Judaism and Psychology

Jews have engaged with and steered psychological inquiry since its inception.

BY JESSICA KRAFT

Jewish psychologists and the influence of Jewish tradition have been instrumental in creating the field of modern psychology. The fundaments of several psychological movements can be traced directly to Jewish values, ideas, and practices, and Jews in the 20th century were at the forefront of research about the psyche and the varieties of human behavior.

Jewish psychologists founded several branches of psychological inquiry. All of the major theorists of the Gestalt school, except Wolfgang Kohler, were Jews. Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Kurt Lewin, and Kurt Goldstein posited theories of perception and understanding based on holistic understanding, rather than a previous model based on the computation of parts.

Psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud and, with the notable exception of Carl Jung, most of its early proponents were also Jews.

Why the Jews?

Some intellectual historians speculate that it was particular Jewish personality and cultural traits that led Jews to lead the field of psychology in its early days.

In a social psychology study of Jewish families, researchers F.M. Herz and E.J. Rosen found that in contrast to some other ethnic groups, Jews on the whole tend to choose verbal expression as a way of expressing emotions, particularly negative or painful experiences. Historical circumstances of oppression, segregation, and confined living conditions often resulted in close-knit communities of Jews who felt their pain deeply and expressed it to one another plainly.

According to studies conducted by Mark Zborowski, an anthropologist who investigated cultural aspects of pain, Jews respond more quickly to physical discomfort than non-Jews. Jewish families often discuss issues and problems in great detail, and suffering individuals are encouraged to “let out” their feelings and achieve catharsis through communication.

According to Peter Langman, “Jews differ from many cultural groups in that they place less value on self-reliance and are less suspicious of taking their problems to professionals.” Thus, the traditional role of rabbi/rebbe involves extensive counseling or psychotherapy.

Traditionally, there was even what today we would call an “intake.” The gabai (rebbe”s assistant) met with people before they met with the rebbe, and then:

After interviewing the supplicant about his family, his background and his troubles, the gabai delivers the kvitl [written description of the presenting problem] and an oral report to the rebbe. (Zborowski & Herzog, 1995, p. 172)

Psychoanalysis and Freud

But it took Josef Breuer, an assimilated Jewish doctor living in Berlin, to apply this “talking cure” with his Jewish patient, Bertha Pappenheim, to ignite the practice of psychoanalysis. These two understood that when they talked about her symptoms, and particularly their origin and emotional side effects, she would feel better. Pappenheim, a notable figure on the scene of Berlin’s intellectual salons, is also well-known as Freud’s case study about Anna O.

Sigmund Freud’s Jewishness is a hotly debated subject. He always described his father’s background as Hasidic, and his mother was raised traditionally Jewish. Though by the time he was growing up the family had partially assimilated, Freud acknowledged how influenced he was by Jewish thought, and the mystical tradition in particular.

David Bakan, in his 1958 book, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition showed that Freud was familiar with, and interested in Kabbalah. Bakan advanced the idea that Freud’s psychoanalysis was a secularization of Jewish mysticism.

According to Langman and Dana Beth Wasserman (1990), Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams was based on interpretive methods used to understand dreams in the Talmud . The aspects of Freudian dream psychology that seemed perhaps shocking to the gentile public were already part of Jewish text: symbolism, word play, enactment of taboos, and numerology. 

Psychoanalysis, as it then developed into a standardized practice, was dominated by Jewish men; Sandor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, and Hans Sachs were a few of the 17 initial members of the Psychoanalytic Society in Vienna. Peter Langman has written that, contrary to a prevailing notion of this group’s secular orientation, “the analysts were aware of their Jewishness and frequently maintained a sense of Jewish purpose and solidarity.”

Later contributors to the practice of psychoanalysis also included a disproportionate number of Jews: Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson, Erich Fromm, Otto Rank and Bruno Bettelheim.

