You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This review covers two books by Henry Abramovitch and a play co-authored by Abramovitch and Murray Stein. This work by Abramovitch shows an extraordinary burst of creativity over the past several years. Each of these books is, in a unique way, an illustration of a mature analyst's skill in combining the powers of the imagination with clinical experience and wisdom that can only emerge after years of practice. Whether probing the lives of philosophers, religious leaders, and mythic figures, fantasizing about an unrecorded meeting between great minds, or probing the psychology of reactions to an analyst's mysterious sudden death, Abramovitch shows time and again how a talented analyst can work his material into a coherent, meaningful, highly interesting narrative. I will take each of the books in the order in which they came to print, starting with the play The Analyst and the Rabbi that was co-authored by Henry Abramovitch and Murray Stein.
Much has been written about C. G. Jung and his relationship with Judaism. The scope of the published books and papers covering this topic address Jung's alleged complicity with the Nazis in the early 1930s, his characterization of Jewish psychology as never having created a cultural form of its own and needing a host culture, and his silence during the Nazi period and through the second world war. It is known that following the end of the war, Rabbi Leo
Baeck—the former leader of the Reform Jewish community in Germany, who was interred at the Theresienstadt concentration camp from 1943 until liberation—was in Zurich as part of his mission to reach out to Jews in Europe who had survived the Holocaust. Prior to the Nazi period, Baeck had known and valued Jung's work. When Jung learned that Baeck was to visit Zurich, he sent him an invitation to his home in Kusnacht. Baeck did not respond, and so, Jung went to the hotel where the rabbi was staying and saw him there. No record was made of the discussion betw