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Inquiry, questioning, and wonder are defining features of both psychoanalysis and the Jewish tradition. The question invites inquiry, analysis, discussion, debate, multiple meanings, and interpretation that continues across the generations. If questions and inquiry are the mainstay of Jewish scholarship, then it should not be surprising that they would be central to the psychoanalytic method developed by Sigmund Freud. The themes taken up in this book are universal: trauma, traumatic reenactment, intergenerational transmission of trauma, love, loss, mourning, ritual-these subjects are of particular relevance and concern within Jewish thought and the history of the Jewish people, and they raise questions of great relevance to psychoanalysis both theoretically and clinically. In Answering a Question with a Question: Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Jewish Thought: A Tradition of Inquiry, Editors, Aron and Henik, have brought together an international collection of contemporary scholars and clinicians to address the interface and mutual influence of Jewish thought and modern psychoanalysis, two traditions of inquiry.
List of contents
Acknowledgements Introduction Lewis Aron and Libby Henik 1. DESIRE, LOVE AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE SELF Rashi and Desire: Reading Rashi’s Reading of Genesis 39 Cheryl Goldstein “The Impressive Caesura” and “New Beginning” in Psychoanalysis and Jewish Mystical Experience—Birth, Creation and Transformation Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel On Abandoning Aristotle: Love in Psychoanalysis and Jewish Philosophy William Kolbrener Bewilderments: The Story of the Spies Avivah Zornberg 2. TRAUMA AND BREAKDOWN The “Hearing Heart” and the “Voice” of Breakdown Ofra Eshel “Have You Seen My Servant Job?” A Psychological Approach to Suffering Richard Kradin On the Use of Selected Lead Words in Tracing the Trajectory of the Transmission of Transgenerational Trauma in the Genesis Ancestral Saga Menorah Lafayette Rotenberg 3. MOURNING, RITUALS AND MEMORY The “Coat of Many Colors” as Linking Object: A Nodal Moment in the Narrative of Jacob’s Bereavement for Joseph Moshe Halevi Spero Shadows of the Unseen Grief Cheryl Friedman Across a Lifetime: On the Dynamics of Commemorative Ritual Joyce Slochower 4. HOLOCAUST, INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION AND MEMORY The Testimonial Process as a Reversal of the Traumatic Shutdown of Narrative and Symbolization Dori Laub Holocaust Memories and their Transmission Annette Furst In Bed with a Collaborator: Reenactments of Historical Trauma by a Granddaughter of Holocaust Survivors Nirit Gradwohl Pisano Contributors Index
About the author
Libby Henik (LCSW) is in private practice in New York and New Jersey.
Summary
The themes taken up in this book are universal: trauma, traumatic re-enactment, intergenerational transmission of trauma, love, loss, mourning, ritual—these subjects are of particular relevance and concern within Jewish thought and the history of the Jewish people, and they raise questions of great relevance to psychoanalysis both theoretically and clinically.
Additional text
“Answering a Question with a Question is for those who want to understand the covered topics from a psychoanalytic perspective. It is recommended for academic collections and other collections with readers interested in the confluence of Jewish sources and psychology.”
