Is it possible to cultivate a home-grown “Jewish psychology”—a method for mental healing, of others and ourselves that derives from the unique worldview of Judaism?
The first step in attempting to uncover the Torah’s complete perspective on a specific topic is to analyze the verse that most overtly refers to this topic. When considering the sources for a Jewish psychotherapy, the verse that most clearly stands out is one from Proverbs. This verse directly addresses mental problems and their treatment:
If there is worry in a man's heart, let him cast it down, and a good word will make it cheerful
Is that all? Yes, but as we will soon see, it is a lot. Like everything in the Torah, this verse fits the description of “the little that holds a lot,” and one must work to uncover the abundant secrets it contains.
The first word in the verse is also is its key: “worry.” If we try to translate this word into the psychological language of our time, we will see that the best equivalent would be anxiety. Negative worries and anxieties can be seen not only as a specific mental problem but as a common root for many, if not all, mental problems. A deviation from mental health begins when our tranquility is disproportionately disturbed by a certain situation. Every difficulty makes waves in our soul, but if these waves frighten us, if they challenge our very existence, then we have a mental problem.
Thus, the word “worry” in our verse can be seen as a sort of code name for the entire spectrum of mental distress, and the verse can be seen as dealing with the way to treat them.
Three Interpretations
If “worry” expresses mental distress, then the word we have translated as “let him cast it down” tells us how to heal it. But what does this it mean to “cast it down?” It turns out that this is a very unique and mysterious word, with no less than three different interpretations—one peshat (literal and direct meaning) and two additional ones in the way of drush (homiletic interpretation):
- Lower it. The peshat interpretation of “let him cast it down” is that something should be lowered, in the way you would lower a flame on your stove. To cast something down is to make it small and bow it down. This interpretation says that when a person feels anxiety, they should somehow lower its intensity and strive to make it smaller.
- Divert it. The first drush interpretation of this mysterious word pronounced yashchenah exchanges the “sh” (right Shin) sound with an “s” sound (left Shin, which can also be written with a samech), making it into the word yassichenah, which means “divert it from your mind” or “distract your mind from it.” According to this, the way to deal with anxieties is simply to put them aside and engage in other things instead.
- Discuss it. Finally, the second drush interpretation, which is the third overall, also utilizes a left Shin, but this time interprets the word as deriving from the root meaning “to converse,” and so the word becomes yessichenah. According to this interpretation, the word means “discuss it with others”: the person experiencing anxiety should talk about it with others and in this way find healing for their soul.
So, we have a verse from the Bible that talks about the mental healing of anxieties, and three different interpretations of it, each of which lends itself to a different therapeutic modality. According to the first, one should lower the anxiety, according to the second, one should divert it and keep out of mind, and according to the third, one should talk about it. It seems that the first two methods try to remove the problem somehow and are performed internally by the person, while the third method seeks to process the problem and is performed with another person.
The Interpretations as Stages
But there is another way to understand the three different interpretations before us, and thereby each of them separately. According to the inner dimension of the Torah, all disputes should be seen through the prism of “these and these are the words of the living God,” meaning seeing all sides as complementing each other. According to this principle, we can see the three interpretations of the word “let him cast it down” not as three different therapeutic methods but as three components of one therapeutic method.
In what way should we combine the different interpretations? Here the first psychologist in the Torah—namely Joseph, the “master of dreams”—comes to our aid. Part of Joseph’s success in solving the dreams of the Egyptians was his understanding that he should understand them in the context of time. Joseph interpreted the numbers in the dreams of the Egyptians as stages in developmental processes: the three vine branches and the baskets in the dreams of the ministers symbolized three days, and the seven cows and sheaves in Pharaoh’s dreams stood for seven years. By adding the dimension of time, Joseph succeeded where the magicians of Egypt failed. Inspired by him, we can see the three interpretations of the word “let him cast it down” as stages in a journey, joins them into a single therapeutic process consisting of three steps.
The next question is, of course, in what order should we arrange the interpretations? This time we must turn to a figure much later than Joseph (but much closer to us): the Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidut. As we have explained, the Ba’al Shem Tov outlined three fundamental stages characterizing every complete spiritual process and called them submission, separation, and sweetening: submission involves lowering the ego and recognizing that everything that happens to us comes from God; separation is a process of inner clarification and purification during which we rid ourselves of negative traits and identify with positivity; and sweetening is proper self-realization and self-expression, now coming from a refined place.
