Answering a Question with a Question (Vol II)

Inquiry, questioning, and wonder are defining features of both psychoanalysis and the Jewish tradition. The question invites inquiry, analysis, discussion, debate, multiple meanings, and interpretation that continues across the generations. If questions and inquiry are the mainstay of Jewish scholarship, then it should not be surprising that they would be central to the psychoanalytic method developed by Sigmund Freud. The themes taken up in this book are universal: trauma, traumatic reenactment, intergenerational transmission of trauma, love, loss, mourning, ritual—these subjects are of particular relevance and concern within Jewish thought and the history of the Jewish people, and they raise questions of great relevance to psychoanalysis both theoretically and clinically. In Answering a Question with a Question: Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Jewish Thought: A Tradition of Inquiry, Editors, Aron and Henik, have brought together an international collection of contemporary scholars and clinicians to address the interface and mutual influence of Jewish thought and modern psychoanalysis, two traditions of inquiry.

Lewis Aron is the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is the author of A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis (The Analytic Press, 1996).

Daniel D. Stuhlman:
“Answering a Question with a Question is for those who want to understand the covered topics from a psychoanalytic perspective. It is recommended for academic collections and other collections with readers interested in the confluence of Jewish sources and psychology.”

"Answering a question with a question, a hallmark of Jewish Talmudic tradition and of psychoanalysis, often is an act of freedom. In addition it can help make clear that finding the right questions, even if we cannot answer them, may be more important than answering questions that may obscure our having to face what is not answerable. Aron and Henik bring us a wonderful collection of papers that speak to us from the heart and with courage and dignity, about individual struggles across time to find the right questions and to answer them. They take us at times to the boundaries of what is bearable in ways that leave us changed and 'opened​'​ in unexpected ways. A book that stirs us so deeply is not to be missed."

Freud acknowledged on several occasions the role of his Jewish background in forming his world view and method, but at the same time was concerned that psychoanalysis may be damaged if seen as "a Jewish theory" in a social climate influenced by antisemitism. The editors of the present volume clearly believe that clarifying the links between psychoanalytic thought and Jewish tradition can be productive rather than risky. They gathered an impressive multi-disciplinary team, composed of analysts, therapists, literary scholars and students of Jewish thought, who approach this area from numerous angles: studies of biblical stories and of their past interpretations, themes of Jewish mysticism and philosophy, exploring rabbinical traditions, contemporary clinical work and intimate personal experience. They deal with the place of questioning in Jewish thought and in psychoanalysis, with the significance of desire and personal transformation, with trauma, loss and mourning, with the impact of the holocaust and its intergenerational transmission – to name just a few of the themes of this rich, varied and unique collection.