In fact, the practice had become so dominated by Jews that Sigmund Freud based his decision to hand over leadership of the movement to Carl Jung partially because he was not Jewish and would therefore refute the position that psychoanalysis was a Jewish conspiracy. Jung, however, became very interested in Kabbalah and continued to pursue this interest, ultimately linking kabbalistic beliefs with his understanding of the “collective unconscious.”

Other Major Contributors

Erich Fromm evinced a particularly Jewish ethos in his studies of ethics, love, and human freedom. Fromm had studied Talmud extensively in his youth in Germany, and was guided by his father and grandfather, both rabbis. Though he became largely secular in his interpretations of Hebrew scripture, the influence of biblical stories, particularly in Genesis, greatly impacted his work.

In the realm of popular psychology, Joseph Jastrow, whose father authored the well-known Talmud dictionary, was the first recipient of an American Ph.D. in psychology in 1898 and established a psychology lab at the University of Wisconsin. With a syndicated advice column and a talk radio show, he was the first psychologist to stir up public interest in psychological inquiry.

During the same time period, Hugo Munsterberg founded American applied psychology and became a well-known figure in America with his numerous books and magazine articles. Boris Sidis pioneered personality studies, entertaining the public with his spectacular cases of split personalities.

Abraham Arden Brill and Isador Coriat brought Freud beyond the European urban centers by translating his work into English. Influential psychoanalyst Alfred Adler also fed the public’s hunger for in-depth knowledge of their inner lives by going on lecture tours and giving numerous interviews in which he was helped by his translator, the psychiatrist Walter Beran Wolfe.

Jewish Texts and Ideas

All of these psychologists received a solid Jewish education, at least during their childhood years, and for some of them, this exposure to Jewish mores and stories influenced their later work by providing archetypal human relationships, such as the conflict between son and father, represented in Abraham and Isaac, and the lament of childless women like Sarah.

In particular, Adler used the original family networks of the Torah to illuminate contemporary family dynamics. Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, along with other forefathers and mothers, provided models for kinship behavior.

Furthermore, Jewish involvement in the development of psychology in the early 20th century helped to create a more tolerant culture than in Western Europe. As Jewish psychologists participated in researching and defining human nature, they also sought scientific justifications of the role of the Jew in modern society.

Many of them popularized aspects of their studies and advocated against prevailing conceptions about hereditary intelligence, ethnic stereotypes, and particularly Christian interpretations of the unconscious. They also delved into previously taboo aspects of human behavior, producing classic studies of the social psychology of sexuality, deviance, and immorality.

Capitalizing on the wide appeal of their ideas, Jewish psychologists articulated a state of mental health and social cohesion that served the dual purpose of benefiting the Jewish and other immigrant communities, particularly in America.

Jewish understanding of the roots of human behavior as communicated in the Talmud are often more in tune with the revelations of psychological science than other religious frameworks. In Jewish tradition, the impulse to do good, the yetzer hatov, is balanced out by the yetzer hara, the evil inclination. This complex idea that every individual embodies productive and destructive instincts allows for a more nuanced self-development process than a moral compass that sees the pure individual tainted by sin and in need of salvation.

Issues in Jewish Psychology Today

Some Jews have since seized upon the insights of modern psychology to address issues of mental illness in the Jewish community. Their specifically Jewish psychology infuses a scientific understanding of the functioning of the mind and emotions with an appreciation of God and Jewish history.

Rabbi Abraham Twerski, for example, has done much to educate these communities about addiction and domestic abuse, even drawing specific parallels to the practices of Alcoholics Anonymous and wisdom in the Talmud. Other practitioners like Rabbi Harold Kushner and Dr. Joyce Brothers have applied Jewish wisdom and insight to modern relationships, and have gained a huge following among Jews and non-Jews alike.

