Chassidus &
Psychoanalysis

Joseph H. Berke

 
The topic of my talk is Chassidus,
that is, Chassidic thought, and psychoanalysis. Is there any connection
between these seemingly disparate disciplines?
In raising this question I will focus
on very personal concerns, sadness, loss, despair, a broken heart.
Collectively these concerns may be included under the category of depression.
So I shall be looking at this issue of depression from the standpoint of
Chassidus and psychoanalysis.
But before proceeding further I would
like to acknowledge my friend and colleague, Professor Stanley Schneider, of
the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. What I will be sharing with you is a
collaborative effort. It is related to a paper which we recently published
about a meeting that took place in 1903 in Vienna between Rabbi Shalom Dov
Ber Schneersohn, that is, the 5th Lubavitcher Rebbe, also known by his
acronym, the RaSHaB, and "the famous Professor," Sigmund Freud.
At the time the Rebbe was under great
pressure from the Czarist police and anti-Chassidic Jews (mishnagdim).
Although he had already had extraordinary accomplishments in the exposition
of Chassidus, he expressed great dissatisfaction with himself. He considered
that the journey to Vienna was equivalent to going into exile for the
purpose of self-refinement and self-purification.
The person he met, Freud, came from a
long line of Chassidim who, for several generations, lived in and around
Galicia, a centre of Chassidic life. We know that his great grandfather,
Ephraim, was a Chassid and that Freud was named after his pate al
grandfather, Shlomo, also a Chassid and Rabbi. Sigmund is the German version
of Shlomo or Solomon. His father, Jacob, was a Chassid until his adolescence
when he was affected by the Haskalah or secular movement. Although he denied
it, recent research shows that Freud had an extensive, Jewish upbringing,
knew Hebrew, and was knowledgeable about Jewish practices. There is even a
possibility that Freud was familiar with Kabbalah. No doubt all this was of
help to him in his meeting with the Rebbe and in his ability to understand
the Rebbe’s condition. After their exchange, Freud concluded: "The head
grasps what the heart is unable to contain, and the heart cannot tolerate."
The word Freud used, in German/Yiddish was fartroght, to carry or to bear.
(German: fertragen, to endure), or to hold or contain. So the statement can
also be translated as: "The head grasps what the heart cannot carry/bear."
or, "The head grasps that which the heart cannot contain/endure."
It is worth noting
that when Freud met the Rebbe, he was working as a psychiatrist and
neurologist, and was still struggling to formulate his theories of
unconscious processes, what we know as psychoanalysis. The transition from
psychiatrist and neurologist to psychoanalyst can be traced to the
publication of his seminal works, Studies in Hysteria (with Joseph Breuer)
in 1893 and The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, and came to a fruition in
1917 with the publication of his landmark paper, "Mourning and Melancholia".
In it he delineates inte al and exte al worlds or spheres, and shows how
the relationship between the two, what he called the identification or
internalisation of the dead object or representation, can lead to extreme
emotional states such as melancholia.
Melancholia is part of a continuum of
depressive conditions ranging from a depressive mood, in popular vernacular,
‘the blues,’ to full scale depressive state, or depression. This can be
described in terms of experience, behaviour and overall state of being. The
experience of depression includes feelings of heaviness, worthlessness,
hopelessness and helplessness. In terms of behaviour, the descriptions
reflect medical psychology. ‘Depressed people’ can’t work, play, relate or
create. They inhabit an involuted self devoid of energy, a state of being
which is oppressed and oppressive, repressed and repressive, compressed and
constricting. Analysis, itself, seems much more interested in the
intrapsychic and interpersonal mechanisms which lead to these conditions. In
fact, Freud’s formulations led to a much greater understanding of depressive
conditions and ways to alleviate them.
Chassidus, however,
provides a wider picture of the depressed state, for it is not only
concerned with the self, but with the soul. And it not only acknowledges
diagnosis, but bitten also prognosis, that is, pointers whereby the
depressed person may step beyond his condition.
In
the Tanya, the classic work of Lubaviter Chassidic thought written by Rabbi
Schneur Zaiman, the first Lubavitchor Rebbe (the alter Rebbe), we find
several terms that describe a downtrodden, low and depressed spirit.

