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Email Dr. Sanford Drob forensicDX@aol.com |
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Click here for An Interview with Sanford Drob on Kabbalah and
Psychotherapy. Email inquiries with my response are subject to editing. I will not post your comments if you do not want me to, so if you are not willing to have your inquiry or comments posted please let me know. Please feel free to continue this dialog by writing Dr. Drob at forensicdx@aol.com. Please note that earlier dialogs are
posted first in this section. 10-03 Tom Shmuel
Rooth and Clinical
Applications of the Kabbalah The following is an edited version of a brief exchange on
the subject of Kabbalah and psychotherapy. Anyone is welcome to join in this
dialogue by contacting S. Drob at forensicdx@aol.com I am beginning graduate studies at the 10/13 From: S. Drob As for clinical applications of Kabbalistic ideas, if you
have not done so already you might want to read my article "This Is
Gold, Freud, Psychotherapy and the Lurianic Kabbalah” which is in the
"articles" link of my New Kabbalah website. I have not seen
much on Kabbalistic psychotherapy (you may want to check out books by Edward
Hoffman) but judging from emails I have received there seems to be a
growing interest in this area among current graduate students in psychology.
I have also heard from people who are interested in the interface between Jewish
mysticism and such figures as Bion and Lacan. I am now completing a
book on Jung and Jewish Mysticism, which is more theoretical than clinical in
nature. [Note
I want to thank you for so graciously taking the time to
respond to me, and for the insights and information you provided to me both
personally and on your website. I just
completed my paper on “The Clinical Kabbalah,”…I use your email as a basis
for proffering that while Kabbalah provides a sound philosophical and
theological foundation for a therapist, to compel a client to learn Kabbalah
as part of receiving therapy may not be in the client’s best interests. Nonetheless, at this time I remain
interested in creating a clinical Kabbalah, and finding ways in which its
principles may apply to a therapeutic setting, certainly from the perspective
of the therapist’s attitudes, and perhaps as a means of methodology with
clients. I’m just a beginner; I have
plenty to figure out, yet. One thing I
have figured out already is that not many people have written about using
Kabbalah as a template for therapeutic practice. I love Symbols of the Kabbalah. I have not had time to sit down and read it
from introduction to conclusion, and admit to using it as a reference when I
wrote my paper, but find it to be one of the more clearly written pieces I’ve
read. The parts I read, plus your
website writings, greatly interest me.
I look forward to reading more about Jung. You asked me to update you on anything interesting that I
encountered in this process, and I believe I have, although it may be old hat
to you. I think that the sefirot offer ways to frame or reframe
pertinent questions to clients, so that a therapist can avoid negative
connotations when asking a client to clarifying thoughts or feelings. For example, perhaps I would ask a
historically violent man how, when he uses his male power to dominate a
situation at home, if he is increasing or decreasing his honor; it may make
him question if his method brings him what he really wants. Does he want only power, or does he also
want balance and joy in his home? Is
discipline a thing he enforces, or is it also something lives by
example? I am only hypothesizing,
here, but feel as if I have found a way to use the sefirot in therapy: their complementary qualities provide ways to
cause clients to reflect on their behavior, and perhaps not only see a
behavior they would rather have, but a way to bring it into being. . Thanks for writing and I am glad to hear of your progress and that you
find my work interesting and helpful. I agree that the complimentary
qualities of the Sefirot can be useful in capturing some of the features of
good psychotherapy. The blending of chesed
and gevurah, i.e. kindness and
judgment, in rachamim (compassion)
seems to me to be a particularly good description of the posture that a
therapist must take with his/her clients, as well as the attitude that the
client must take towards him or herself. I would also, of course, recommend
the Lurianic dynamic of Ein-Sof, Tzimtzum, Sefirot, Shevirah, and Tikkun, etc. as a model of the entire
therapeutic process (which in my view mirrors the creative process in
general--therapy at its best creates or forges a soul or self). One could
conceive of Ein-sof as the full
holding space of the therapeutic encounter, a space that the therapist must
withdraw from (Tzimtzum) in or to
allow the client's values, being and conflicts to emerge in their own right (Sefirot). Once this occurs the client
fully experiences the contradiction and conflict, inherent in an unrestored
(pre-Tikkun) psyche, leading to a
shattering of aspects of his/her psychic world (Shevirah), which must then be emended/restored/re-created in
therapy (Tikkun). At each phase of
the treatment each of these phases are operative, but at any given point, one
of them (e.g. Shevirah, i.e.