And yet many observant Jewish communities have been slow to take on the insights of psychology, remaining in denial about specific mental health issues. This might be because psychological theories can conflict with traditional Jewish ideas. The Jewish system of mitzvot, commandments, presumes that individuals have agency and free will. Classical psychological concepts like the unconscious and contemporary approaches that stress psychopharmacology and the physiology of psychological disorders may challenge traditional Jewish notions of “freedom.”

In the secular world, however, Jews have assumed a central role in the formation of new psychological theories and applications to this day, and the continuing contribution of Jews to the field of psychology is a testament to the perceptive position of the Jewish people and the emotionally astute cultural heritage that binds them.

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Now to Brainwashing…

Brainwashing, also called Coercive Persuasion, systematic effort to persuade nonbelievers to accept a certain allegiance, command, or doctrine. A colloquial term, it is more generally applied to any technique designed to manipulate human thought or action against the desire, will, or knowledge of the individual. By controlling the physical and social environment, an attempt is made to destroy loyalties to any unfavourable groups or individuals, to demonstrate to the individual that his attitudes and patterns of thinking are incorrect and must be changed, and to develop loyalty and unquestioning obedience to the ruling party.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/brainwashing

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Gus: Excellent you are still with me… 

We need to connect some dots. In Ron Unz views, the Jewish cabal could be responsible for 9/11:

Admittedly, I’d occasionally heard of some considerable oddities regarding the 9/11 attacks here and there, and these certainly raised some suspicions. Most days I would glance at the Antiwar.com front page, and it seemed that some Israeli Mossad agents had been caught while filming that plane attacks in NYC, while a much larger Mossad “art student” spy operation around the country had also been broken up around the same time. Apparently, FoxNews had even broadcast a multi-part series on the latter topic before that expose was scuttled and “disappeared” under ADL pressure.

In 2007, Counterpunch itself published a fascinating follow-up story about the arrest of that group of Israeli Mossad agents in NYC, who were caught filming and apparently celebrating the plane attacks on that fateful day, and the Mossad activity seemed to be far larger than I had previously realized. But all these details remained a little fuzzy in my mind next to my overriding concerns about wars in Iraq and Iran.

However, by the end of 2008 my focus had begun to change. Bush was leaving office without having started an Iranian war, and America had successfully dodged the bullet of an even more dangerous John McCain administration. I assumed that Barack Obama would be a terrible president and he proved worse than my expectations, but I still breathed a huge sigh of relief every day that he was in the White House.

Moreover, around that same time I’d stumbled across an astonishing detail of the 9/11 attacks that demonstrated the remarkable depths of my own ignorance. In a Counterpunch article, I’d discovered that immediately following the attacks, the supposed terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden had publicly denied any involvement, even declaring that no good Muslim would have committed such deeds.

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Gus:

So, the question has to be asked: would jews commit suicide to pilot planes into the towers?. The simple answer is no. The next question is how long would it take for a Jew disguised as an Arab to convince a group of 30 or so Muslim fanatics to commit suicide by flying planes into the towers? Five minutes? Two hours? Or less? "Look guys, here is the plan..."

We do not have to go into far-fetched territory. The Muslims fanatics ARE ALREADY BRAINWASHED by their own beliefs. It would not take much psychological manipulation (BY ANYONE, including the Saudis) to give them an extraordinary role in killing “infidels” and striking at the heart of infidel territory. So the theory that the Jews (not all of them obviously, but some devious enough, say MOSSAD) could have be responsible for 9/11 can hold some water…

Now HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CONVICTED OF THE 9/11 CRIME?

SO FAR: NONE.

The 9/11 Trial: Why Is It Taking So Long?… I KNOW ! I know… Let’s blame the CORONAVIRUS !!!!!!

The trial of five men accused of plotting the attacks had been scheduled for early next year — almost 20 years after the hijackings. Now even that schedule won’t be met. Here are the reasons.

By Carol Rosenberg

April 17, 2020

This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

WASHINGTON — Next year is the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings that killed 2,976 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field. For much of those two decades, the United States has been holding five men accused of helping plot the attacks.