 

1. nemichat ruach =
lowness of spirit. This emotion occurs when the person feels that he is not
able to achieve what he would like to.

 

2. lev nishbar =
contrite of heart. This feeling allows an individual to see his spiritual
inadequacies. However, it can also lead to deep sadness when the person
realises that he is not fighting strongly enough against the evil impulse.

3. atzvut =
depression and/ or melancholy, and is
sometimes called black depression. If the depression arises out of the
awareness of spiritual failings then this can lead to a burst of desire to
change one’s behaviour

Atzvut
arises because the soul has two sides: an evil side and a good side. The
evil is the source of depression. The good element gives rise to spiritually
motivated depression. Concomitantly atzvut is synonymous with sadness and
may reflect a deep sense of loss.

4. merirut hanefesh
= bitterness of the soul. This state has to do with being remorseful about
being removed from G-d’s presence.

Let me look at these terms in greater
detail: Atzvut means constricted. It is a numbing sense of compression that
constricts one’s heart and blocks out all feelings. For atzvut means that
one’s heart is as dull as a stone and that it is devoid of vitality or
feeling. This results in a state of emotional despondency and deadness, with
no hope, vitality or holiness, as with with a person who has been stricken
with grief.

In contrast
to atzvut, the Tanya describes two conditions where a person is not stuck or
blocked. These are feelings of contriteness and bitterness. Contriteness or
lev nishbar can be freely translated as broken hearted. In this state a
person may be sad, but he has chosen to face his spiritual shortcomings and
is not disconnected from G-d.

The other condition, merirut, or
bitterness, does not necessarily lead to melancholia or the implosion of the
self. It is associated with anger and a welling-up of energy, an inner
stimulus to change one’s situation. A sad bitterness which arises from
spiritual stocktaking, and from the struggle with one’s standards is not
atzvut, but merirut. The stirring of bitterness is a necessary precondition
for a person extricating himself from despondency.

The term that described the
RaSHaB was nemichat ruach, a lowliness in spirit which is analogous to low
self esteem. This words also denote humility. A person suffering from
nemichat ruach realises that he has a long way to go to reach his goals. For
Chassidim this does not necessarily denote pathology, but rather an
expression of humbleness. Moreover, it may equally apply to the state of the
soul as well as to the state of self.

Ultimately these different
conceptualisations of depressive or low feelings teach us that there are two
main kinds of depression or lowness. One is rooted in physical and emotional
states beclouded by mixtures of good and evil. This parallels the
psychoanalytic concepts of envy and narcissism. And it is close to a
psychological understanding of depression – related to guilt, shame and
conflicts over need and dependency. The other kind of depression is
spiritually inspired and according to the Tanya is not depression at all but
rather like an emotional hiccup, a lowness about one’s spiritual failings, a
momentary sadness, which can then be used as an effective weapon against
depressive moments.

Such a mechanism is similar to
Freud’s early prescription for depression: that one needs to release the
‘cathected object,’ that is, the focus of one’s emotional and mental
energies, from one’s mind. Sometimes the connection cannot be easily broken.
In order to minimise the risks of melancholy developing, which would lead to
stuckness and constriction, anger has to occur. Such anger will break the
cycle. In the Tanya this process is referred to as: redirecting ‘lowness’ or
depression into soul-searching, , and into anger at the evil inclination.
This, in tu
, will dispel a person’s mundane, if not murderous, mood.

There is a further contribution that
Chassidus makes about depression as we have seen from the discussion of
bitterness. The condition is not inevitably pathological, or for that
matter, even tragic. On the contrary, it may be a painful, but positive
experience on the road to learning about oneself and in getting closer to
G-d. As Rav Adin Even Yisroel (Steinsaltz) notes in his book, The Long
Shorter Way, it may be possible to pass beyond self-pity and
self-satisfaction, "only when a person is burned so badly that his skin
begins to peel, will he begin to feel himself.

……Here the essential contribution is
with (Emes) Truth, the truth of oneself, and the need to break down the
partition or veil (or psychic skin) that separates oneself from the Divine."