Applying the Ba’al Shem Tov’s three stage process to our newly found stages of therapy, in the same order in which we presented them, we get that:
- Lower it is the first stage of submission
- Divert it or Keep it out of mind is the second stage of separation
- Speak it is the third stage of sweetening
Let us now look at the complete process as it is portrayed through this correspondence between the stages of therapy and the Ba’al Shem Tov’s three-stage model.
Submission: Placing the Problem in the Context of Faith
What does submission mean in the context of our mental problem (yashchenah in the sense of lowering)? Contrary to what it may sound like, it does not necessarily mean suppressing the problem (although that is certainly an option for as long as it works). The best way to describe this stage is placing our anxiety in the context of faith, which naturally gives it smaller and less terrifying dimensions.
When we are faced with a mental problem, we are immersed in it, and in ourselves, in a way that forces it to color our entire view of reality in murky colors. In this state, it is impossible to directly approach a deep analysis of the problem and its causes. If we try to do so, we will necessarily find ourselves enslaved to the distorted picture of reality created by the problem itself. Our anxiety will dictate the analytical tools, the conclusions, and the horizon of possibilities to which we can progress—a sure recipe for further descent into what troubles us in the first place.
Therefore, the first step is to calm our anxiety and, as much as possible, change our perspective on it so that we can look at it more objectively, or from the outside. There are several contexts in which anxiety can be placed in a way that will restore some sanity to the system, but the widest and deepest context, which provides the highest developmental horizon, is the context of faith. From a faith perspective, the world, life, and our anxiety are all experienced as stemming from a Divine source whose aspiration is to benefit us, even if the path we must follow is at times winding and difficult. Whether our hardship is a cleansing gift, or God forbid a punishment, it is ultimately something positive—an opportunity to achieve a higher developmental state.
This is the meaning of the connection between yashchenah and submission: to strengthen our faith we need only submit our ego—getting out of the excessive sense of self that amplifies our anxiety, and turning our gaze upwards and forwards to that which is beyond our self.
Separation: From Worry to Story
The second interpretation (yassichenah, diversion) refers to the stage of separation. Separation consists of both distancing from the negative and identifying with the positive. In the same way, diverting attention is an action of both pushing away negative thoughts and engrossing ourselves in positive thoughts (which will help further push away the negative). In short, it is a process of forming positive and constructive thoughts, which gradually replace the anxious thoughts.
Diverting attention from worries means rewriting the worry’s narrative in a constructive way. It means rearranging the contents of what causes us to the worry in an optimistic way that shows their advantage. Diverting attention is like permuting the letters of the word for “worry” so that it becomes a “story”—a new and constructive life story.
Modern psychology, starting from Freud and even more so in Jung, recognized that the structure of our unconscious is rooted in the stories and mythologies we are imbued with. This principle also works in the opposite direction: refined and rectified stories can create a healthy mental state. For a Jewish person, the materials for positive mental stories are drawn from the tradition of Jewish stories—starting with the stories of the Torah, through the stories of the rabbinic sages, and ending with the stories of tzaddikim—righteous people such as the stories of the Baal Shem Tov—which look at the various crossroads of life through the eyes of faith.
On a deeper level, the main purpose of the new story is to construct within the soul a positive worry—a focused and constructive preoccupation with clarifying our life’s purpose and achieving it. This worry is not anxious or stressed like negative worries, but it does strive with focus and vigilance towards its goal. Regarding this positive form of worry, the sages said that “the secrets of the Torah are only transmitted to one whose heart is worried within him.” The healthy soul is not just calm, it is also concerned—concerned with the fact that it was sent into this world for the fulfillment of a specific mission, and yet so many years of life have passed and we are each individually far from fulfilling this mission. Thus, the healthy soul is constantly pondering its mission and purpose in life and how to bring about their realization. When we are focused on this experience, there is no room in our soul for sinking into unnecessary anxieties that distract us from life’s main thrust.
Sweetening: Therapy
The choices and changes in inner perspective that we toiled on in the first two stages allow us to begin working with an external therapist in a fruitful way (yessichenah, talking with others). If we had tried to do this from the start, the therapy would have been caught in the destructive gravitational field of the anxiety itself, with no real possibility of escaping it. The inner decision to look at the problem with the eyes of faith (submission), along with the beginning of work on choosing a positive mindset and self-correction (separation), allows us to approach the open wound of the anxiety itself and begin to solve it.
