Repentance, Psychotherapy, and Healing Through a Jewish Lens

American Behavioral Scientist

Volumn 41, Issue 6, 1998, Pages 814-833

  Frankel, Estelle ^a  

^a NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0032219965     PISSN: 00027642     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0002764298041006004     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. For a more extensive discussion of collective repentance, see Abraham Isaac Kook. The Lights of Penitence, trans. Ben Zion Bokser (New York: Paulist Press, 1978).
2. One such reference is in the Talmud: “Great is repentance, for on account of an individual who repents, the sins of all the world are forgiven.” (Talmud Yoma 86b).
3. The Jewish notion of a supraconscious soul as the center of the self is fundamentally a different way of viewing psychic structure than that postulated by psychoanalytic theorists. When the longing to be aligned with the God-self is included among the drives and needs of the individual, a different psychic structure constellates-one in which spiritual wholeness may be as motivating a force as emotional needs and drives. For a fuller discussion of this notion, see Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz, “Chassidism and Psychoanalysis,” in The Strife of the Spirit, ed. A. Kurzweil (New Jersey: Jason Aronson, Inc. 1988), 182-91.
4. There are a number of different rabbinic sources that make reference to this idea. In Genesis Raba 1:5 it says: “Great is repentance in that it preceded creation.” Another way to understand this saying is based on the notion that with creation, duality begins. Teshuvah, as the means to return to that state of primal unity that existed prior to creation, was a gift of God's grace to humankind. In this sense, teshuvah can be understood as a perpetual process for the religious person. So long as one exists in the flesh as a separate unique being, teshuvah offers the means by which one can return to one's essential unity with God. See Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz, “Teshuvah,” in Strife of the Spirit, ed. A. Kurzweil (New Jersey: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1988), 98-109.
5. For an in-depth study of the ways in which Freud may have unconsciously drawn on a variety of concepts from the Jewish mystical tradition in his early psychoanalytic formulations, see David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical tradition (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1958).
6. Moses Maimonides, “The Laws of Repentance,” The Book of Knowledge from The Mishneh Torah (Jerusalem: Mossad ha'Rav Kook Publishers, 1976).
7. Pinchas H. Peli, Soloveitchik On Repentance: The Thought and Oral Discourses of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 95.
8. For an in-depth discussion of the role of mourning in psychotherapy, see Peter Shabad “Repetition and Incomplete Mourning: The Intergenerational Transmission of Traumatic Themes,” in Psychoanalytic Psychology 10, no. 1 (1993): 61-75.
9. For a discussion of the role of morality in psychotherapy, see William Doherty, “Bridging Psychotherapy and Moral Responsibility,” in The Responsive Community 5, no. 1 (1994/95); Robert Bellah et al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, Ltd., 1985).
10. Peli, Soloveitchik On Repetance, 95.
11. All quotes from Tzidkat Ha 'tzaddik are based on this author's as yet unpublished translations from the original Hebrew text: Reb Tzaddok Ha'Cohen of Lublin, Tzidkat Ha'tzaddik (Jerusalem: “A” Publishers, 1968).
12. In an article tided “The Halakhic Mind,” Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik speaks of teshuvah as existing within qualitative rather than quantitative time: “Man lives in the shadow of the past, future and present simultaneously…. The future determines the direction and indicates the way….There exists a phenomenon whose beginning is sin and iniquity and whose end is mitzvot and good deeds, and vice versa. The future transforms the trends and tendencies of the past.” See Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind: An Essay on Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought (New York: Seth Press, 1986).
13. For a discussion of the therapeutic use of ritual, see Estelle Frankel, “Creative Ritual: Adapting Rites of Passage to Psychotherapy for Times of Major Life Transition” (Master's thesis, California State University, Hayward, 1982).
14. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, The Lights of Penitence, trans. Ben Zion Bokser (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), chap. 12.
15. The expression, “Every Israelite is responsible for [connected with] every other Israelite,” is found in numerous sources, including Talmud Shavuot 39, Talmud Sota 37, and Talmud Rosh Hashana 29.