In this vein it is worth quoting from
Psalm 51, "A broken and contrite heart, 0 G-d, thou wilt not despise," to
which the alter Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, replied: "If one does
not have a broken and contrite heart, one cannot be said to have a heart at
all."

But it is also important to
note that there is another side of the coin both in Chassidus and
psychoanalysis. These are the perspectives that do not recognise depression
or lowness of spirits as potential growth experiences. On the contrary they
are seen as necessary, or perhaps unnecessary, conditions that should best
be avoided or denied. This is a prominent view among many analysts,
especially during the current age of psychobiology, which looks upon
depression or depressive moods are symptoms of an illness which have to be
‘cured.’ Similarly in ChaBaD, and Breslov Chassidus in particular,
depression is considered as a kind of evil or sin, that has to be stamped
out in favour of joy. One must remains joyful at all costs such as by
farbrenging, singing, eating and drinking mashka (vodka). Joy is the key
which can unlock the prison of misery.

Having digressed in order to present
these contrary but widespread attitudes, I want to return to the main thrust
of my presentation: There exist convergent opinions both in Chassidus and
psychoanalysis that depression or a broken and contrite heart are conditions
which can be faced and overcome. These convictions are reflected in modern
psychoanalysis. By this I refer, in particular, to object relations theory,
or the English School of Psychoanalysis, introduced by Melanie Klein and her
followers. Melanie Klein was born in Vienna in 1882 and lived her formative
years there. Many consider her to be Freud’s foremost follower. Klein
greatly extended his work by developing the field of child analysis as well
as by pioneering the psychoanalysis of psychotic patients. Like Freud, Klein
had a notable Jewish pedigree. Her father came from an orthodox Jewish
family and her mother was the daughter of a rabbi. Although she was not
observant or formally religious in adult life, she did have a significant
Jewish upbringing which clearly influenced her accomplishments.

Many of Klein’s basic
conceptualisations have to do with depression, and what she called
depressive anxiety and the depressive position. She pointed out that in the
first few months of life, the infant felt beset by threats to its existence.
She called this persecutory anxiety. (The perceived threat that everyone and
everything is out to get you.)

But after a few months of age, when
the child begins to realise that parents he or she hates is also the parent
‘he’ loves, then ‘his’ primary fears have to do with harming the person he
loves, or of not being able to repair the damage that his hatreds can cause.
There is a popular nursery rhyme, which I am sure you all know, which
reflects these concerns:

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a
wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.
The despair in this refrain reflects
the difficulty of repairing someone close whom one has loved and hurt.
Indeed, Melanie Klein struggled to define the depressive position at a time
when she was grief stricken from the death of her ‘eldest son in a
mountaineering accident. By using her despair, her atzvut, to paraphrase the
Tanya’s understanding of depressive feelings, Klein developed a formula for
putting things right. And if this could not happen in actuality, her son was
physically dead, then the correction would happen internally, in her
inte al world, in that other great dimension of existence, where her son
remained very much alive.

Her formula, or prescription
has several elements, which, as we shall soon discuss, remarkably parallel
Chassidic thinking. Klein established that the depressive experience is
rooted in conflict. This occurs between love and hate, or as she put it,
between the Life impulse (Eros) and the Death impulse (Thanatos). The latter
is synonymous with envious destructiveness. As the result of intense battles
between these impulses, severe damage may occur, not only in exte al
reality, but especially to inner representations of people whom one loves,
and also to representations of one’s self. So the first step is to
acknowledge this.

Further sources of conflict have to
do with seeing and not seeing what is going on, and between feeling and not
feeling the consequences of this conflict, that is, guilt, shame, despair,
pain, sorrow and sadness. So the next step is to recognise these feelings,
however painful they may be. Essentially Klein said that in order to work
through the depressive position, or the specific group of anxieties,
relationships and inner barriers which reflect love/hate situations, one has
to: tolerate ambivalence. bear conflict and face reality.

This same prescription permeates
Chassidic thought, the need to confront oneself. Thus, the alter Rebbe
points out in Tanya
that this struggle goes on the
levels of soul and self, both spiritually and humanly. In the latter
instance it is between the
Yetzer Tov and
Yetzer HaRah,
that is, between the forces of goodness (Klein might say gratitude) and evil
(ingratitude, envy). In the first instance, this struggle is between the
Nefesh HaBehamit,
the animalistic part of oneself, and the
Nefesh HaElokit,
the G-dly soul.

