of the way in order to create, and
ultimately reach out to a world.
Without getting into the logical details of this doctrine I should
note that the Kabbalists speak as if the very act of contraction involved in
the tzimtzum is enough to allow a
world (and particularly a Primordial Man, who embodies all of the
characteristics of the universe) to emerge.
The Hasidim interpreted this doctrine psychologically in their
admonition that in relating to others,
in particular our children, we must emulate the Infinite God and
perform an act of tzimtzum whereby
our own thoughts and desires, are contracted and concealed so that the other
may emerge in his or her own individuality.
Rotenberg, has created an entire social psychology based on the notion
of tzimtzum, arguing that mutual
I-Thou relationships and communal institutions must be based upon mutual
contraction rather than the assertion which is taught by contemporary
psychology [24]. I have often found
that the most difficult task for a new psychotherapist is that of getting him
or herself out of the way in order that the patient may emerge as an
individual in his own right. Indeed,
the psychotherapeutic relationship may be the one relationship in which
patients can experience an other who is not asserting his or her will over
against the patient's own. If this can
truly be achieved, then perhaps the patient can emerge spontaneously in his
or her own full being in much the same way as the Lurianic Kabbalists held
that the Primordial Man emerged spontaneously with the tzimtzum or contraction and concealment of God. This is an attitude, it should be noted,
which is even more difficult to take with respect to our own children, who we
may be inclined to see as a narcissistic extension of ourselves. Yet it is only through an act of
contraction in which we overcome our own narcissism that we are able to see
either our patients or children in the context of their own desire. How is such an act of tzimtzum with respect to our patients, our children and others
possible? I do not have an easy answer
to this question. but a few words and metaphors come to mind. Amongst these are becoming transparent as opposed opaque, naive instead of knowledgeable, and
perhaps even foolish instead of wise. I think that those of us who are unable to
allow ourselves to be fooled, manipulated or completely baffled by our
patients have not reached the requisite state of humility to conduct
meaningful psychotherapy. It is, I believe, also of interest that in the
writings of Chayyim Vital, we learn that before God could contract Himself
away from a point He first had to concentrate all of his energies upon
it. This provides us with the insight
that the very process of “contracting” with respect to our patients is not
simply one of ignoring them or leaving
them to their own devices, but rather involves an intense focus and interest
upon them, and at the same time a restraint or withdrawal which allows them
to emerge as themselves. None
of this is to say that there is no place for assertion, wisdom and knowledge,
on the part of the therapist. The
Lurianic Kabbalists recognized that the negative act of tzimtzum must be followed by a positive act of hitpashut or emanation, and that the
relationship between God and the world, or between man and man, is an ebb and
flow of contraction and expansion, withdrawal and assertion, retreat and
encounter. In psychotherapy, however,
there must first be a getting out of the patient's way before one can achieve
the requisite understanding to make a useful interpretation. When the
analytic hour is filled with the patient and his or her desire as opposed to
the therapist's, then what, if
anything, must be said will become quite evident, for the therapist will have
succeeded in identifying himself as completely as possible with the feelings,
thoughts and situation of the analysand.
I believe that it is just such a contracted, naive kind of listening
that enables a Hasidic rebbe to give
such profound advice to his Hasidim, for such advice turns out to be simply a
tracking or reflection of the Hasid’s own desire. An
act of tzimtzum is also required on
the part of the analysand. The
patient, in regressing to critical moments in his early life, by becoming
absorbed in the world of his fantasies and dreams, and by taking a curious
and naive interest in his own mental productions, performs an act of
contraction or withdrawal with respect to his own ego or self. The dream is of particular interest in this
regard. The Kabbalah (like the
Vedanta) regarded the whole of creation as akin to a dream in the infinite
mind of the Absolute. In withdrawing
himself from himself and (what amounts to the same thing) by concealing
himself from his own reality, the infinite God creates an illusion of
finitude and multiplicity which is our world.
Interestingly, this illusion is for the Kabbalists the very perfection
and completion of the deity himself,
for without man existing in a finite world, God would have no capacity
to see or comprehend himself or to instantiate the values which are implicit
in his infinite goodness. We each perform an act of tzimtzum and, in effect, play God to
dream worlds of our own creation each night.
