Connecting To God Ancient Kabbalah And Modern Psychology

Chapter 1: PSYCHOLOGY AND SPIRITUALITY: THE BRIDGE THE FAILURE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REVOLUTION A century of clinical psychology has made therapy a household concept in the Western world. More people than ever before have experienced psychotherapy. More methods for achieving psychological well-being are available. Miracle drugs alleviate depression and relieve anxiety. Gadgets of every description make household chores and business administration less tedious and more efficient. More time is available for relaxation, entertainment, continuing education, and personal growth. These advances should have produced a happier and more fulfilled generation. But people seem to be no less troubled and no more relaxed and fulfilled than they were prior to the psychological revolution. What has gone wrong? What happened to Sheila, Jeremy, and their extended family helps answer this question. SHEILA AND JEREMY'S STORY Our synagogue was launching an ambitious outreach program. We thought that High Holy Day services for young adult "beginners," with lots of explanations and opportunities for asking questions, might be a good way of attracting people who had been turned off or never turned on. In addition, we were offering home hospitality. I received a call from a young man asking if he and his friend could spend the High Holy Days as my houseguests. This was the beginning of an experience that would prove to be transformative in more ways than I could imagine at the time. Jeremy and Sheila arrived a few hours before the evening service. I learned that Jeremy was a professor at a local university, and that Sheila had been his student in another city. They had begun to talk about building a future together, and religion was the only issue that seriously troubled them. Jeremy was Jewish by birth, but was an atheist. Both his parents were mental health professionals, and he had embraced their contempt for religion. His father was a professor of psychiatry with an international reputation for his research and clinical skills. His mother was a licensed clinical social worker who taught at the same university as her husband. Jeremy's father had been trained in Vienna before the Second World War, and had been persuaded by Sigmund Freud's The Future of an Illusion that religion was a collective neurosis. He was convinced that God did not exist and that the concept of the Divine was a human invention to serve social and psychological needs. Jeremy's mother shared her husband's beliefs. There were no Jewish observances or even Jewish symbols in their home. I was not surprised to learn that Jeremy had had no Jewish religious education. Sheila, on the other hand, came from a religious home. Her parents were sincere believers and had given their children a solid Christian education, but Sheila had some reservations about religion. The threat of hellfire and damnation for religious noncompliance and the negative attitude to other faiths by the family pastor troubled her deeply. However, she knew that her life needed to be spiritually centered and wanted to find an alternative to the religious values and experiences she had encountered. Jeremy had tried to persuade Sheila that her quest for spirituality made no sense, but she told him that it was a vital part of her being. She pointed out that Jeremy had never been exposed to religion and suggested that his rejection of something he had not experienced was unreasonable. Jeremy reluctantly agreed to give religion a try. Sheila thought that Unitarian Christianity might be less objectionable to Jeremy than the Christianity of her childhood. She hoped, too, that it would do something for her. So Jeremy and Sheila had attended services at a Unitarian church near the university, but left uninspired. Then she had suggested that they go to services at aWeiss, Abner is the author of 'Connecting To God Ancient Kabbalah And Modern Psychology', published 2005 under ISBN 9781400083343 and ISBN 1400083346.