But they have yet to come to trial. The military’s legal proceedings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have lurched from setback to setback, disappointing the families of the victims who have watched in frustration and dismay. Then over the summer, a military judge finally set a timetable toward a trial that envisioned a start date early next year.

Now, that schedule has suffered a one-two punch that promises more delay. First, the coronavirus crisis has cut off most access to Guantánamo Bay, complicating the work of the prosecutors, defense teams, judiciary and support staff who shuttle between the base and the mainland. Then the judge abruptly announced last month that he was retiring from the Air Force and would leave the case next week.

Most pretrial work, including legal meetings, is on hold. The prison at Guantánamo does not allow the five defendants to meet with their lawyers by telephone or video link.

The departing judge, Col. W. Shane Cohen, has postponed his plan to begin the trial on Jan. 11, 2021, by at least two months. But it will be up to the next judge — who, when chosen, will be the fourth since 2012 — to work out when to start what is envisioned to be a yearlong trial.

The events of the last month are only the latest obstacles. Here are 10 key reasons it has taken so long.

The Black Sites

The prisoners were held out of reach of the courts for years in the belief that they might have information that could stop another attack, help disrupt the Qaeda terrorist network and lead them to Osama bin Laden. Rather than take the defendants to New York to trial after their captures in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003, the United States dispatched them to a secret network of prisons run overseas by the C.I.A.

“C.I.A. was never interested in prosecuting,” one of the architects of the interrogation program, James E. Mitchell, testified this year at Guantánamo.

“That, I think was the core conflict between the C.I.A. and F.B.I.” in the black sites where defendants were held, Dr. Mitchell said. “The C.I.A. was not going to let them set off another catastrophic attack in the United States. They were going to walk right up to the line of what was legal, put their toes on it, and lean forward.”

It was not until September 2006 that President George W. Bush had the defendants transferred to Guantánamo for trial.

The Legacy of Torture

The years the defendants spent in C.I.A. custody complicated — some say contaminated — everything that would follow. During that period, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, accused of being the architect of the attacks, was waterboarded 183 times. All five defendants were brutalized, isolated and kept incommunicado.

What they told their interrogators was inadmissible in court. So, to prosecute Mr. Mohammed and the others, the Justice Department had F.B.I. agents question them again at Guantánamo in 2007 in an effort to obtain confessions untainted by torture.

Defense lawyers have been challenging those F.B.I. interrogations in lengthy court proceedings, essentially a minitrial before a jury is chosen. The lawyers argue that the prisoners had been conditioned by the C.I.A. to tell future interrogators what they wanted to hear and want the judge to exclude their statements to the F.B.I.

A Slow Start

Before the prisoners could be charged at Guantánamo, Congress had to approve new military commissions to replace a format the Supreme Court had shut down as unconstitutional. To normalize their detentions, the Pentagon gave each defendant a status hearing and first International Red Cross visit. Even then, years into their custody, the defendants were denied lawyers.

The five defendants were formally charged for the first time at Guantánamo in June 2008, more than five years after their capture. The death penalty case drew swift criticism as sacrificing due process for national security interests.

Then questions arose about the mental competence of one defendant and whether a manifesto attributed to all five — claiming responsibility for the attacks — could be the basis of a guilty plea. In a capital case, the rules of the war court required a military jury to hear evidence and then deliberate a punishment in a two-step process.

Obama Intervenes

President Barack Obama, who had come to office promising to close Guantánamo, suspended the military trials for a period of review. One part of the administration revamped the military commissions with Congress while, on a separate track, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. concluded that the Sept. 11 case should be tried in New York. The plan met with fierce resistance.

Some New Yorkers feared a trial of that magnitude would snarl traffic in Lower Manhattan, harm business and put a terrorist target on New York City. Congress passed legislation forbidding federal trials for Guantánamo prisoners.

