Dear Readers
Welcome to the May edition of Mind Body & Soul, themed “Finding the Balance”. For some of us, balance is as easy as riding a bike; for others, balance can be elusive. This is particularly the case for those of us whose lives encompass extremes. We may be up, we may be down. We may love some politicians and commentators; we may hate others.
Some of us might even experience our religious lives in extreme ways. Just two months ago, we were commanded to eliminate any and all Chometz from our possession. We are taught to speak zero Lashon Hara, while we are encouraged to maximize our Torah learning. For some, these apparently absolute expectations can be unsettling.
What does psychology have to say about the role of balance in our lives? What might the Torah have to say about the role of balance in our lives? While I’ll leave the latter question to our contributors, I’d like to share some thoughts about psychology and balance.
Sigmund Freud, in laying out his structural model of the human psyche, described healthy “ego” functioning as the capacity to strike a reasonable balance. The successful ego mediates between the immediate, pressing needs emerging from what he referred to as “id” and the moral imperatives and societal responsibilities dictated by what he termed “superego”.
As an aside, one way of visualizing the differing roles of Ego, Id, and Superego, is to consider the characters in Dr Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat. Imagine Ego as the two children who are stuck at home and who receive an unexpected visit. Id is the fun-loving, chaotic cat (along with his sidekicks, Thing One and Two). Superego is the fretful, consequence-focused goldfish.
Later forms of therapy move from describing balance to prescribing balance. In Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, the capacity for “dialectic” is what helps clients - especially those who suffer from severe personality disorders - navigate a balance between two seemingly contradictory positions. One is the acceptance of their current, pain-saturated emotional state; the other is the healing tendency to spur themselves toward positive emotional change. through mindfulness, emotion regulation, and cultivating interpersonal skills. (More on this from Yitzchok Kahn’s excellent article.)
Whereas DBT typically starts with (radically) accepting one’s painful reality and then moving toward change, there is a less well known modality of therapy, Somatic Experiencing, which moves in a different direction.
In Somatic Experiencing and its “cousin” Somatic Intervention, a client is supported to use their body and its sensations to identify a soothing image, one that is accessible to them in the present. This soothing, safe place serves as a jump-off point, or anchor, to explore the more complicated memories and experiences that are embedded in their mind and body. Therapeutic progress happens as the therapist helps the client gently swing (or pendulate) between safe and unsafe, in the service of rendering that which has been unsafe more manageable.
In short, the field of psychology has produced more than one model that either describes or prescribes a state of balance. The ego strikes a balance between immediate gratification and moral/societal restrictions. DBT helps clients balance acceptance of their current state, alongside the motivation to make things better. Somatic Experiencing creates a safe space from which to explore the less safe parts of past experience. In each case, balance is what leads to health and wholeness.
In our current issue of Mind Body & Soul, some authors highlight balances we might not have noticed. Others seek to restore balance to an area that is all too often unbalanced.
Yitzchok Kahn examines ways that both the field of psychology and traditional Torah sources encourage balance, in general, and dialectic, in particular. Simcha Feuerman zeroes in on the age-old Shammai-Hillel conflict to examine ways that blazing intellect is complemented by humility and curiosity. Moshe Norman reveals a balance that therapists strike, in deciding whether and when to contact past clients. Yehuda Krohn teases out the balance between influence and control, symbolized by the Luchos/tablets placed in the Aron/Ark.
Alan Singer seeks to restore balance to the field of marital therapy, in which, he argues, the cards have heretofore been stacked against men. Douglas Balin shepherds us toward a more balanced view of aging - one that envisions the unique opportunities that aging presents.
Whether your objective is to deepen your sense of balance or restore a sense of balance, there’s something for you in the May edition of Mind Body & Soul.
Rabbi Yehuda Krohn, Psy.D., a licensed clinical psychologist, provides individual and couples therapy in his Chicago-area private practice. He is now authorized to provide teletherapy in NJ and other Psy-Pact participating states. Rabbi Dr. Krohn, writes and presents on Torah, Psychology and the intersection of the two. He is a board member of Nefesh International.
Rabbi Dr. Krohn can be reached, by phone, at 847-763-1184 and, by email, at yemekrohn@gmail.com.