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The Biblical Psychoanalyst

A Bimonthly Newsletter Featuring the Work of Rabbi Dennis G. Shulman, Ph.D.

Volume One, Issue Two November-December 2003

Article

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What Gives Our Life Purpose: A Biblical-Psychoanalytic Perspective

In response to many requests for this material, we are pleased to provide an excerpt of the final chapter of The Genius of Genesis. In this excerpt, Dennis Shulman examines the question of life's meaning in the light of his study of the Bible and his experience as a psychoanalyst.

No portion of this article is to be reproduced unless prior permission is granted in writing by the author.

As I have argued in this chapter, psychoanalysis does have a basis in human values and ethics. However, what psychoanalysis and other contemporary psychological models lack is a theory that locates the individual within a broader context, and that can provide us meaning. The glory of psychoanalysis is its painstaking and exclusive focus on the single life. The individual is not only the subject of the psychoanalytic inquiry, but also its only goal. In an attempt to legitimize psychoanalysis as an objective science, Freud severed all conceptual ties to the long-standing religious and philosophical traditions that involved God, community and social responsibility. Freud's integrated human being, after his successful analysis was completed, loved and worked in a world in which he is existentially alone. Perhaps this is what is at the basis of Freud's pessimistic observation that the goal of psychoanalysis is to transform neurotic misery into ordinary human unhappiness.

The Book of Genesis offers us something different. As we have seen, the individual in the biblical text is critically important, but he or she is not the goal of the text. In Genesis and the other books of the Bible, the individual always reposes within the intricately-woven nest of community, family heritage and the Divine. In the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and Koran, each individual is an instrument of God's plan or purpose, or an obstacle to it. Each individual is profoundly affected by the spiritual successes or failings of the previous generations. Similarly, the choices made by each individual in one generation makes the deepest of impact on the lives his children and grandchildren live. In Genesis, each character's life has purpose because it is lived out within a sweeping multigenerational landscape involving heaven and earth.

The profoundly intimate connection between heaven and earth is demonstrated throughout the Bible, but never so graphically as in Jacob's first dream. "... A ladder was set on the ground and its top reached to the heavens, and angels of God were going up and down on it. And the Lord was standing above it and He said, 'I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.' ... Then, Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the Lord is present in this place, and I knew it not!'"

In this dream, not only do we have a dramatic and explicit biblical depiction of the link between heaven and earth in the ladder, but we also have the image of the angels, who travel freely between the two spheres of this single reality. Jacob, unaware that the "whole earth is filled with God's glory," is astonished to wake from this dream and appreciate, for the first time, that God and angel are with him in the wilderness. Even here, heaven and earth are in constant contact. Even here, man is not alone.

Significantly, the angels in Jacob's dream go up the ladder before they come down. This symbolism affirms the Genesis view that the angels are here with us on earth. They are messengers to us. They encircle and protect us as we travel our paths. They are ladders who continually link earth with heaven and us with God. The angels remind us what the Book of Genesis wants us to know--that each of us is always in a divine context.

In the Genesis account of Joseph's life, soul and psyche, we discover a second answer to the biblical understanding of human purpose. As we saw in Chapter Five, Jacob, Joseph's father, is a hero who, from his birth and for forty years afterwards, is ruled by his impulse to triumph over his brother. The text depicts Jacob as ruthless in his drive to gain the birthright and blessing that belong to Esau. Others' vulnerabilities, his brother's impulsivity, his father Isaac's blindness, are merely Jacob's props in his morally reprehensible schemes. As Jacob flees his brother's homicidal rage and the parents that were incapable of controlling him at his worst, Jacob is a hero who requires a radical character "make-over."

Jacob has this psycho-spiritual transformation over the next two decades. It culminates with the wrestling match which results in Jacob's name change to Israel. However, as we saw in some detail in the previous chapter, Jacob's transformation is neither complete nor consistent. This wavering of Jacob's psychological state is best indicated by Genesis' inconsistent use of the name, "Israel," to refer to Jacob. Jacob, in the remaining chapters of Genesis, is sometimes Israel, but mostly still referred to as "Jacob."

It is in the figure of Joseph that Jacob's journey to Israel is completed. It is Joseph who knows, perhaps more firmly than his father ever could, that God is with him and guiding him. It is Joseph who understands, certainly more than his father ever did, the absolute psychological devastation and havoc that a father's preference for one son over the other can wreak on a family and the future. It is Joseph, after Jacob's death, who definitively rejects his family tradition of retaliation when he promises his brothers, in the final chapter of the Book of Genesis, that he will care for them and their children. It is at that moment, in only two generations, as we gently close the biblical book we've studied in such detail, that Jacob becomes Israel. We see in this Jacob novella that we can and should begin our journeys, but that sometimes, if we make our choices wisely, it will be our beloved Josephs that complete them.

This poignant and inspirational story of Joseph teaches us the second biblical moral concerning human purpose. Not only does each of us, as we saw in Jacob's dream, inhabit a world that is heavily populated by God and angels, but each of us, as well, lives within a communal and multigenerational nexus. For Genesis, no generation is a vacuum. Adam and Eve affect Cain, Abel and Seth. Abraham and Sarah affect Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac and Rebecca affect Jacob and Esau. And Jacob and his wives and concubines affect their twelve sons and one daughter. How one generation chooses to act, for good or for evil, has a momentous impact on those who follow. For the Genesis "author," just as there is no individual who is alone, there is no individual who can ignore his responsibility to the community and future. Jacob's obligation was to struggle with himself so that he could, at least partially, achieve Israel; so that Joseph could save his brothers. Joseph needed to find his way to humility and forgiveness in pit and dungeon; so that the descendents of these people of Genesis could ultimately find their way to Sinai and the Promised Land.

Unlike the psychoanalytic perspective, the biblical asserts that each of us has a meaningful role to play in the present and the future. According to Genesis, the survival and integrity of this world depend on each of us and how we act.

The genius of Genesis is its depiction through multi-layered narratives of a clarion philosophy of human purpose. Most simply put: Genesis teaches us that each of our lives, in this brief time we have, should demonstrate gratitude toward all things past, service toward all things present, and responsibility toward all things future. ...

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