The case started anew on May 5, 2012, with new charges and a new law that gave war crimes defendants protections similar to those offered in national security trials in federal court.

Capital Case Complexities

A prosecution decision to try the five men together in a capital punishment case added layers of complexity and lengthened the process.

By law, each defendant gets a qualified death penalty defender, known as a learned counsel, who is paid by the Pentagon. These seasoned criminal defense lawyers demanded experts, consultants, more lawyers and information that might help them argue against the death penalty, known as mitigation evidence.

In a joint trial, a setback in one defense team slows progress for all. In 2014, the first judge split off the case of one defendant when an ethical issue arose over the F.B.I. turning a defense team member into a confidential informant. But the prosecutors insisted on reuniting the cases, adding months to the litigation.

C.I.A. Involvement

The C.I.A. and prosecutors, invoking national security protections, have refused to turn over trial preparation materials to the defense lawyers or were slow to do so.

Initially, the lawyers said, the prosecutors provided the same evidence that they had prepared for the lower standard Bush administration-era trials. Lengthy pretrial proceedings — discovery requests, motions, hearings — ensued, with defense lawyers demanding, and the judges sometimes agreeing, that they get access to the kind of evidence they would see in a federal case.

As they did, the defense teams began complaining of government intrusions into their work, including the mysterious appearance of a former C.I.A. contract interpreter on a defense team and the discovery of eavesdropping equipment in their meeting rooms. The developments forced the trial judges to take testimony to try to resolve a series of ethical issues confounding fair trial rights.

Enduring Secrecy

Prosecutors declared last Nov. 1 that they had given the defense lawyers all the pretrial evidence they were entitled to see. But in the months that followed, they continued to turn over hundreds of documents, in part because of changing classification rules.

Years before, the chief prosecutor predicted that a White House decision to declassify a Senate Intelligence Committee study on the C.I.A. black site program would provide the defense lawyers with the information they needed for a fair trial. It did not. The 500-page, partly redacted summary that was released in December 2014 served as a road map for what information defense lawyers would seek to prepare for trial. Litigation continues on access to evidence.

Transcripts of public hearings are released to the public with portions blacked out, suggesting that something said aloud in court has been retroactively classified.

Legal Quandaries

The years the men spent in C.I.A. custody raised questions about admissibility of evidence with no real precedent in American jurisprudence. The military judge’s job includes balancing what the government contends are the national security secrets of the case against the right of the men to a fair trial, a complex juggling act.

Because it is a national security case, a judge cannot order the government or its intelligence agencies to disclose information. Instead, the judge has the option of suspending a trial until they do — or dismissing the case.

Pretrial hearings and appeals courts have also had to address some basic legal questions confronting the hybrid federal-military court — like the definition of a war crime and how much international law applies to when the war on terrorism began. Prosecution and defense lawyers have been calling witnesses, making legal arguments and filing multiple briefs on these issues.

Location, location, location

The crude court compound the Pentagon built at Guantánamo as a temporary outpost of the war on terrorism turned out to be expensive and inadequate.

Everyone but the men accused of the crime commute to Guantánamo from Washington, and points beyond for one- to three-week hearing sessions that have been plagued by flight delays, cancellations, mold-damaged offices and communications failures.

Judges have also canceled hearings because of hurricanes, health issues, higher court challenges and, recently, the coronavirus.

Revolving personnel

Two of the three military officers who presided as judges in the case chose to retire from service and leave the case; the third left the bench for a prestigious position in the Marine Corps.

Military defense lawyers typically spend two or three years on the case and then go back to the legal offices within their respective services to advance their careers, and earn promotions. Some court contractors find the pace of travel and crude conditions at Guantánamo too difficult and move on.

A 75-year-old capital defense lawyer who had been on the case for eight years is leaving for health reasons. His successor needs a security clearance, to meet the prisoner and time to read and absorb eight years of litigation, all hindered by restrictions stemming from the coronavirus.

