Creativity And Sexuality: A Kabbalistic PerspectiveJudaism openly recognizes, as an integral part of human nature, the enigmatic relationship between yetzer, or physical desire, and yetzirah, or spiritual creativity. Creativity and Sexuality, written as a fictional dialogue, clearly delineates the psychic interdependence of these two drives, as well as the integration of the concepts as they are defined by both Jewish mysticism and modern psychology. Mordechai Rotenberg is interested in the impact of religion on the psychology of everyday life. He was prompted to write Creativity and Sexuality by the popularity of writings that explore Jewish texts on the subject of sexuality from a historical or literary point of view, but that do not hesitate to include psychological evaluations based on popular secondary psychological concepts. This work seeks to provide an accurate psychological analysis of sexuality and spirituality from a Jewish mystical perspective. As such, it both reconstructs the interdisciplinary bridge between Judaism and psychology and deconstructs some exegetical traditions. The goal is to present new paradigmatic options, which may help modern society struggle more efficiently with its sexuality. Ultimately, the author sees physical desire and spiritual creativity as a regulative continuum. People learn how to spend the tremendous power of energy that the sexual yetzer produces not only on physical sex, but on the spiritual yetzirah. In an introduction written especially for this new edition, the author explains the continuing relevance of Creativity and Sexuality, and the ongoing relationship between sexual desire and a healthy spiritual self-fulfillment. This volume will be of interest to students of Judaism, psychology, mysticism, and sexuality. |
From inside the book
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... nature . Creativity and Sexuality : A Kabbalistic Perspective is , by contrast , predicated on the notion that the person who patterns his behavior on a particular divine image ( imitatio Dei ) should understand that if his culture is ...
... natural drive to perpetuate life will prob- ably depend forever on divine explanations . That is to say , that as long as the sexual desire for reaching orgasm cannot be reproduced in the lab , such kabbalistic songs ( as the one cited ...
... nature of experiencing ecstatic Kabbalah . It seems imperative , then , that since we have no way to determine the actual experiential nature of a behavioral phenomenon described as an " ought " category in texts written hundreds of ...
... nature of the Kabbala , " is unfounded.3 But there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that Freud was familiar with such a canonic concept as the yetzer . In a relatively unknown pamphlet about Freud and religion , Gre- gory Zilboorg ...
... nature will cease to accept ( sometimes blindly ) the historio- philological interpretations of behavioral categories described in a text , but so that the historian will consult the psycho - phenomenological expert when he wishes to ...
Contents
Creation and Procreation | 1 |
Contraction and Emanation as Reading and Writing | 21 |
The Yetzer and Romantic Imagination | 49 |
Manic Disorder versus Creative Ecstasy | 62 |
Romantic Flirting versus Sexual Harassment | 79 |
Harassing the Flirter | 89 |
Ecstatic Prophecy and Imagination | 105 |
The YetzerYetzira Genre and the Musar Movement | 121 |
The Theory of Vaginal Envy | 139 |
The Yetzer in the Sociopsychological Therapy Room | 157 |
Bibliography | 171 |
Kierkegaards Seduction Style 86 | 179 |