rupture) may be more salient than any of the others. Kabbalah Psychotherapy and the
Coincidence of Opposites Dear Dr. Drob, I wrote an email to you a couple of months ago inquiring
for resources related to a clinical application of the Kabbalah for my
masters paper. Thank you for your response, the sources proved
useful. I have some questions or thoughts regarding some of your
writings, which I have found particularly useful. I am interested in coincidenta
oppositorum, how this philosophy is articulated in the kabbalah, and
specifically how this concept can be used psychotherapeutically (since it
seems in many ways to exist in many psychotherapeutic schools of
thought). I am confused in a couple areas of this
philosophy. Question 1: Is the term coincidenta
oppositorum, stated by socrates in his doctrine of opposites, are the two
related? I am wondering the origins of this concept; although as I
think you have implied that it seems to have arised in many
wisdom traditions at different time periods. Question 2: this question is a bit lengthy and allow me to
apologize if my thoughts are not articulate. My understanding of
coincidenta oppositorum, and its psychological implications, is that one
aspect of mental health and spiritual growth is the capacity to tolerate the
experience of opposites. Psychotherapeutically, gestalt seems address
this quite well. What I wonder is whether we ever experience opposites
on some absolute level. Allow me to give an example: Suppose a client says I love my father and I hate my
father. Semantically these appear to be opposing statements.
Perhaps even the emotional quality of love and hate appear to be in complete
opposition. However, if we include the reference points, behind these
statements we may find that the the love and hate this client feels contains
many non-opposing references. For instance, if the client said I love my
father because he taught me a just moral system, versus I hate my father
because he is unavailable emotionally. Now we find that even though the
raw emotional quality of love and hate may be oppositional, we
find that perhaps the holistic experience of loving a father’s
moral system and hating a fathers emotional neglect are not actually
opposites because there meaning units are not in opposition. It seems
that there are certain arenas of experience in this example that
psychological opposition is experienced and other arenas where it is not; the
raw emotion of love and hate versus the emotion with its attached
meaning. So, I bring this all up because I wonder if a part of our
role as a therapist is not only the facilitation of tolerance of opposites,
but also aiding the client to identify the areas in which two seemingly
opposite emotions are not actually in some absolute opposition when we look a
bit deeper at the reference point. Is there ever some absolute
opposition in our minds (meaning, if we include the reference points on a
very specific level, will they always be different, and isn't the references
of love always included on some level in our experience of love, even as a
newborn)? And of course I wonder whether this was all semantics, and I am
misunderstanding the meaning of coincidenta
oppositorum. Thank you, Keith Kurlander Dear Keith: I found your query very interesting and well thought through and, as is
often the case with good questions, it has prompted me to analyze the topic
more thoroughly than I had before. Below you will find my response to part of
your question. I will have to research the history of the coincidentia
oppositorum idea more thoroughly to answer your more historical query.