So here we are… We’re none the wiser. We know nothing. And not only this, engineering reports are conflicting as to why the towers fell. 

My own flimsy explanation (already posted on this site) relies on my metallurgy studies back in the 1960s: At 750 degrees Celsius, instead of expanding, STEEL CONTRACTS, then expands again. This apparently is due to the atoms of carbon realigning themselves into a different lattice under heat. My theory is simplistic: some of the vertical beams were expanding while others were contracting. This difference within the few remaining beams after impact would be enough not to be able to support the weight of the stories above the impact. 

As well, due to the heat, and vaporisation of the aluminium of the plane, some rust, dust and the disintegrating plasterboards would eventually combine into THERMITE dust in various places. Thermite burns at over 4000 degrees Celsius… This would have melted the beams into liquid giving the impression of sheer cuts at floor level as if cut by oxyacetylene. Once the top collapses, the weight engenders the domino effect of floor after floor popping down. No need to have placed explosives to demolish the buildings at priori. 

Awaiting the secret files releases by Joe Biden, with boredom already... Note, there is no official version until these files are released...

We might get a surprise...

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The FBI has released a newly declassified document related to logistical support given to two of the Saudi hijackers in the run-up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The document details contacts the hijackers had with Saudi associates in the US but does not provide proof that senior Saudi government officials were complicit in the plot.

Released on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, the document is the first investigative record to be disclosed since President Joe Biden ordered a declassification review of materials that for years have remained out of public view.

The 16-page document is a summary of an FBI interview done in 2015 with a man who had frequent contact with Saudi nationals in the US and who supported the first hijackers to arrive in the country before the attacks.

Biden last week ordered the Justice Department and other agencies to conduct a declassification review and release what documents they can over the next six months.

He had encountered pressure from victims’ families, who have long sought the records as they pursue a lawsuit in New York alleging that Saudi government officials supported the hijackers.

The heavily redacted document was disclosed on Saturday night, hours after Biden attended September 11 memorial events in New York, Pennsylvania and northern Virginia.

Victims’ relatives had earlier objected to Biden’s presence at ceremonial events as long as the documents remained classified.

The Saudi government has long denied any involvement in the attacks.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington has said it supported the full declassification of all records as a way to “end the baseless allegations against the Kingdom once and for all.”

The embassy said that any allegation that Saudi Arabia was complicit was “categorically false.”

The trove of documents is being released at a politically delicate time for the US and Saudi Arabia, two nations that have forged a strategic – if often difficult – alliance, particularly on counterterrorism matters.

The Biden administration in February released an intelligence assessment implicating Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the 2018 killing of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but drew criticism from Democrats for avoiding a direct punishment of the crown prince himself.

Victims’ relatives cheered the document’s release as a significant step in their effort to connect the attacks to Saudi Arabia.

“The findings and conclusions in this FBI investigation validate the arguments we have made in the litigation regarding the Saudi government’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks,” Jim Kreindler, a lawyer for the victims’ relatives, said in a statement.

“This document, together with the public evidence gathered to date, provides a blueprint for how (al-Qaeda) operated inside the US with the active, knowing support of the Saudi government.”

That includes, he added, Saudi officials exchanging phone calls among themselves and al-Qaeda operatives and then having “accidental meetings” with the hijackers while providing them with assistance to get settled and find flight schools.

Regarding September 11, there has been speculation of official involvement since shortly after the attacks, when it was revealed that 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudis. Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda at the time, was from a prominent family in the kingdom.

The US investigated some Saudi diplomats and others with Saudi government ties who knew hijackers after they arrived in the US, according to documents that have already been declassified.

Still, the 9/11 Commission report found in 2004 “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” the attacks that al-Qaeda masterminded, though it noted Saudi-linked charities could have diverted money to the group.

-AAP

Read more: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/us-news/2021/09/12/sept-11-documents-released/

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