Article ID: CBB000760010

Peace of Mind (1946): Judaism and the Therapeutic Polemics of Postwar America (2002)

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The sudden appearance of a rabbi in a genre long monopolized by Christians was not a uke but a sign of the mid-century emergence of Jews as an intellectual, cultural, and theological force in American society. The ?rst large generation of Jewish readers of American books came of age in the middle decades of the century. It included many women, who joined the larger stream of middle-class women seeking a more therapeutic spirituality than that offered by the mainline churches. The tragedy of two world wars in a quarter century intensi?ed the quest for new forms of consolation and selfawareness. These wars not only stimulated public interest in psychology--- a psychology boom followed each one---but exacerbated the social problem of grief and, therefore, pushed psychology more and more in the direction of psychotherapy and the search for meaning. At mid-century, the quest of many Americans for new psychospiritual approaches created an opening for charismatic Jewish as well as Christian preachers. Theologically, Peace of Mind capitalized on the changes psychology had wrought in the inspirational mass market. By placing all people on the same spectrum of normality and abnormality, and divorcing maturity from dogmatics, psychology created a spiritual democracy. As a result, for the ?rst time in nearly two millennia, a rabbi had a solid platform from which to preach spiritual answers to an interfaith audience. A friend of Christianity, Liebman would not have preached the superiority of Judaism on the basis of faith alone. But, on the grounds of modern psychology, he could argue that Judaism offered special insight into the workings of the human mind and emotions

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Authors & Contributors
Brokman, Aleksandra
Huertas-Maestro, Miguel
Monteiro, Marit
Mélanie Henry
Lazcano, Silvia Lévy
Himmerich, Hubertus
Concepts
Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Clinical psychology
Mental disorders and diseases
Science and culture
Science and religion
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
21st century
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
United States
London (England)
New York City (New York, U.S.)
Netherlands
Spain
Germany
Institutions
National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.)
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