Perhaps you can share with me what you learn about this in your own
researches. I would like to have your permission to post your question along with my
response and any further comments you may have on the Dialog portion of the
Newkabbalah website. If you agree you may (only if you like) want to edit
your question to take out any personal references or in any way you see fit
prior to my posting it. I should also refer you, if you have not already seen these, to my
articles The Coincidence of Opposites
in Jewish Mysticism and Fragmentation In Contemporary Psychology: A
Dialectical Solution (which are on the internet, the latter also appeared in
the Journal of Humanistic Psychology), to my discussion of the problem of coincidentia oppositorum on pages 206-210 of my book Kabbalistic Metaphors,
and a brief discussion of the idea of the coincidence of opposites in
psychotherapy in Part I of An Interview with Sanford Drob on Kabbalah and
Psychotherapy (also on the New Kabbalah website). Finally, I discussed the
opposites and contradictions within the psyche as these apply to
psychotherapy in some detail in an article I wrote for the Jewish Review in
1989, entitled "Antinomies of the Soul," which I hope to have on
this website shortly. I think the question of the opposites in the psyche is
an extremely important issue in psychotherapy. Jung, of course, has written a
great deal about this topic. The phrase coincidentia oppositorum
(the coincidence of opposites) like many philosophical notions carries with
it considerable ambiguity. I believe that we can distinguish between 'weak'
and 'strong' senses of this concept. The weakest sense of coincidentia oppositorum appeals to
the empirical observation that apparently opposing ideas, feelings and
intentions often coincide within the same subject or mind. Progressively
stronger senses of this idea rest on the assertion that there is a causal or
logical relationship between opposing ideas, feelings and motives; for
example, the Jungian notion that an idea or feeling compensates for the
excesses or deficiencies of its opposite, or Derrida's view that a particular
'reading' is possible only because of the opposing ideas or readings it
excludes. Perhaps the strongest sense of coincidentia
oppositorum rests on the assertion that opposing, indeed contradictory,
ideas are both true and that the assertability and truth of each is
completely dependent upon the assertability and truth of its opposite. (I
have attempted to provide examples of this strong use of the coincidence of
opposites in both S. Drob: Fragmentation In Contemporary Psychology: A
Dialectical Solution, where I discuss the interdependence of certain opposing
philosophical views as free will and determinism, and in S. Drob: The
Coincidence of Opposites in Jewish Mysticism where I apply the coincidentia idea to theology and the
"word-thing" distinction). A weak version of the coincidentia idea might hold with Walt
Whitman that the human psyche is vast enough to contain contradictory ideas,
e.g. both perfect faith in God and atheistic unbelief, but only the strong
version would hold that a person's faith was logically dependent upon his
unbelief, and vice versa. As you astutely point out, an analysis of this idea is complicated by
several factors. The first of these is that apparently opposing or contradictory
ideas and assertions may actually have partially or wholly different meanings
or referents, in which case the opposition between them would be largely a
function of vagueness and non-specificity. A second, related, complication
arises from the possibility that an object, event or state of mind can be
accurately described through what appears to be contradictory ideas simply
because it is being described from two different perspectives or in two
different ways (the same act can be both good and evil, depending upon one's
point of view). Finally, it is not always clear whether the poles of a
supposed opposition actually contradict one another or are rather simply
opposites in some psychological or other non-logical sense (an example of
this might be an individual's anger and attraction to the same person), in
which case no special philosophical doctrine would be needed to reconcile
them. Given the complexity of the analysis of coincidentia oppositorum, we would also expect a similar
complexity in proposals to 'resolve' such oppositions or bring them into the
state of 'unity' that is described by certain mystics (e.g. Cusanus, Azriel)
and certain psychologists (Jung) who have made use of the coincidentia idea. First, we might hold that by simply clarifying our terms and their
referents will remove any apparent contradictions in our talk about mind and
the world. For example, clarifying the senses in which a person 'loves' and
'hates' his mother, or the senses of 'God" in which an individual believes
in and does not believe in God, will remove apparent contradictions generated
by overly general and vague language. Similarly, it might be thought that seeming contradictions can be resolved
by specifying the differing value criteria that are brought into play in
making apparently contradictory assertions. Life might turn out to be both
meaningful and meaningless, human nature may turn out to be both
fundamentally good or evil because were are surreptitiously applying
different value criteria (or definitions of meaningful and good) at the same
time. Again. By specifying our criteria the contradiction is removed. So far we have discussed points of view that would render the notion of coincidentia oppositorum misleading or valueless. A more positive view of the
doctrine emerges from a recognition that the major dichotomies in human
thought and experience (being and nothing, matter and mind, cause and effect,