In dreaming we perform an act of contraction whereby we withdraw or
remove our cathexis from the world and substitute a new world or reality in
the dream. But, paradoxically, just as
the world is said to complete God, our dreams can be said to complete
ourselves, for it is only through our dreams and fantasies that we can
achieve a perspicacious notion of who we really are. Jung who was far more theologically
inclined than Freud, viewed the dream as our portal into "heaven",
for in the dream we gain access to the archetypes which, according to Jung,
are the psychological foundation for what were traditionally spoken of as the
gods. As
I have already mentioned, the word tzimtzum has a connotation of
concealment as well as contraction, and it is this connotation which is of
particular relevance to an aspect of human creativity which has been much
discussed in psychoanalysis: the
origin of personality or character.. We might say that an act of tzimtzum or concealment lies at the
very core of our character, for it is only through concealment and it's
variants, i.e.: denial, repression, symbolization, displacement,
condensation, etc. that a division is set up between the conscious and the
unconscious mind and our personalities are born. As we know, it is the unconscious mind
which adds depth and flavor to life, and is essential to the formation of an
individual's character. Just as God,
according to the Kabbalists, creates a world through an act of concealment
(if you will a cosmic repression) man creates his own character, and, as
Freud understood it, his culture, through an earthly concealment: the repressions of everyday life. We can see a Hegelian dialectic at work on
both the theological and psychological levels, for in both instances we find
that reality gives rise to illusions which are in turn productive of the very
realities which gave rise to them. The
"illusion" of a finite world is theologically the perfection and
completion of God, and the "illusion" of a world of fantasies and
dreams is the ground and the depths of the reality of man. This, by
the way, is a wonderful example of the Kabbalistic notion of coincidentia oppositorum, the
principle that profound opposites compliment and complete each other. It also illustrates the Kabbalistic (and
psychoanalytic) principle that the unknown (or unconscious) is not simply the
result of repression, but lies at the core of man's very being. There
is one more clinical theme that I would like to pursue with respect to the
concept of tzimtzum, and this relates to the problem of getting
ourselves and even our psychologies out of the way so that we as individuals
can make room for an external world.
Since the time of Copernicus man has become decentered within the
physical universe while at the same time becoming far more essential in the
spiritual world. Man has become
spiritually central to such a degree that he himself has become completely
coextensive with "soul"[23, p. 100]. The world itself has lost its soul and the
hermeneutic method which was once used to find spiritual meaning in nature
and cosmos has now been confined to the study of man. Indeed, one of Freud's greatest
innovations, perhaps his greatest, was that at a time when Darwin had
subjected an aspect of the world (the origin and nature of biological
species) which had once been understood hermeneutically, to the methods of
natural science, Freud subjected a
phenomenon (neurosis and psychopathology), which in his day had been
understood scientifically, to the methods of textual interpretation, the very
methods, by the way, which formed the basis of the Jewish intellectual
tradition. However, a consequence of
these Darwinian and Freudian developments has been a further bifurcation
between man and the world, between the humanities and the natural sciences;
to the point where the soul has been taken out of the world and confined to
man.
James Hillman, has spent the past 30 years bemoaning this occurrence,
urging us to regard the world itself as well as our own productions in art,
language, and science as filled with soul and spirit [22,23]. We have boxed ourselves into such a corner
that the psyche is confined to ourselves and our relationships, and we are no
longer as capable as previous generations of sensing the great depth and soul
in the world at large. Indeed, our
generation is one in which to be deep means to turn inward toward the self,
and to be involved in such matters as politics, science or the natural world
is deemed psychologically uninteresting.
Many of the most creative minds of our own generation have spent the
better part of their lives in self absorption on the analytic couch or in
other primarily psychological activities.
