Joseph H. Berke - Böcker

This book explores Sigmund Freud and his Jewish roots and demonstrates the input of the Jewish mystical tradition into Western culture via psychoanalysis. It shows how Freud utilized the Jewish mystical tradition to develop a science of subjectivity.

This book considers the experience of envy, greed, jealousy, and narcissism and how they operate between parents and children, brothers and sisters. It focuses on the object of these harmful emotions, what attracts malice to them, and how they may arouse it.

'Even paranoids have enemies' is the reply Golda Meir is said to have made to Henry Kissinger who, during the 1973 Sinai talks, accused her of being paranoid for hesitating to grant further concessions to the Arabs. It is used as part of the title of this book to highlight the complex relationship between paranoia and persecution.The politics of the Middle East, the pressures within Japanese society, the dynamics of the drug scene, racism, and the effects of mechanical thinking in institutions and cultures all serve to illustrate in this book the intimate connections between paranoia and persecution. Contributors examine the ways in which paranoia and persecution are experienced at the individual, institutional and macrosocial level. They draw on theoretical perspectives from a range of disciplines in an exploration of both the psychological impact of paranoid processes and the extent to which these processes are rooted in political and cultural exigency.

Kabbalah and psychoanalysis are conceptions about the nature of reality. The former is over two thousand years old. The latter has been formalized less than a hundred years ago. Nonetheless they are parallel journeys of discovery that have forever altered not only what we see, but the very nature of seeing itself. The domain of Kabbalah is the spiritual and material macrocosm. In contrast the concern of psychoanalysis is the microcosm, the innermost recesses of the human mind. However, both are convergent and complementary theories. Kabbalah asserts 'as above so below,' meaning, the Godhead, the source of everything, is reflected in the smallest details of existence. Similarly, psychoanalysis traces the evolution from 'inner objects' to family feuds and social fields. More than theories, however, Kabbalah and psychoanalysis test the limits of direct experience. They are contemplative, meditative and introspective methods for restoring shattered worlds and fragmented lives. These are material as well as spiritual entities which have been separated from their source, on one hand 'the Godhead' and on the other, 'personal praxis.' The purpose of this study is to explore how Kabbalah and psychoanalysis converge and diverge, complement and conflict with each other, in order to amplify their impact and enable mankind to gain a greater understanding of reality.

Kabbalah and psychoanalysis are conceptions about the nature of reality. The former is over two thousand years old. The latter has been formalized less than a hundred years ago. Nonetheless they are parallel journeys of discovery that have forever altered not only what we see, but the very nature of seeing itself. The domain of Kabbalah is the spiritual and material macrocosm. In contrast the concern of psychoanalysis is the microcosm, the innermost recesses of the human mind. However, both are convergent and complementary theories. Kabbalah asserts 'as above so below,' meaning, the Godhead, the source of everything, is reflected in the smallest details of existence. Similarly, psychoanalysis traces the evolution from 'inner objects' to family feuds and social fields. More than theories, however, Kabbalah and psychoanalysis test the limits of direct experience. They are contemplative, meditative and introspective methods for restoring shattered worlds and fragmented lives. These are material as well as spiritual entities which have been separated from their source, on one hand 'the Godhead' and on the other, 'personal praxis.' The purpose of this study is to explore how Kabbalah and psychoanalysis converge and diverge, complement and conflict with each other, in order to amplify their impact and enable mankind to gain a greater understanding of reality.

This book explores Sigmund Freud and his Jewish roots and demonstrates the input of the Jewish mystical tradition into Western culture via psychoanalysis. It shows in particular how the ideas of Kabbalah and Hassidism have profoundly influenced and enriched our understanding of mental processes and clinical practices. Freud's own ancestors were hassidim going back many generations, and the book examines how this background influenced both his life and his work. It also shows how he struggled to deny these roots in order to be accepted as a secular, German professional, and at the same time how he used them in the development of his ideas about dreaming, sexuality, depression and mental structures as well as healing practices. The book argues that in many important respects psychoanalysis can be seen as a secular extension of Kabbalah.The author shows, for example, how Freud utilized the Jewish mystical tradition to develop a science of subjectivity. This involved the systematic exploration of human experience, uncovering the secret compartments and deepest levels of the mind (such as the preconscious and unconscious methods of thinking), expanding human consciousness beyond 'objective' reality, and the revelation of hidden, unconscious thought processes by free association and dream analysis (all linked to kabbalistic modalities such as 'skipping and jumping'). The book also explores the close connections between psychoanalysis, quantum physics, and Kabbalah.The Hidden Freud: His Hassidic Roots also uses the meetings that took place in 1903 between Freud and the great hassidic leader, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Rebbe Rashab, as a point of departure to consider Freud's Jewish identity. While Freud may have felt himself to be "completely estranged from the religion of his fathers" he still remained a man who "never repudiated his people, who felt that he was in his essential nature a Jew, and who had no desire to alter that nature", as so many of his colleagues had done. Freud lived the life of a secular, sceptical Jewish intellectual. This was his revealed persona. But there was another, concealed Freud, who revelled in his meetings with the Rebbe, Kabbalists and Jewish scholars; who kept books on Jewish mysticism in his library; and who chose to die on Yom Kippur, 1939, the Day of Atonement. This book considers the implications of the 'concealed Freud' on his life and work.