Faith as the Fulcrum of Psychic Change: Metaphors of Transformation in Jewish Mysticism and Psychoanalysis

Abstract

This paper examines the role of faith in transformation, proposing that faith, on the part of the patient as well as the analyst, is the turning point of psychic change. It uses the metaphors of transformation of the Jewish mystical tradition as an organizing framework with which to consider the transformational experience within psychoanalytic process and the evolving view within psychoanalysis of the relationship between analyst and analysand as one of asymmetry and mutuality. It posits faith as a mutual yet asymmetrical stance within the psychoanalytic relationship of intersubjective, mutual recognition. In faith, one opens to the possibility of the transcendent Third, an experience of union with a larger whole from which one emerges with a sharper sense of one's authentic truth.

Notes

This paper is drawn from my doctoral dissertation “Repair of the Soul: Applying the Metaphors of Transformation of Jewish Mysticism to Psychoanalytic Process,” Long Island University at C.W. Post, October 2006. I thank Dr. Danielle Knafo, my dissertation advisor, for her invaluable guidance, dedication, and support throughout this project, and my committee members, Dr. Robert Keisner and Dr. Lewis Aron. In particular, I am deeply grateful to Dr. Aron for his enthusiastic encouragement of my scholarship and for his warmth and generosity in mentoring me through the development of this paper for publication. My thanks also to Dr. Jeremy Safran and the anonymous reviewers of Psychoanalytic Dialogues for their insightful comments and suggestions.