As such, we are in a position that is in some ways analogous to that
of God before creation: we are
narcissistically preoccupied and unable to get ourselves out of the way so
that we may genuinely encounter an
ensouled world. Perhaps another human act of contraction or tzimtzum is necessary at this stage to
recognize that the hermeneutic categories which we have eagerly applied in
psychoanalysis to ourselves are relevant to the world at large, and that
there is as much psyche and depth in that world as there is within our own
souls. When patients take a genuinely
deep and abiding interest in the world around
them and turn away from their own inner preoccupations I consider this
a most hopeful sign. While such an
interest can, on occasion, be a sign of resistance, it is very frequently
also a sign that the patient has contracted himself, that, he has gotten
himself out of the way to such an extent that he has permitted a world to
emerge outside the confines of his own psyche. Achieving this might be
considered a wonderful act of imitatio
dei, and when it occurs the
Kabbalists would find it as a warrant for the assertion that man was created
in the image of God. One
more word on the function of the world in both the Kabbalah and in
psychoanalysis. We know that according
to Freud, each of us has a thanatic urge
to return to the complete state of entropy, disorganization, or nothingness
from which we arose. This is what I
have elsewhere referred to as Freud's negative mysticism: a mysticism in which the goal, instead of
being a union with the one resplendent God, is dissolution or death
[25]. According to Freud, our
attachment to the objects of the world prevents us from acting out on our thanatic urges. A similar theory is found in the Baal Shem
Tov, the founder of Hasidism, who held that our interest in the objects of
the material world is the one thing that prevents our soul from prematurely
returning to its origins in God. I
would say then that for both Freud and the Baal Shem that the world is a good
thing, for Freud because it forestalls our entry into nothingness, and for
the Baal Shem Tov because it prevents
a premature unio mystico
that would prevent us from accomplishing our work on earth. The world is also, according to the
Kabbalists, in spite of its immense challenges, evils, and hardships, or (to
be more precise) because of them,
the perfect setting in which man can assume his life task. What this task is, I will discuss later, when we turn to the
concept of tikkun haolam. The
Sefirot Sefirah and its plural form sefirot have no clear linguistic
derivation. The term has been
variously interpreted as relating to Hebrew words meaning luminary,
brilliance or sapphire, number, scribe and book (the Hebrew word for which is
sefer) and each of these proposed
derivations can provide us with some insight into the nature of the sefirot symbol. The Kabbalists indeed describe the sefirot as luminaries, dimensions,
numbers or archetypes with which God has created or written the world. The sefirot are ten in number, and even
their names (e.g. wisdom, kindness, beauty) suggest that they represent
values, archetypes or dimensions of both the human soul and (according to the
Kabbalists) the world. As we have seen,
it is a fundamental tenet of Kabbalistic thought that the microcosm mirrors
the macro-cosm, that the elements of
the soul of man mirror the ultimate constituents of God and the
universe. As we have already seen,
these elements or sefirot are in a
sense illusory in nature, having been brought into existence by the tzimtzum or concealment of the
infinite unity of God, in much the same way as a multiplicity of mathematical
equivalencies can appear to have a separate existence as a result of our
ignorance of the fact that they are all, for example, equal to the number
one. The
sefirot refer to such dimensions of
existence as the ultimate will, ideal wisdom, and deepest understanding, as
well as, love, power, and judgment, beauty and compassion, endurance,
majesty, foundation, and kingship.
These dimensions have been interpreted by the Kabbalists as
instantiating the spiritual, psychological, and material dimensions of the
known world. Beyond the four
dimensions of space and time which are recognized by contemporary physics,
the Kabbalists recognize six value and ideational dimensions which
characterize an object's spiritual, conceptual, psychological, and physical
properties. Moses Cordovero, a
kabbalist who was a contemporary of Luria's in Safed, understood the sefirot as the constituent elements
or "molecules" of the objects in the world, and held that each
thing obtained its specific character through the relative admixture and
dominance of sefirot which comprised it.
The Kabbalists also held that the
sefirot were organized into worlds, some of which (being spiritual) were
dominated by such sefirot as will
and wisdom while others (being more material) were dominated by less exalted sefiriotic archetypes. An interesting and important aspect of the sefirot doctrine is the existence of
the so-called ten negative crowns or "counter sefirot ", which are said to exist in an infernal realm,
providing an evil or negative counterpart to the sefirot which dominate
the upper worlds. According to the
Kabbalists man must pay his due to the world of the counter sefirot as well as to the upper
realms. If he fails to recognize the
negative forms of will, wisdom, strength and kindness within himself, he runs
the risk of being dominated by these same forces emerging from the "other
side". An
entire psychology can be developed on the basis of the sefirot doctrine. Not only
can the sefirot be put to
fascinating use in the understanding of character, but the kabbalistic
doctrine of "Worlds" can be utilized in understanding such
phenomenon as higher and lower states of consciousness and dreams. Freud himself well understood that a dream,
after all, brings us into a realm which is dominated by dimensions of will
and desire, and in which the material aspects of things are subordinated to
desires and ideas. Such a realm corresponds very closely to some of the
alternative worlds spoken of in the Kabbalah.
