Maimonides' Cure of Souls: Medieval Precursor of Psychoanalysis

Maimonides' Cure of Souls: Medieval Precursor of Psychoanalysis, by D. Bakan, D. Merkur, and D. Weiss. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009. 183 pp. $35.00. This book is fascinating. For those of us for whom study of Maimonides has been rooted in history of thought or in systematic philosophy and theology, this book provides psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic reading of Maimonides. And, for those of us for whom study of Freud has been rooted in history of psychoanalysis, this book provides insight into important source for some of Freud's most radical ideas. It is Merkurs continuation of work of Bakan, who died before its completion. The choice of Maimonides was good one for several reasons. First, Maimonides' The Eight Chapters, his work on psychology, and his The Guide for Perplexed existed in translations in Freud's time. Second, Maimonides was cultural hero for assimilating Jews in nineteenth and twentieth centuries who read Maimonides as scientist and rationalist, creating for themselves kind of Kant. Third, as modern cultural hero, Maimonides was almost surely subject of lectures and conferences at Vienna lodge of B'nai Brith that Freud attended regularly and in which he also gave lectures. Finally, as Merkur shows, Freud, while not himself observant or even religious in theological sense, came from educated Jewish family in which works of Maimonides would likely have been available. Chapter One argues that Maimonides saw his chief task as healer of body and soul. His therapy is composed of two parts: first, practice opposite virtue or vice until one has reached golden mean of balanced behavior, and second, believe that sin can be corrected. Teshuva (repentance), in its intellectual as well as its actional dimensions, is, thus, Maimonides' cognitivebehavioral therapy. Chapter Two presents Maimonides' intellectualist mysticism, which is an aha' experience of creative inspiration . . . when someone gets' idea . . . when 'the penny drops.' Then, through engaging in certain specified intrapsychic process, it is possible to create the possibility of radical reform of condition of human Merkur identifies this process as meditation (hitbonenut). It is accomplished by careful reasoning and is followed by practicing presence of God, i.e., a cognitively rich and varied process of inspiration that he [Maimonides] identified with biblical prophecy . . . engaging God in prophetic dialogue. Bakan and Merkur call whole rational mysticism. As I read Maimonides in his twelfth-century context, I find that he teaches that there is experience of being in ptesence of God. Bakan and Merkur, however, dispute my claim and propose that there is nothing post-philosophic at all. Rather, that the bliss is never postrarional or nonrational . . . indicate[s] that cognitively limited or seemingly empty experience was emphatically not content of Maimonides' contemplative I think Bakan and Merkur, by denying extramental existence of Intelligences and intellect, belief that was common in medieval Jewish and Muslim philosophical theology, have distorted Maimonides and, therefore, also his understanding of ultimate religious experience. However, others scholars share Bakan and Merkur 's reading of Maimonides, and they may be right. Nonetheless, I suspect that denial of postrational is projection of modern sensibilities and conceptualities. Chapter Three argues that, for Maimonides, imagination is central to prophecy, but imagination is also source of sin in that it allows humans to imagine that evil is good. Thus, imagining bad act to be good induces one to actional sin, and imagining God to be anthropomorphic induces one to theological sin. Maimonides handled theological sin by making all prophecy (except that of Moses) metaphor, i. …