TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Why The Founders of Psychology Were All Jews
Date: 11/25/22 Length: 55:50
Daniel Lapin 0:01
Welcome to the rabbi Daniel Lapin show where I, your rabbi reveal how the world really works. This is a service I provide for happy warriors all around the world. Because happy warriors are those who take joy in confronting the challenges of life, meeting them head on, doing what they need to do when they need to do it, and becoming well rounded personalities developing at the same time, their families, their finances, their faith, their friendships, and their physical fitness. So it is a great honor for me to serve the community of happy warriors through this podcast. Thank you for being part of the show. And thank you all for spreading the word so effectively, because the growth of the show is a source of pride and pleasure to both me and to my wife, Susan, and happen. So onwards with today's show, which is a difficult one, by the way, if you sense perhaps a small reluctance on my part to dive into the material. Well, I may have to plead guilty to that, because it's not an easy one. What I'm speaking about is, why are so many psychologists and psychiatrists Jewish. Now this isn't the same as say, Oh, why is it that so many women's nail salons are operated by Vietnamese ladies? The answer to that one is simple. There was a period in which there was a large immigration to the United States from Vietnam. And there weren't a lot of now the nail salon area wasn't saturated. It didn't require oppressive government regulations and licensing to get into that business. And so it made perfect sense. 100 years ago, women's nail salons were not run by Vietnamese ladies, in 50 years time, I very much doubt they will be again because all the daughters of those Vietnamese ladies are at Stanford and at Berkeley and at Harvard and Yale, and they're not going to be going into the nail business. But for a period of time they did.
Daniel Lapin 2:58
But when I ask about psychiatry and psychology, I'm going back to the beginning of the field and into the 19th century. And I'm speaking not only about the United States, but I'm speaking about Vienna, Austria, before World War Two, I'm speaking about Europe after World War Two, talk about psychologists or psychiatrists, and they are disproportionately Jewish. As you can imagine, this is not an easy topic for me to talk about. But obviously, I believe that my job is to tell you the truth, much more than it is my job to massage you with warm butter, and to make you feel good. And for that matter to make myself feel good. When I deal with a subject on the podcast, it's usually something that has been something I've been working on something and I've been grappling with for a long time. And and eventually it gets to the point where I'm ready to talk about it to you that happy warrior, even though I may not be prepared yet to publish written material on it, but that's coming very soon as well. So why is this an important topic? Well, because a lot of side things are associated with it. And for instance, when I started researching the literature on this topic, and I'm not the only person obviously to have noticed that Jews are very over represented in the fields of psychology and psychiatry and bio you know, that's not true in in in many other fields. I mean, there are medical specialties many medical specialties which Jews are not heavily represented in sports Thats medicine for one, but there are plenty others. And there are also many fields and many activities. So it's not as if Jews are evenly and randomly distributed throughout the activities and careers and professions that people select know, psychiatry and psychology are heavily, heavily populated with people of Jewish ancestry. So that's I thought worth looking at. And also because it opens the door to a very important point. It's a point that I think most Jewish listeners to this show are somewhat familiar with. But I don't think many people other people are familiar with, based on the questions I get quite often, it seems clear to me that for a lot of people, what I'm about to say, is largely unknown. What I'm about to say is that being Jewish is not any indicator of your religious proclivities, it should be, but it is. What do I mean by that? I mean, that for many people, it's more tribalistic. You see, if somebody says they are a Christian, then that means that at a certain point in time, that person accepted a personal relationship with Jesus. That's what it means. But if somebody says they're Jewish, most times what they mean is they were born Jewish. If somebody says they're a Christian, what you do not expect to hear from their mouths in the next moment are, and I'm also an atheist, you don't expect to hear that. But with many people who are Jewish, those people will also tell you that they're an atheist. Sigmund Freud wrote in a letter to a Swiss friend of his, by the name of Oskar Pfister, who is a psychologist in Zurich, and he wrote to him and he identified in it said, I am a godless Jews. And it's funny that the field of psychoanalysis had to wait for this godless Jew to show up. And for somebody to say, I'm a godless Christian, is absurd. I don't know for sure. But I gotta think that for some of you to say I'm a godless Muslim, is ridiculous. You wouldn't even get to such a thing, I don't think. But with a very large proportion of Jews, particularly in the United States of America, a lot less so in Israel, but in the United States of America, you will find many Jews who will call themselves Jewish by culture, but non religious, no relationship with God non-believing. No connection with a Bible, no interest in the Bible, no belief in the Bible. That's very common.