Several
other aspects of the sefirot
symbolism are striking from a psychoanalytic point of view. For example, the sefirot are organized in the Zohar
into a series of parent and child personalities whose dynamic interactions
and family romance are strikingly premonitory of the Oedipus and Elektra
complexes. The Zohar describes how the "celestial father" has a
particular fondness for his daughter which stirs the jealousy of the
"celestial mother". In his
love, the Zohar relates, he calls
her daughter, but this is not enough for him and he calls her sister. This too is not enough for him and he calls
her mother. An enraged supernal mother
says to her daughter, "is it a small matter that you have taken away my
husband, for all his love is centered on you?" But at the same time the mother is said to
favor the son over her husband [9, Vol. 1, p. 299], thus, completing a sort of cosmic Oedipal
triangle; a vision of the universe in which the world itself is conditioned
by archetypical interest and desire, the very desire which contemporary
psychoanalysts have discerned in the psychology of individual man and at the
foundation of human society. There
is also a decidedly sexual connotation
to the sefirot. The sefirot
are spoken of in metaphors of sexual intercourse and love, and the Kabbalists
affirmed that the harmony of all the worlds is dependent upon a sexual
arousal and unification which occurs between the celestial beings (partzufim) which emerge as elements of the sefirotic system. Of course, the division of the godhead into a
multiplicity of sefirot and further
into several partzufim or
personalities is, according to the Kabbalists, one of those paradoxically
necessary real illusions, and the
division amongst these entities and personas is a state of affairs which must
ultimately be overcome. The unification of the sefirot is spoken of as zivvug
or copulation between male and female aspects of the godhead, and in
order for an appropriate unification to take place mutual male and female
orgasms are deemed necessary. The
"male waters" are derived from the grace of the heavens above, but,
as we have seen, the "female
waters" are to be supplied by mankind itself, who is often identified in
the Kabbalah with the feminine aspect of the deity. While the Kabbalists warned against taking
these sexual metaphors literally, it
is clear that theirs is a highly eroticized universe, the dynamics of which
are most perfectly expressed in the unification of man and woman in erotic
love. That such erotic love is important for the psychological unity of
individual man and woman is a plain inference from the Kabbalist’s
cosmological theories. A Jungian, of
course, is entitled to take the entire scheme of multiple personalities
(male, female, young, old etc.) within the godhead as symbolic of the
inherent multiplicity within the personality of man, and their various
"unifications" as representing the dialectic between
"animus" and "anima", and "senex" and
"puer" within man's psyche. The sefirot are ways in which we as
individuals structure our lives and cope with the psychological energy
radiating from our own psychic core.
The Kabbalists adopted a view in which the perfection of each
individual soul involves the full recognition and development of each of
seven sefirot, which they regarded
to be the seven basic emotions of the human psyche. Each of these "emotional sefirot" is said to be comprised
of both itself and each of the other six so that a scheme is developed in
which there exists, for example, the love of love, the strength of love, the
beauty of love, the endurance of love, etc.
All forty-nine combinations are necessary in order to achieve the full
human potential. There is also a dialectical relationship amongst a number of
the sefirot. One such relationship, in particular, that between Chesed (love or kindness) and
Din (strength or judgment),
forms a critical moment in kabbalistic psychology. It is only when love is modified by
judgment, and judgment modified by love, resulting in the sefirot Rachamim
(compassion), that the human soul can be said to be complete. Indeed, it is a severing of judgment from love
which is said to give rise to the "other side" and the infernal
realm of the kellipot; this
providing an analogy to the Freudian notion that repression and neurosis
results when the harsh judgments of the super ego are unmodified by erotic or
compassionate trends within the personality. Psychotherapeutically, the
Kabbalists, and particularly the Hasidim who succeeded them, sought to obtain
a balance between kindness and judgment, such that neither dominates and
overwhelms the psyche. This balance is
expressed in the sefirah Rachamim, which
connotes "compassion". Those
who are familiar with the Yiddish word rachmones
will understand that it is precisely
the deeply felt empathy and compassion expressed by this term which is
critical to the psychotherapeutic attitude. I
should note, if only in passing, that the Hasidim developed a sefirotic psychology which antedates
Freud by more than 150 years, but which anticipates many of the elements of
psychoanalysis, including the view that the psychology of the average man is
characterized by extreme inner conflict, that such conflict can be partially
ameliorated only through the sublimation of emotions in creative activity,
and that one can only ascend psychologically by first descending into the
rejected aspects of one's soul [25].
