Weekly Moment With the Rebbe

Mental Health, Jewish Values

Psychology and Judaism – can they co-exist? Does analysis lead to religious introspection – or secular selfishness? The Avner Institute presents an interview with psychologist Yehuda Landes who, over 40 years ago, realized the importance of Judaism as the basis of ethical conduct and meaning — and the power of Chabad Chassidus, where the Rebbe’s influence on the mind and soul predated many modern techniques.

In loving memory of Hadassah bas Shneur Zalman

“Growth and Sensitivity to Yiddishkeit”

The following are excerpts of the interview with Dr. Yehuda Landes, courtesy of The Uforatzto Journal, Summer, 5736/1976:

How would you describe your professional life?

. . . . I feel that most families, be they Jewish or non-Jewish, living in the twentieth century in America, are under considerable family stress in areas of earning a living, communication within the family, and dealing with emotional feelings that are sometimes unclear or withheld. These feelings create family and individual conflicts which can result in attenuating behavior repertoires and causing behavior to be inefficient. This results in neurotic symptoms of behavior.

I really don’t believe that an American family can survive the conditions of life easily without frank and neurotic symptoms of behavior. And I think most families have their fair share. I have noticed, however, that families who are committed to values within the context of the family, to focusing on something more than fulfilling needs, expectancies, and desires for things and events, or sensory joy and pleasures, are families that tend to have much more enriching relationships. They are in general much happier and more comfortable.

How has becoming a religious Jew affected your practice?

. . . . Basically, I think my Jewish patients are fearful about my religious values because they feel somewhat threatened and concerned that I may require them to change into religious people. My own feeling is that I have a right and a necessity to make clear to them my own particular values and religious persuasions. I am delighted to talk to them about Jewish matters if they bring it up in the course of therapy or outside therapy, but I also feel very strongly that Hashem gives all Jews a choice, and they have a right to that choice.

My doing psychotherapy with Jews is not a technique designed to persuade them to be observant Jews. Nevertheless, I sometimes get carried away and will let my values communicate . . . . I have little doubt that my particular observance of Jewish values has been made explicit and my patients know it. As a matter of fact, I have lost several Jewish patient families who are uncomfortable with any overt demonstration of Judaism insofar as their own identification as Jews is minimal. I would classify them as basically secular Jews who are acutely anxious and fearful of Jewish observance.

It is analogous to a neurotic phobia. I resolve this loss with the fact that not every psychotherapist can get to every individual or family effectively. I have some attrition in my practice as does every psychotherapist based on the nature of the contract between the psychotherapist and the patient.

The implied question here, of course, that’s most difficult to examine is how I may have modified my approach and tactics to the treatment of Jews. . . . . I think that as I have become more aware of the Halacha and the customs among Chassidim, there is no doubt in my mind that I reinforce other behaviors selectively according to how I see individual problems and how I see myself with my patients. What this means is, that there once was a time when I would support behavior among Jews and non-Jews which was not endangering the lives of anybody else but certainly was totally against Jewish law and Jewish custom.

How do you see your role as a Jewish psychologist as being different from that of a qualified Orthodox rabbi who must also understand people?

. . . . The rabbi, in my opinion, has a very particular specialty and is uniquely qualified in that specialty and that is that he knows the Jewish law. He knows the Halacha and the Responsa so that the law can be interpreted in terms of how a Jew must live in our contemporary society. I think any person who is ba’al smicha [ordained] has and it is a very necessary specialty role among Jews.

I might say that Chabad rabbis who are into uforatzto [outreach] work are often selected to be particularly skilled listeners and communicators. They operate often in the context of psychologists and they do a very good job at this, indeed. I have noticed that on the West Coast the Chabad rabbis that I have met are outstanding in their ability to talk with Jews at the level the Jews are at, whether they be in the university or in the prison, children or heads of families, etc.

The clinical psychologist works with individuals and families that are having problems that are psychological in nature, in that they relate to life in the family, life at work, problems of individual survival, problems of emotional disorder, unresolved conflict, fears, etc. Many of these problems, however, do have spiritual relatedness, and I think that a psychologist who is unaware of moral and value issues is probably a very inefficient psychotherapist.

I think that just as a lay person can only do an incomplete job in understanding the Shulchan Aruch, so the rabbi may not have the skills, the time, or the clinical ability with which he can offer help to people within the grips of neurotic or psychotic processes.

Can you develop for us a world view as a religious Jewish psychologist as compared to a non-religious Jewish psychologist?

. . . . There has been a whole tradition among the past three generations of psychologists, specifically led by the neo-Freudian and the humanistic psychologists such as Eric Fromm, Karen Horney, Fritz Perls, Albert Ellis and the encounter movement in general, who espouse the point of view that man is the center of the universe. That the essential purpose for man is the evolution of man in a “better” man through personal growth and creativity. This is often defined as developing a wider range of feelings and experiences, both sensory in terms of touching, and emotional feeling arousal, and different living styles, even living attitudes. The operative point is that one can creatively grow and creatively develop and do anything as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody. Man is solely responsible for man, and this is enough to fulfill all that is expected of man.

