A few weeks ago, I came across one of the new & improved psychology systems: Internal Family Systems. And it claims a very high rate of effectiveness:
From the Internal Family Systems Skilled Training Manual:
From the Internal Family Systems Skilled Training Manual:
In the IFS Complex Trauma Study, only one subject out of 13 still qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD after finishing 16 weeks of IFS therapy.
That's pretty good! Better than the years of talk therapy so intensely pushed in my youth. (And also accompanied by "proofs" of its effectiveness, I might add...)
(Full disclosure: I haven't investigated this method in depth.) But just reading articles about the notion of "modular mind" and that a person has "different selves running around inside" him or her immediately made me think of the Jewish idea of a yetzer hara.
Anyway, based on neuroscience, this new method labels and describes the different selves. But I just kept thinking: "yetzer hara" and "nefesh habeheima (the animal soul/self)" and "yetzer tov" and so on.
And the idea that the bad things you do aren't the real you?
Well, doesn't it sound very similar to what Judaism has already been teaching for millennia?
But because the majority of neuroscience researchers and readers aren't familiar with authentic Jewish sources, guess what some align this to? Buddhism!
It's not difficult to understand why, after so much secular psychological science, people yearn for some spirituality in their psychology. All in all, the human soul knows that its human representative is more than just a high-IQ ape, and the human soul cries out for nourishment.
But for a while now in the frum community, people like Sara Yoheved Rigler, Guttman Lochs, and Rivka Levy have been explaining in convincing detail the innate problems with the Eastern spiritual paths.
Many of us are already familiar with what some say about the verse in Beresheit (Genesis 25:6), which states that Avraham Avinu gave gifts to the children of Keturah and sent them "eastward to the land of the east": These were spiritual gifts, sparks of a sort. And then these spiritual gifts apparently got treifed up along the way and became these impure spiritual systems found in the East today.
But the reason why people find these systems so compelling is because there is truth to aspects of these systems.
It's sort of like with Christianity. Christianity kept certain Jewish values, like giving tzedakah, caring for the poor and disadvantaged, talking to God, allowing traditional marriage only, opposing all forms of murder (including abortion--which is a form of murder in most cases except those allowed by Jewish Law--and infanticide) and much more, but they diluted it with a lot of other stuff (like saying that 3 is 1) along with picking and choosing according to their whim (like interpreting some statements of the Torah with absurdly black-and-white literalness and ignoring other obvious and essential statements) or the whim of their time and surrounding culture. And they do have an English version of the Tanach included within their own system.
But again, those core truths (however diluted) are what made Christianity so compelling and what still attracts people today, albeit not on the conscious level.
(Full disclosure: I haven't investigated this method in depth.) But just reading articles about the notion of "modular mind" and that a person has "different selves running around inside" him or her immediately made me think of the Jewish idea of a yetzer hara.
Anyway, based on neuroscience, this new method labels and describes the different selves. But I just kept thinking: "yetzer hara" and "nefesh habeheima (the animal soul/self)" and "yetzer tov" and so on.
And the idea that the bad things you do aren't the real you?
Well, doesn't it sound very similar to what Judaism has already been teaching for millennia?
But because the majority of neuroscience researchers and readers aren't familiar with authentic Jewish sources, guess what some align this to? Buddhism!
It's not difficult to understand why, after so much secular psychological science, people yearn for some spirituality in their psychology. All in all, the human soul knows that its human representative is more than just a high-IQ ape, and the human soul cries out for nourishment.
But for a while now in the frum community, people like Sara Yoheved Rigler, Guttman Lochs, and Rivka Levy have been explaining in convincing detail the innate problems with the Eastern spiritual paths.
Many of us are already familiar with what some say about the verse in Beresheit (Genesis 25:6), which states that Avraham Avinu gave gifts to the children of Keturah and sent them "eastward to the land of the east": These were spiritual gifts, sparks of a sort. And then these spiritual gifts apparently got treifed up along the way and became these impure spiritual systems found in the East today.