Daniel Lapin 8:24
And I think that if you tapped a Jew on the shoulder on any street in the United States of America, if you're not in an area with Orthodox Jewish population, such as parts of Brooklyn, New York, parts of Chicago parts of Dade and Broward counties in Florida, parts of Los Angeles, parts of New Jersey, Teaneck, New Jersey, Lakewood, New Jersey, Baltimore, Maryland, and in a few other places, those happen to be cities with significant populations of Orthodox Jews, usually, in many cases, not the majority, but a lot. But ordinarily, you tap a Jew on the shoulder in the streets. And, and you say to him, so do you believe that God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai? Because that really is the seminal question of Judeo Christian belief, is it not? And I don't think I have a single Christian friend who would answer that question anything differently than yes, of course, don't you? Do you believe that God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai and let me tell you what the odds are the Jew you tap on the shoulder on The St. There's a 60% probability that he will say to you, well, it depends what you mean, by "God gave." I mean, you know if you mean there was inspiration, or that Moses compiled, and what you'll get is a long list of ifs, ands and buts. But the proportion of American Jews who will answer that question, again, the seminal question is, do you believe that God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai? It's not you believe in God? Because most people do answer that in some way or another, as Yes. But it's much more than that. If you ask the same people who would answer Do you believe in God? If you answer saying Jews who say do believe in God, they say, well, some kind of God, some kind of being that kind of thing most Jews would answer. And then you say, Do you believe that God prohibited the act of male homosexuality? That absolutely not. So you've got to see. And you got to know that not just in the present stage, not only in 2022, but for years and years and years, and I dare say, into the future, as well, for a large number of people who think of themselves as Jewish, who are born Jews? And who would probably answer in the affirmative.
Daniel Lapin 11:34
If somebody said, Are you Jewish, provided? The questioner was not a Nazi with a machine gun? But they'd say, yeah, yeah, I'm Jewish, those same people would have to tell you, if you if you develop the conversation a little further, that their value system is not Jewish. Their value system is secular modernity, secular socialism, secular fundamentalism. And for many years, people used to joke that the Democratic Party was the uncircumcised wing of the Jewish community. People used to joke about that in America, I suppose it's a lot less of a joke today. But many of the big names one nose off as being Jewish, have zero commitment to God, or his message to mankind, you really have to know and you have to understand that that's really important. And it has a lot to do with this question of why are Jews so over represented in the professions of mental health, psychiatry and psychology? Why? What's going on there? Well, let's first of all, just take a look at who some of these people are. I wrote some of them down. This is by no means a comprehensive list, I can assure you, but it starts, of course, with Sigmund Freud. And, and look, I do know that this show is going to be somewhat controversial, which is deeply distressing to me because as regular listeners know, my paws, paws of righteousness, and my ways are the ways of peace. I shy away from being controversial. I don't ever want to say anything that makes people upset. Because I think that people should go through life, like tennis balls floating down a gutter. Not exactly. But I give you warning, that what I'm about to tell you, much of what I'm about to tell you will be contradicted by almost every university in the world, not all but almost every university in the world. And what I'm going to say to you is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't worry me, it shouldn't worry you you know why? Because we're not talking about nuclear physics. If we spoke about nuclear physics, I wouldn't say to you, that listen, I'm gonna leave it to you to judge whether what I'm telling you is true or not, because most people are not familiar with nuclear physics. So you would feel a very legitimate need to find out whether the nuclear physics department at your local university things that Rabbi Daniel Lapin knows what he's talking about, or he's talking through his hat. If we're speaking about quantum mechanics, I can't say to you, look, you must use your own judgment? How can you use your judgment on quantum mechanics? I think the world of my happy warriors. But I also know that probably no more than a few percent of you are familiar with the field of quantum mechanics. And why should you be? It's not as if we're speaking about complex areas of biology, where, again, you can't use your judgment. But when we talk about metaphysical areas, you can use your judgment, because nobody else is of necessity more expert than you. What do I mean by that? If we talk about the, shall we say, the ideal spacing between children when you build a family? Do you think that you know less? That let's assume that your apparent, do you know less than a professor of biology at the local university? Do you think you know, less than the professor of psychology at the local university? Why would you think that? How about if we're talking about relationships between parents and children, relationships between siblings? How about if we're talking about the nature of male female relationships? Do you really need to be told by a professor University? The truth about these things? No, because in metaphysical areas, ordinary human beings who are living