The late Rebbe, Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, explained that the animal soul, the Nefesh
HaBehamit, is ‘the motor of physical life’ that incorporates all the
instincts, drives, desires and faculties that one needs for physical
survival. In contrast, the Nefesh HaElokit, embodies all a person’s yearning
for transcendence, for connecting with the Divine. He pointed out that both
are indispensable aspects of human existence. Yet, within all individuals a
constant battle takes place between a) the sacred,and the mundane, and b)
within physicality itself, between the
Yetzer Tov
and
Yetzer HaRah,
good and evil. Consequently, the whole of
Tanya
can be considered a prescription for
fighting these battles, and for achieving the deep joy of inner completeness
and attachment to G-d.

Not
long ago, Dr. Tali Loewenthat old me a story that had been told to him by
Rabbi Mendel Futerfas. Rav dendel was one of the great figures among
Lubavitch Chassidim. He was a truly righteous man whom I had the privilege
of knowing personally in London. He had spent many years in Siberian prisons
for teaching Yiddishkeit. One day, while he was in a particularly nasty
camp, he saw a fellow prisoner, a Cossack, sitting on a log and weeping. He
went up to him and asked, "Why are you crying.?"

The Cossack replied that it was the
fall, the time when all Cossacks went hunting for bear. Cossacks lived on
bear for it provided meat to eat, fur for clothes and fat for lighting
lamps. He himself loved to hunt bear. But, he added, you couldn’t kill them
directly. If you tried to do so, the bear might run after you and kill you.
So you had to hunt stealthily, in the fall, which was the time when the
bears began to hibernate. Then the bears would go into a cave with big store
of nuts and berries, and go to sleep. Once he located such a cave, he would
send in a dog to nip and bark. Then the bear would wake up, go to front of
cave, roar and stretch out to see what was happening. It was only at this
point that the Cossack felt safe enough to shoot him.

"Ah," said Rav Mendel, "it is the
same with us. The bear lives within us. Like you, we have to tease him out
very carefully, before overcoming him." What Rav Mendel was referring to was
Yetzer Harah,
that part of the Nefesh
HaBehamit, that contained
all one’s horrible, nasty, destructive impulses.

Similarly,
Tanya
talks about the need to reveal the bear, our animalistic impulses, a process
which can lead to a spiritual awakening. In order to overcome despair, one
has to take one’s bearing and come to terms with the contents of the cave,
one’s inner darkness. In many respects this is what Teshuvah, repentance, is
all about: the ability to bear one’s sins. Such contrition can also take
place during a psychoanalysis, a long way, or during ‘Yichidus,’ a private
meeting with the Rebbe, a short way, when the Rebbe reveals as much as one
can possibly bear to know about oneself.

Klein asserts that such
self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-awareness, and self-concern are all
essential steps in overcoming depression. For they provide the initial
ingredients of what many psychoanalysts consider to be her greatest
contribution – Reparation.
Reparation has to do with righting wrong, restoring unity, picking up
pieces, all part of the continuum of overcoming human destructiveness. It is
the means by which depression yields a growth process, in place of
pathology. According to Klein reparation is never complete, nor is it ever
completed. Rather it is the active process of striving towards completeness,
whether of the head, or heart or entire being. Reparation is very much
related to the Kabbalistic concept of
Tikkun.

The
late Israeli poet, Pinchas Sadeh, focussed on,
Tikkun Ha-Lev,
or Restoration of the Heart. One evening he describes what
Tikkun Ha-Lev,
meant for him:

"…..while I was still engrossed in
thought on a certain topic, a thought entered my mind regarding ‘repair of
the heart.’

