I Mostly Agree With His Interlocutor!

Once Psychology comes up, he starts asking me all sorts of questions about what I’m planning to do with my degree once I’m done. I inform him that God willing I am going to work within the Jewish community. He snorts in derision. “Come on, how many frum people go to psychologists?” he asks me.

I reply that while there are a lot more people than he probably thinks, there’s still more who can benefit from having someone to talk to, and how Judaism places emphasis on having someone to confide in. He waves me off: “Yeah, but you’re probably learning all sorts of kefirah and apikorsus (heresy and blasphemy) anyway.” I patiently try to explain to him that while I do encounter blatant instances of concepts and beliefs that are incompatible with Judaism, I tend to let those things slide, because they are not important. For all intents and purposes, I assure him, I am trying to learn the techniques that can be utilized in therapy and in determining how to respond and identify certain emotional issues. But the core understanding of what makes a human being tick, I hope to get from Torah sources.

He looks at me, confused. What do I mean?

I try to explain that my insights into human nature is not coming from the secular sources, but rather from classic and contemporary Jewish sources.

“Which sources?” he wants to know.

Alei Shur, Chovot HaLevavot, the writings of the RamBaN, etc. I list off a few more works to make sure he understands.

“Mussar?”

Yes, Mussar, chassidus, Chumash. All of the above.

He shakes his head: “But mussar doesn’t work!” he protests.

I look him in the eye and gently tell him “I can tell by your response that you’ve never learned mussar properly. If you had, you wouldn’t be so shocked.”

“But mussar is hard!” he insists.

Of course it’s hard – in the sense that it takes a tremendous amount of intellectual honesty, bravery, and effort to implement and maintain the strategies toward refinement that the tzaddikim have prescribed. And therapy is also hard and time consuming, and involves similar ideas. A synthesis of the two isn’t so far fetched, after all.

The conversation came to an end at that point; I think I left him in a daze…