The psychological theories of the Lubavitcher or Chabad Hasidim, who
take their name from the first three spiritual and intellectual sefirot Chochmah, Binah, and Da'at,
(knowledge, wisdom and understanding) is a subject of considerable interest
in itself, one, by the way, which can be studied in vivo even today in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn where
the Lubavitcher Hasidim have their world headquarters. I think it is fair to say that these and
other contemporary Hasidim are in some ways a living representative of the
Kabbalah. The
"Breaking of the Vessels" The
sefirot, we should recall, are
spoken of by the Kabbalists as kelim
or vessels which are designed to structure the light or energy of the
Infinite God. Interestingly, these
vessels are composed of the very energy which they are meant to contain. However, as a result of their
disunification, of their failure to allow their energy to pass freely between
them, the sefirot were unable to
contain the immensity of the "cosmic libido." As a result many of the sefirot, shattered, resulting in the
metaphysical and psychological event known in the Lurianic writings as the shevirat hakelim, the breaking of the
vessels. With the advent of the shevirah,
or “breakage” the harmony of the cosmos is destroyed. According to Vital, as a result of the
breaking of the vessels the “Celestial Mother and Father”, who had hitherto
existed “face to face” in coniunctio, turn
their backs on each other and the
divine energy, embodied in the sefirot,
becomes entrapped in “the other side” [2,21]. The
"shevirah" is regarded as
an event which occurs in every sphere of human and cosmic activity and which
inevitably repeats itself in each historical age and in the life of each
individual. The breaking of the
vessels is perhaps the most important Lurianic symbol. It is a second symbol of negation (tzimtzum being the first) and it
teaches us that there is a destructive aspect to all creativity. Old structures must, in effect, be
shattered before new ones can be reorganized to transcend them. This principle holds true for the history
and development of nations, for transitions in the history of science and
ideas, for the ontogenetic development of human cognitive capacities, and,
most significantly for our purposes,
for the personal growth of the men and women who we psychotherapists
encounter in the consulting room. The
cognitive, ethical and spiritual structures which contained our own psychic
energies at age 19 or 21 may be totally insufficient to contain them at 25 or
30 and those same containers which worked well for us in our 30s may not work
well at all in the 40s, 50s and
beyond. While many will be able to
make gradual modifications in their personal sefirot, others will
experience what can only be described as a tectonic upheaval in their lives
when old forms of thinking, feeling, and behaving shatter in the face of new
life experiences. This is not such a
bad thing, and, as James Hillman has
pointed out, as therapists we should not always be in the business of
preventing our patients from falling apart [22]. Sometimes the breaking of the vessels which
occurs in our personal lives is an entree into the deepening of the self and
soul. When the structures shatter, a
bit of genuine desire, or a glimpse of what Winnicott speaks of as the
"true self" is visible through the cracks. Usually, this truth is experienced as a
fall into chaos or the unknown, and it might well be analogized to the terrifying
dark nights of the soul which for ages have been reported by the mystics and
which, on my reading, served as the basis for the initial insights of
psychoanalysis. When such a crack
becomes visible in the personas of our patients, we have an important decision
to make. Do we rush in to close it off
and "heal it", or do we decide to ride out the storm and watch as
elements of our patient's persona fall in pieces before our therapeutic
eyes? What to do in such situations
is, on my view, one of the most difficult decisions a psychotherapist ever has
to make, and it is the mark of a sensitive and wise clinician
that he or she is able to judge when to withdraw and observe and when to
suggest, for example, psychopharmacological treatment in the face an apparent
psychological breakdown. When an individual
experiences the breaking of the vessels, it is, from a psychiatric
perspective, a portent of depression, anxiety, or perhaps psychosis. From a theological perspective, however, it
is akin to a test from the gods. We
must remember that man does not pass all such tests and that sometimes more
than a sure and compassionate hand is