(I thought that)……. powerful
forces prevent the possibility of repairing that which is broken. If so,
what is possible? What remains for man to do, after all? What can save and
rescue the things that are smashed? Maybe only – and even this only through
tremendous effort, through difficult struggle, through great pain – this;
repairing the heart. "

Sometimes
this work can be accomplished by adding or repositioning the letter of a
word. The Hebrew language seems designed for this process, which I would
like to illustrate. The Hebrew for heavy is Khaf Vet Daled, spelled KaVade.
KaVade means ‘heavy’ one of the characteristics of depression. It also
denotes the liver, which in turn is related to the gall bladder, or source
of black bile, the Marrah Shahchor. It used to be said that an excess of
black bile led to a pervasive blackness of the self and of the soul.
However, it is possible to elevate this word, and by extension the
depressive experience, by adding a Vav, a letter contained in the name of
G-d, which expresses G-d-consciousness. Then you arrive at Kh V vav spelled
Kavode (1) which means glory, or honour or pride as in KhVode HaShem, the
glory of G-d. In this simple manner, G-d’s radiance, can pierce and replace
the deepest blackness.

For
the depressed man or woman the way to accomplish a personal transformation
is to add a vav to one’s life, to connect with the divine within and
without. In this sense, perhaps the most significant aspect of Tikkun, or
reparation, is this connecting or reconnecting, implied by the word itself.
Repair literally means to re-pair, bring back together, re-connect elements
which had originally been one, but which subsequently had been split apart.
So tikkun refers to a broken relationship and the need to re-pair the
disparate parts. This certainly applies, as Tanya describes, from many
different angles, to the relationship between man and G-d. Klein’s genius
was to show how it applied to the relationships between man and man, the
interpersonal dimension, and within the person himself, the intra-psychic
dimension.

The
Interpersonal dimension is evident in sadness or atzvut, where a deep loss
has occurred. The intrapsychic dimension can be seen in Lev Nishbar, where
the wrench is between the head and the heart, thinking and feeling. On the
deepest levels Klein noted that Reparation is not complete until all aspects
of one’s inner world have been repaired. By this she meant that it is not
enough to re-pair a damaged relationship with mother, or a damaged
relationship with father, but one has to repair the damage between mother
and father as a couple and in one’s relation to them as a couple. By adding
this further step, she consciously or unconsciously re-paired her relation
with her tradition and thereby with G-d. For the 5th commandment clearly
states, Honour your Father and Mother. This is a basic ‘mitzvah’. And
mitzvah does not just mean commandment, but Chassidus teaches that it
signifies a connection. Once you do a mitzvah, you make a connection to G-d.
In this way it can be said that psychoanalysis and Chassidus are
fundamentally related, they both aim to bring about a relationship with the
divine.

Such
actions, Tikkun Ha-Guf
and Tikkun Ha-Nefesh,
restoration and re-pair of the body and soul of the Jewish people are
essential components of the living legacy of the 7th Rebbe, Menachem Mendel
Schneerson. From 1950 onwards he lived and worked in the shadows of the
Shoah,
to repair hearts more than broken, and to re-establish Jewish existence in
the world both individually and collectively, In so doing he helped re-pair
our people’s relationships with and within themselves, as well as with each
other, and with the gentile nations, and with G-d.

American psychoanalyst and
progenitor of ‘self psychology.’ Kohut has provided a very moving connection
between ‘self and ‘soul’, and by extension, between Psychoanalysis and
Kabbalah, in his book, The Restoration of the Self. In the epilogue, he
ponders the capacity of art and artists to depict the central dilemma of our
age, how man can manage ‘to cure his crumbling self.’ Kohut confides that
nowhere has he found a more accurate account of the yearning to restore a
shattered self than in Eugene O’Neill’s play, The Great God Brown. Towards
the end, the central character, Brown, contemplates his wrecked life and
shattered self. Kohut concludes, through the words of Brown:

"Man is born
broken.
He lives by mending.
The grace of G-d is glue."

Copyright Joseph H.
Berke 2000. All Rights Reserved.

¿Colaboró usted ya con SerJudio.com?

E-mail:

comentario@serjudio.com

Página principal |
Arriba |
Reglas para los e-mail

| Apoyo
| Búsqueda 

©2005
Yehuda Ribco,
Montevideo, Uruguay.
 Todos los derechos son propiedad de sus autores.

___Queda
terminantemente prohibido el uso de estos textos para fines de idolatría:
 falsos-judíos mesiánicos abstenerse de utilizar la información para
embaucar___