But the reason why people find these systems so compelling is because there is truth to aspects of these systems.
It's sort of like with Christianity. Christianity kept certain Jewish values, like giving tzedakah, caring for the poor and disadvantaged, talking to God, allowing traditional marriage only, opposing all forms of murder (including abortion--which is a form of murder in most cases except those allowed by Jewish Law--and infanticide) and much more, but they diluted it with a lot of other stuff (like saying that 3 is 1) along with picking and choosing according to their whim (like interpreting some statements of the Torah with absurdly black-and-white literalness and ignoring other obvious and essential statements) or the whim of their time and surrounding culture. And they do have an English version of the Tanach included within their own system.
But again, those core truths (however diluted) are what made Christianity so compelling and what still attracts people today, albeit not on the conscious level.
Real Healing & Self-Improvement
The point is that while the attraction of the progressive and deeper developments in psychology is very understandable, it's neither the full picture nor the real picture.
When reading about the newer developments and studies, I also get this "Ooh, shiny!" response to it. And the truth is, they are effective (at least to a point) because they're coming closer to classic Jewish mussar. For example, you can find the concepts of "self-compassion" and "a positive self-image" discussed copiously, particularly in Chassidus -- but not using those modern-day terms.
Judaism also discusses "mindfulness" at length and teaches how to achieve it (especially the 978-year-old text, Duties of the Heart), but it doesn't use that terminology.
However, while lacking the modern terminology, the classic Jewish sources contain the whole picture and get to the root of it all while providing you with the authentic path to achieving whatever it is you need to achieve.
The main problem is that when you're lacking the real picture and imbibing a diluted truth, you're ultimately not going to be able to solve your issues at their root.
Just as one example, Judaism considers any kind of suffering (whether it's putting your hand in your pocket for one coin and accidentally pulling out another or massive brutal suffering) to contain very real meaning, even if the suffering is so abominable that there is not human 3-dimensional way to understand it.
Finally, there are the very real issues of the human soul, the Jewish soul, the World to Come and one's place in it, and gathering the broken scattered sparks to bring the world to its final rectification for the benefit of all (and the more you sincerely invest in this rectification, the more you'll enjoy it when it finally arrives; tzaddikim who suffered the most in the This World receive the most enjoyment in the Next World).
And these issues need to be attended to. Even if your mind isn't aware of them, your soul is.
_______
May we all succeed in attaining our soul's rectification from love, emuna work, and truly good deeds, and not via suffering and tribulations.
When reading about the newer developments and studies, I also get this "Ooh, shiny!" response to it. And the truth is, they are effective (at least to a point) because they're coming closer to classic Jewish mussar. For example, you can find the concepts of "self-compassion" and "a positive self-image" discussed copiously, particularly in Chassidus -- but not using those modern-day terms.
Judaism also discusses "mindfulness" at length and teaches how to achieve it (especially the 978-year-old text, Duties of the Heart), but it doesn't use that terminology.
However, while lacking the modern terminology, the classic Jewish sources contain the whole picture and get to the root of it all while providing you with the authentic path to achieving whatever it is you need to achieve.
The main problem is that when you're lacking the real picture and imbibing a diluted truth, you're ultimately not going to be able to solve your issues at their root.
Just as one example, Judaism considers any kind of suffering (whether it's putting your hand in your pocket for one coin and accidentally pulling out another or massive brutal suffering) to contain very real meaning, even if the suffering is so abominable that there is not human 3-dimensional way to understand it.
Finally, there are the very real issues of the human soul, the Jewish soul, the World to Come and one's place in it, and gathering the broken scattered sparks to bring the world to its final rectification for the benefit of all (and the more you sincerely invest in this rectification, the more you'll enjoy it when it finally arrives; tzaddikim who suffered the most in the This World receive the most enjoyment in the Next World).
And these issues need to be attended to. Even if your mind isn't aware of them, your soul is.
_______
May we all succeed in attaining our soul's rectification from love, emuna work, and truly good deeds, and not via suffering and tribulations.
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