necessary to assist the patient in emerging from the breaking of the vessels
to the next stage, knows as tikkun: repair or restoration. Before
moving on, however, I wish to dwell a
bit more on the theme of disintegration, in psychotherapy. Why, we might ask, should we ever welcome
our patients' falling apart, ever wait
out the storm of their pathology with an anticipation of creativity and
progress coming in its wake? I have a
few thoughts on these questions. The
first of these (which I have already intimated) is that psychopathology is
very often a clue to desire. A man who
finds himself with the impulse to suddenly drive his car into oncoming
traffic, or a woman who suddenly stops acting as a wife and mother and
secludes herself in the corner of a dark room, may each be registering a
protest against a life in which they are not acting from their true desire,
or conversely they may be trying to destroy or incapacitate themselves before
desires which are unacceptable to them have a chance to show their face. Pathology is often an indication of that
kernel of light which is hidden inside the "husk of darkness" (to
use the Lurianic metaphor) and which may not, in fact, become available for
extraction or release, unless the pathology is, so to speak, permitted to run
its course. The "falling
apart" which is pathology can be valuable in other ways as well; it can
serve as a humbling experience, and the means for transcending or
disintegrating our own narcissism. In
breaking up the structures and securities of which we were once so sure,
pathology can also lead to moral development as we take a fresh perspective
on ourselves and our relationships.
Finally, in bringing ourselves face to face with the darkest corners
of our experience we become deeper and more complete as individuals. With Jung,
I cannot help but feel that the man or woman who has come to recognize
the murderer within is somehow more complete as a human being than another
whose murderous impulses are unconsciously manifest in biting sarcasm and
extreme competitiveness. The sefirot have shattered and the broken
shards go hurtling through the cosmic void, trapping sparks of divine light
which attach themselves to the shards like drops of oil that cling to the
pieces of a shattered clay vessel.
These sparks, surrounded by the dead shards, comprise, as we have
seen, what the Kabbalists refer to as the sitra
achra or the "other side."
It is incumbent upon the individual to discover those sparks which are
relevant to his own life, to free the divine light contained within them,
and, in effect to assemble the vessels in a manner which is superior to the
way they were assembled originally by God himself. Theologically speaking, mankind is enjoined
to complete and perfect creation.
Psychologically speaking, the individual is responsible for the
re-formation of his own character, and, particularly, for the transcendence
of the personality formed by his heredity and early life. As James Hillman has pointed out, it is the
"falling apart" of psychopathology which provides the opportunity
for this transcendence. There
is an analogy to the dynamic of the breaking of the vessels in the
psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams.
We have already seen how, in dreaming, the individual performs a
miniature tzimtzum (concealment,
contraction) which enables him or her to withdraw cathexis from the external
world and create a new reality which is dominated by will and desire. The dreamwork furthers this process through
the use of displacement, substitution, condensation and symbolization which
further conceals the inner meaning of the dream from the dreamer. In order for this meaning to be restored
the dream itself must, according to Freud, be broken up into its component
parts and reorganized in a manner which, in effect, recaptures the original
spark of creativity entering into the dream's formation. The kabbalistic process of tikkun might be said to be akin to
this interpretive process, only on a much wider scale. As a result of the cosmic tzimtzum or concealment, the world
itself is a distortion of the original divine light or essence. This cosmic distortion, like the manifest
dream, must itself be broken apart into constituent elements which, having
fallen into a nether world akin to the unconscious, must then be restored by
man through the process of tikkun
in order that he may discover and complete the divine essence or
purpose. This process is perfectly
analogous to the alchemical solve et
coagulum which Jung understood to be the means through which an
individual attains wholeness of self [15].