It has always been curious to me that Jews who are non-observant but secularly identified as Jews have often been in the forefront of this movement. . . . . I have never quite understood the joy in the worship of man in light of human experience in the twentieth century which, to me, seems like a century filled with wars and holocausts and catastrophes caused by men to their fellow men. I am inclined to doubt man’s essential reasonableness, civilization and social superiority or any other capacity that makes him deserved of self-worship.

As a matter of fact, the whole Haskala [Enlightenment] movement in Judaism which aped the gentiles in the 17th and 18th centuries, emphasizing humanity and man’s enlightenment, has never made much sense to me because I don’t see men as enlightened. I see man basically as self-seeking and if left to his own individual devices occasionally showing some individual sensitivities to his fellow men, but more likely to end up in a rather animalistic in-drive state and somewhat like one might experience in the society of a zoo full of baboons. I have strong doubts about the effectiveness of man’s self-legislation, man’s self-imposed morality on man for the sake of man.

However, one consequence of this humanistic psychology is such therapists often propose to clients to do exactly what they feel like doing, “to let it all hang out,” “to get free,” “to do their thing,” regardless of its consequences on family or parents or on themselves or on humanity as a whole. I think this attitude is greatly responsible for the tremendous wave of sexual and aggressive permissiveness in our time. It has caused tremendous family and individual confusion and has caused many families, both Jewish and non-Jewish families, to break up. Many people are disappointed that they are not continuously happy, continuously pleased with new sensory pleasures and delights.

. . . . The Jewish view, according to Halacha, is one of moderation, one of restraint, one of modesty, one of dignity where one adheres to a higher law, law of Hashem as defined in the Torah. There is some loss of individual freedom because the Halachic rules don’t always make sense at this time. They do not always seem reasonable from man’s perspective. The whole ordered life of the observant Jew, however, is a life which is inherently more clear, more sensible and emotionally safer. The family that pursues Torah and mitzvoth finds emotional, intellectual, and spiritual delights that are unavailable to non-observant Jews.

How would you describe Jewish America, i.e. California today?

. . . . We are largely in a disaster state in California, with some islands of Jewish observance and traditional Jewish practice. Most Jews in California are uninvolved and have minimal affiliation with Jewish institutions. They identify as secular Jews and they will occasionally contribute to Jewish Federation philanthropies because they have a certain loyalty to the State of Israel, but their own lifestyle in many ways are indistinguishable from non-Jews.

. . . . I think that the level of sensitivity of what it means to be a Jew has so diminished here, that the Jewish educational needs for California are now massive. It will take decades of work by observant, dedicated Jewish leadership to help – perhaps not this generation, but the children of this generation and their children to understand what it means to be a Jew and how to follow the Jewish law.

How do you view the role of Lubavitch in this contemporary Jewish world?

The Lubavticher Rebbe, shlita, has established an amazing operation in the galut [exile]. He takes young Jewish men and women, gives them a superb education in Jewish life, custom, and law, and sends them throughout the Jewish world to teach Jews. These are people who don’t do a “number” on Jews but basically make themselves available to help Jews. And they do this in a sensitive, non-pushing, caring way which deeply communicates with Jews.

I have noticed that even people who are far away from observant Judaism and whose own lives are uninvolved in observant practices are nevertheless often captured by the Rebbe’s shluchim, with whom they develop a close relationship. This relationship is so Jewish-oriented that it increases the sensitivity of these non-participating Jews to what Jewish life really is, and they make a spiritual connection.

I have always been impressed with B.F. Skinner’s theory of how behavior can be changed in organisms, where . . . you wait for a behavior to be elicited from the organism; that is, the behavior has to come independently and perhaps randomly from the organism, at which point that behavior is reinforced, either by a signal or a recognition or a reward. The behavior then has a greater likelihood of reoccurring.

In many ways, the Lubavitchers do exactly that. They circulate as identifiable, observant Jews among the sea of Jews in this galut and they wait for some signal or some indication of elicited behavior to emerge from a Jew, i.e. show of interest, a question, a debate, an argument, etc., at which point they respond accurately and clearly according to Jewish contact that results in a growth and sensitivity to Yiddishkeit that is delightful to observe.

It’s always been amusing to me to note that the technique of rewarding eliciting behaviors is a technique that has been used by Chassidim since the days of the Ba’al Shem Tov and perhaps earlier. It apparently was discovered prior to the 1940s of B.F. Skinner.

. . . . I think that we could easily multiply the number of rabbis from Lubavitch in California by a factor times ten in order to get the kind of results that we need before the assimilation is complete. . . . . I don’t know where we are going to get the manpower from Lubavitch to do this job insofar as the system is always in a monetary crisis, but I think as the manpower availability grows, the effects will be enormous and very leveraged, so that increasing numbers of shluchim will have greatly increasing effects in California.

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