This stage resembles the psychological treatments we are familiar with in our time but by coming after the first two stages of submission and separation, it is given a completely different context and form. The conversation about the anxiety, its analysis, identifying its causes, and searching for ways to fix it in our lives do not lead to self-digging and deeper immersion in our troubles (as so often happens in the treatments we are familiar with). Instead, the conversation becomes a much more positive and liberating experience, allowing us to remove the bad elements that have accumulated in the system and make good decisions about their future correction.
We will notice that although the interpretation of “talk about it with others” is not the peshat, it completely connects with the second part of the verse, “and a good word will make it cheerful”: the “good word” is good speech—both the one that comes out of us and the one that echoes back to us from the therapist, bringing healing and joy. This stage is called sweetening because it sweetens the difficulty and effort involved in the first two stages, in which we forced ourselves to go out of ourselves and the addictive preoccupation with the depths of our soul. Moreover, the sweetening stage alleviates the bitterness that the anxiety itself created in the soul: in it, we discover why we were destined to face our anxiety in the first place, and how—not only despite our anxiety, but also thanks to it—we recovered and became more whole and mature.
It goes without saying that not everyone is always capable of completing the first two stages on their own. Often a person reaches an advisor completely caught up in their problem and unable to extricate themselves from it and adopt a higher perspective on it. In such cases, the advisor must help the patient, gently and considerately, but also consciously and deliberately, through the first two stages as well. He or she must let the patient pour out his heart freely, of course, and listen attentively to the details of his problem as he experiences it. But from a certain point onwards, he must try to direct things in a way that will bring the patient to complete the first two stages of the process, without which the third stage will not truly succeed. The therapist is tasked with gradually raising the advisee to a higher perspective that looks at his situation through the eyes of faith (submission) and direct him to positive worries that will divert his attention from his anxiety (separation). Only then can the two, in a joint conversation, discuss all the details of the problem troubling the patient in a way that will advance its solution.
The Therapist Also Needs Therapy
A fundamental principle in Chasidic thought is that a person can help someone rectify their flaw only after they have identified how at least a subtle version of that flaw exists within their own soul and only once they have corrected that flaw’s subtle version in themselves. There is no fault that is not present within our soul, even if only in a very subtle way, and the one who provides mental healing must rectify this aspect in themselves before they can rectify it in another. Therefore, Chasidic mental counseling is a process in which the therapist also undergoes therapy. The self-treatment that the therapist undergoes not only allows them to help the patient from a more profound and genuine place but is made possible thanks to the encounter with the patient. The patient was summoned to a particular advisor with Divine Providence, not only to be healed by them, but also to mirror to them their own hidden flaws.
This principle was strictly applied by all the great Chasidic masters, and many stories describe the ways in which they went through self-reflection in order to identify with the chasidim who came to consult with them. For example, it is told about the second Rebbe of Chabad, Rabbi Dov Ber Schneersohn, also known as the Mittler Rebbe, that during his private sessions with his followers, he would be completely drenched in sweat. When asked the reason for this, he explained that in each session he had to take off his own mental garments and put on the mental garments of the person in front of him, and this process exhausted him to the point of sweating. Another story told about him is that one day, in the middle of a series of private meetings, he suddenly announced that he was no longer receiving visitors and then locked himself in his room for many hours of prayer and crying. A few days later, when he was asked the reason for this, he explained that the person who had been with him confessed to him about such a severe sin, that the thought that it existed also within him, even in a subtle way, shocked him so much that he had to stop the meetings and do a self-accounting until he found it within himself and repented for it.
The therapist’s identification with the patient means that they must themselves undergo a process of submission, separation, and sweetening before they can advise. In the therapist, these three stages take the following form:
- Submission: The therapist must hear the patient with a pure ear all the while quieting within themselves the internal voices that leap to their consciousness and want to wave ready-made answers to the patient.
- Separation: After that, the therapist must examine the different possible responses arising within themselves and distinguish between those which truly concern the patient and those that are irrelevant but have some relevance to the therapist.
- Sweetening: Finally, the therapist must identify the mirrored negative source of anxiety within themselves and apply the solutions that were relevant to him or her, to the best of their ability.
Only after doing all this is the therapist fit to move on to their patient and begin advising them on how to try and solve their problem.