The alchemists, in their quest to create gold from common substances,
themselves adopted the Kabbalistic concepts of shevirat and tikkun,
holding that base elements must first be dissolved or broken apart before
being reassembled (with the aid of the philosopher's stone) into gold. Tikkun:
The Restoration The
process of tikkun was a continuous
source of fascination for the Kabbalists who created a far ranging set of
symbols to express its essence. We
have already encountered several of these symbols in our discussion of the
raising of the sparks, the unification of the masculine and feminine aspects
of God and the soul, the integration of sefirot,
the modification of judgment by kindness and the consequent emergence of Rachamim or compassion, the
sublimation of instinct into intellectual and spiritual activity, and the
descent into the infernal world of the kellipot
for the purpose of extracting the divine essence and reconciliation with
one's true self. Amongst the other
similes with which the Kabbalists described the process of tikkun are the "discovery of the
roots of one's own soul", "development in the womb of the celestial
mother", and "the reunification of the trees of life and
knowledge". Each of the
Kabbalistic metaphors are extremely suggestive and, looked at from the point
of view of contemporary psychoanalysis,
we can discover amongst these metaphors economic, dynamic, structural,
developmental and even object-relations themes. A
discussion of each of these metaphors is beyond the scope of this essay. However, as an illustration, it may be
worth our while to focus upon one of these metaphors, "the development in
the womb of the celestial mother".
In the Lurianic Kabbalah, several world personalities or partzufim are said to have emerged
spontaneously as a result of the breaking of the vessels. Psychologically, these partzufim can be understood to be distinct personas or aspects of
a fragmented self, such fragmentation being inevitable in the course of human
development. One of these partzufim,
Zeir Anpin the "short faced" or "impatient
one" is, according to the Kabbalists of Safed, connected with the phase
of tikkun which involves the
efforts of mankind. Of interest to us
here is the fact that Zeir Anpin
himself is described as developing within the womb of another of the partzufim, Imma, the celestial
mother. Theologically we have, as
Scholem has pointed out, a myth of God giving birth to himself [3, p. 141]. Psychologically, we have an account of a
self initiated rebirth or personal development. Within the celestial mother, Zeir Anpin, is said to progress
through five distinct stages: conception, pregnancy, birth, childhood and godolot or maturity. This final stage is reflective of mankind's
own intellectual and moral maturity.
Of great significance is the fact that the partzufim Imma, within which
Zeir Anpin's development takes place, is dominated by the sefirah Binah which is representative
of divine understanding. Before the
six emotional sefirot which are embodied in Zeir Anpin can achieve their
tikkun or restoration they must undergo a developmental process whereby they
come under the guidance of a motherly understanding which is internal to God
or, psychologically speaking, internal to the individual. Through such a process of understanding an
individual becomes a mother to
himself, one who empathically understands the various emotional aspects of
his or her personality. By
now it should be evident that for Kabbalists our contemporary distinctions
between such disciplines as psychology, theology, philosophy and even politics make little or no sense. For the Kabbalists a self restorative act
is at the same time a world restorative act,
and the individual who discovers the roots of his own soul also
discovers his purpose in life in the world at large. I think that we as contemporary
psychotherapists would do well to keep this message in mind in our work with
our own patients. One sure sign that
treatment is resolving to good effect is that the patient shows a deep and
abiding interest not only towards others but towards some aspect of the world
at large where he or she feels satisfaction in making a distinctive
contribution. In getting to know and
understand my patients I oftentimes ask myself what sparks are there in the
world that this individual is destined to raise, and by this I mean no more
than "how can this individual actualize his or her unique talents in a
manner which is deeply satisfying to himself and beneficial to
others". The Hasidim affirmed
that there are divine sparks in all things; in the substance of earth, food
and air, the laws of society, the thoughts and emotions of men. A sculptor, for example, by imposing a form
on formless clay or marble, can be said to raise sparks in transforming an
earthly material into a human or
divine symbol. Each of us is
enjoined to a similar task appropriate to our own talents and abilities. In listening empathically to our patient's
passions, desires and all but forgotten aspirations we are in a position to
help them grasp their tikkun and,
by creating an environment in which those aspirations are nurtured, direct
them to those sparks which they themselves can raise. In this regard I take particular interest
in my patient's earliest loves, asking straight out in the beginning of the
therapy if they have ever been in love and listening intently upon the answer. For falling in love is more likely to
emanate from the true self than any other experience or passion; one can
hardly fall in love out of obligation. Once our patients have re-experienced
and genuinely grasped the nature of their love life, they are in a far better
position to enter into the very essence of their desire and the nature of
their tikkun. While this is by no means always true,
there are enough cases in which an individual's rediscovery of a sense of romantic passion ignites him or
her in creative and intellectual pursuits so as to make this avenue a
worthwhile one to explore. In
some ways, the Kabbalists' psychology is perhaps closer to Jung than to
Freud, yet the Kabbalists remain quite Freudian in their energic model of the
psyche, in their emphasis upon sexuality and, their view of the family
romance as an ultimate imperative in the human and cosmic realms. That the kabbalistic psychology is imbedded
within the context of a world view which (though it recognizes the
significance of negative forces and the dissolution of the spirit) affirms
mankind's role as the completer of creation, should only make it that more
attractive to psychotherapists of a humanist and world affirming
outlook. If I have indeed recovered
some of the gold which Freud himself seems to have recognized as being buried
in this age old tradition, then perhaps I myself have raised a spark and
performed a piece of my own tikkun as
well. SUMMARY The author considers the report of a Lithuanian rabbi, Chayyim Bloch,
that Freud exclaimed “This is gold” when presented with a German translation
of one of the works of Chayyim Vital, a 17th century Kabbalist and disciple
of Isaac Luria. The psychological
significance of the Lurianic Kabbalah is explored, and the Kabbalah is shown
to be an important historical antecedent to psychoanalysis, and source for
contemporary psychotherapeutic practice.
