Freud and Kabbalah: cont’d: Marc Gafni

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Freud of course would have had the falafel king on the couch in no time. Freud’s understandings, which have so colored our own unconscious view of the word, are the precise opposite of the secret of the cherubs. For Freud everything is a metaphor for sex. For the kabbalists, sex is a metaphor for everything. Freud was interested in reduction, in bringing everything down. He lived in an era which was still in rebellion against 1700 years of Church domination which had crippled science, freedom and beauty. As a result, he, like most of the intelligentsia of his age, automatically rejected spirit as a serious force. So Freud reduced everything in the world to sex.

The mystical project however is not about reduction; it rather seeks to raise up all the scattered sparks of light and return them to their source. To the kabbalist all the processes in the world, including sex, are erotic at their core. For the kabbalists sex points to the erotic.

This points to an even deeper distinction between Freud and the kabbalah. For Freud sex was a human release valve which allows for the release of tension and therefore assured more effective functioning. For the kabbalist effective spiritual living was not facilitated by releasing tension but by holding eros. A perfect world for Freud would be one in which everything was de-sexualized; then sex itself could perform its natural biological release valve function without creating neurosis and complexes. For the kabbalist the ideal world would be one in which the sexual modeling of the erotic were made conscious with the resultant eroticizing of all of reality.

marc gafni
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