Spiritual Threads in Psychotherapeutic Work

Spiritual Trauma: A Jewish Perspective

In this wide-ranging audio talk, Rabbi Howard Cooper discusses how a natural and intrinsic yearning for attachment can cause us to seek meaning and security from a God figure. However, he argues, that whilst monotheistic religions can offer some measure of meaning and security, the price believers pay is the demand to exclude all other Gods. Cooper believes this inevitably leads to a cycle of alienation and violence, a cycle that also merely mirrors the internal split in our own psyches, which is forever straining under the competing command to love and hate. Cooper aims to guide his clients beyond a simplistic, childish and fearful idea of God towards an exploration of other possibilities that might then prove useful to our own growth and capacity for connection.