meaning and absurdity, male and female, outside and inside, science and
religion, etc.) reflect oppositions in
value and that a coincidence of such
oppositions involves the reintroduction of a value that has been
excluded by the historical privileging of its supposed opposite. This, I
suppose, is the suggested 'resolution' that follows from the Jungian notion
of compensation and Derrida's deconstruction. Another perspective on the coincidence of opposites is taken by those who
hold that there are indeed fundamental antinomies that exist in both thought
and the world that cannot be resolved through semantic analysis, and which
require more than a "compensation" if we are to gain a satisfactory
understanding of them. Some are of the view that such antinomies are
irresolvable, while others (e.g. Kant, In addition to those who hold that contradiction is somehow inherent in
the nature of things there are those who believe that contradiction is not of
the world-in-itself (whatever that may be) but is introduced into the world
by thought and language. This view is very different, and should be
distinguished from the view described earlier that apparent contradictions
are merely semantic. i.e. due to vagueness and imprecision in the use of
terms). On the view I am now discussing, the very distinction between words
and things, which is introduced by language, conditions an infinite series of
other distinctions that are necessary for practical life, science and culture
but which nevertheless rend apart a primary unity. These distinctions give
rise a series of contradictory yet interdependent ideas, beginning with the
notions that (1) distinctions between things are necessary for there to be
language and (2) language is necessary for there to be distinctions between
things. While some suggest that such linguistically-generated 'contradictions' can only be resolved
through a cessation of language and thought (traditional mysticism) I have
suggested that a turn to bi-linear or dialectical thinking can demonstrate
the logical interdependence of the dichotomies and antinomies engendered by
language and thereby provide us with a glimpse (even within thought and
language) of a unified whole. So much for the philosophical aspects of the coincidentia idea. I will now make some brief remarks on the
applicability of this notion to psychology, particularly to psychotherapy. While language, as the vehicle of psychotherapy, helps to clarify our
thoughts and feelings, it also limits and obscures them. This is because in
expressing oneself one must choose between two poles of an opposition or
select one set of words from an indefinite array of possibilities. One says I
dislike x, or miss doing y, or feel angry about z, and one has already
committed oneself down a path that may (and generally is) only partially and inexactly
true. What I feel about my wife, my son, my dead father is … but when I say
what I feel I have revealed something and concealed or ignored much more.
That words both reveal and conceal is, according to Kabbalistic thought, a
result of the Tzimtzum, the notion that all creation involves concealment and
limitation. The psychotherapy patient will often, even as he or she speaks,
have the sense that the words he/she is saying are not quite right, or that
they are the very opposite of what he/she means to say, or that his/her words
and their opposite are both true. It is important that the therapist and the
patient both understand this, and that the therapist does not work to hard to
dissolve the individual's contradictory beliefs, feelings, and attitudes by
artificially pointing out the different senses, for example, in which the
individual loves vs. hates his/her father, mother, spouse or self. Rather the
therapist and client must both be open to the possibility that both beliefs
ore feelings are present at once in a single sense, and that the client's
developing and working through one train of thought and feeling does not
preclude him or her developing another opposing trend on another occasion,
and further that these two trends of
thought are linked together, and even interdependent, in a variety of as yet
unknown ways. Further, the therapist and client need to be open to the
possibility (and wisdom) of silence. If language divides psychic realty, at
times silence may be the only way to make it whole. The Kabbalists associated two of the Sefirot
in particular with the harmonizing of opposites, Binah (Understanding) and Rachamim
(Compassion, Empathy and Mercy). According to the Zohar and later Kabbalists,
understanding and (especially) compassion are the essential midot or traits that enable the world
to exist as these traits tend to, as Moses Cordovero put it "sweeten all
judgments" and neutralize the bitterness of divine decrees; decrees that
would categorize a person or an act as hateful or sinful. The trait
exemplified by the Sefirah Rachamim, is said to create a balance
between Chesed (overflowing love),
and Din (Strict judgment) so that God can be accepting of humanity's
imperfections and flaws (Palm Tree of Deborah, Ch. IV). Cordovero held that
just as God is merciful to humankind, we should always show compassion and
mercy to ourselves and others, especially to those who offend or provoke us,
because even they have good qualities that should soothe our anger and cause
our heart to delight in their virtue. (Ch. I. Attribute 6). The process of
understanding and compassion/empathy enables both therapist and client alike
to contain the contradictions inherent in the human soul and to see these as
even necessary for the psyche's development and individuation. Good luck on your project and please keep me posted on its progress. Dr. Drob is available for psychotherapeutic consultations in
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