Specifically, the Kabbalists, in their theory of the concealment,
shattering, and restoration of the light of the infinite God, provide a
theosophical analog to the psychoanalytic theory of libido, repression, and
therapy. The Kabbalistic symbol of
“the other side” is seen to be a theosophical version of the unconscious. Further,
the notion of tikkun haolom,
the “restoration of the world”, through which divine sexual energy, entrapped
in the “husks” of the other side, is restored to God’s service, is
interpreted as a metaphor for the therapeutic processes of “making the
unconscious conscious” and restoring the libido to the service of the
individual. Finally, the psychotherapeutic implications of
several Lurianic symbols, including Ein-sof (the infinite godhead), tzimtzum (concealment/ contraction),
the sefirot (the archetypes of creation), shevirat hakelim (the breaking of the vessels) and tikkun haolom (the restoration of the world) are
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York: Crossroad, 1987 p. 99-126. 22. Hillman, J. Revisioning Psychology. New York:
Harper & Row, 1976. 23. Hillman, J. A Blue Fire, ed. and introduced by
Thomas Moore. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. 24. Rotenberg, M. Dialogue With Deviance New York: University Press of America, 1993 (originally published 1983). 25. Drob, S. Freud and the Chasidim: Redeeming The Jewish Soul of Psychoanalysis. Jewish Review 3:1, 1989. The Lurianic Kabbalah is treated in detail in Sanford Drob's Symbols of the Kabbalah and Kabbalistic Metaphors . Sanford L. Drob is in the Core
Faculty of the Clinical Psychology doctoral
program at Fielding Graduate University. He is the
author of Symbols of the Kabbalah:
Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, and Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical
Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought (both published by Jason Aronson,
1999). He is currently completing a book on Carl Jung, Jewish Mysticism, and
Anti-Semitism, working on a study on the Kabbalah and Postmodern thought, and
developing a Kabbalistic "Tree of Life," "axiology" or
"firmament of values" (progress on which appaers periodically on
this website). Dr. Drob served as head psychologist on the Bellevue Forensic
Psychiatry Service from 1984-2003 and was for many years the Director of
Psychological Testing at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He is also on
the clinical faculty of New York University Medical School, consults on the
Bellevue Forensic Psychiatry Service and maintains an active practice as a
psychologist a in Brooklyn and Manhattan. He can be reached by email at forensicDX@aol.com or by phone at
718-783-1769. Click here for a description of Brownstone Brooklyn Psychological Services, for which Dr. Drob and his wife, Dr. Liliana Rusansky Drob are co-directors. Click here for Dr. Drob's CV in clinical and forensic psychology. If you entered this site via a search engine, and there are no
"flash contents" on the left hand side of your screen, the site
will function better if you click here and go directly to www.newkabbalah.com and follow the
instructions at the bottom of your screen to either enter the site or load
Flash 4, if you do not already have it. All material on
New Kabbalah website (c) Sanford L. Drob, 2001-4. An
Interview with Sanford Drob on Kabbalah and Psychotherapy. Kabbalah
and Psychotherapy: Dialogue
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