life actively and passionately and meaningfully develop deep understandings of all of these things, you know, William Shakespeare, again, not everybody reads William Shakespeare and, and I didn't get him until I was into my 30 well into my 30s, it made no sense to me at all, and then somebody helped me. But now I look, William Shakespeare didn't go to university, William Shakespeare did not have the benefit of modern science in any way whatsoever. For heaven's sake, he lived in the 16th century, what you want, and yet in metaphysical areas, in areas having to do with the human soul, having to do with human nature, above all human nature, having to do with relationships between parents and children having to do with relationships between men and women, William Shakespeare is way ahead of the professor in the local University's Department of Psychology, he is much closer to where you are, as a happy warrior, living life in real terms, you know about these things, you have a sense of human nature, you're honest, you recognize your weaknesses, you don't need the confirmation from anybody outside. Unlike, you know, if we were speaking about,
Daniel Lapin 18:19
you know, let let's talk about why the formula for gravitational attraction is very similar to the formula for electrostatic attraction, given that the two forces have nothing to do with one another. Now, at that point, you'd be perfectly legitimate, legitimately justified and saying to yourself, you know, I need to consult somebody who knows more than I do about these areas. Makes sense, but not about metaphysical areas. And, and I hope you're very clear things that have to do with human nature, things that have to do with basic human relationships, you are not only the equal of that university professor, or that academic or that doctor, you may be ahead of him or her. Because if he or she is not married, and you are, you're already ahead of the game, because you've learned things about yourself, and about your spouse and about human nature that that person probably does not know. So please use your judgment on the things we're going to be discussing and evaluate them on the basis of your own knowledge and your own experience, and even your own instincts. So we can take a look at some of these people. Sigmund Freud, Sigmund Freud made his one and only visit to the United States in 1909. He came to give a talk at Clark College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and he made no secret of the fact that he disliked America disliked coming, but he liked the money he got for the lecture. I don't call him Sigmund Freud. I have to tell you I call him Sigmund fraud. I don't want to devote the any lengthy portion of the limited time we have together right now, to detailing the failures and frauds of Freud's life, but he was not an honest person. He lied, he lied about the treatment, he lied about the results. He was not a good person in any way. He had an incestuous relationship with his sister in law. adulterous and instead it was the guy was no good. And he was not a good person. say Alright, fine. Maybe he wasn't a good person. But Richard Wagner, great musician, great composer. I think the the, the the lengthy four part ring the cycle is extraordinary music, rotten human being a really, really, really rotten human being. So are we saying the same thing, Sigmund Freud, a rotten human being which he was, but a great scientist. Now, he wasn't a great scientist at all. In fact, he devoted much of his life to trying to persuade the scientific world to recognize that psychoanalysis was a science, but it's absurd. I mean, to call that a science. There are a lot of things that we'd call sciences today, which shouldn't be sciences, economics. Economics shouldn't be a science. You know why? Because economics has a lot to do with human character and human nature. And so economists like to reduce everything to a scientific foundation. According to the economics, if two men have exactly the same statistics, same age, same education, same earning same jobs, let's say theoretically, they they just had the same activities, the same financial activities. Does that mean that by the age of 40, they'll both have the same net worth? Of course not. Science, Science would say, Well, yes. You know, if they both earn the same amount of money for the last 20 years, then yes, they, but it's not true. Because human character comes into it. One of the men saves and scrimps and invests and is frugal. The other one is a spendthrift wastes money on the latest consumer baubles and blings. And so yeah, if you count, it's a character thing. How one does financially has a lot to do with your character. It's not just a science. The idea of trying to turn the human being into the result of a scientific analysis doesn't work very well. Freud was a big fraud. Freud was a liar. He was a cheat, and laughing nothing much good to say about the man to tell you the honest truth. But Jewish he was. Now people have written and I've seen papers written up. Well, Freud's Jewish background helped him understand dreams, complete, unadulterated, Bilgewater. Freud had zero Jewish background, he was try ballistically a Jew. He said, Yes, I'm here, I'm a Jew. But he's a godless Jew. There was no value system that came from Judaism. And that's really the defining characteristic, whether your sense of good and evil flows from God and the Bible, or whether it flows from modern views, the latest pages of the latest issue of Psychology Today, or anywhere else now. Where the value system comes from, defines what your belief system really is. So he was and that, by the way, is going to be central to everything else, because everyone I'm pointing out here is Jewish by tribe, Jewish by ethnic ancestry, but not in any way Jewish by belief or by values. And so Joseph Boyer, Joseph Boyer was a Berlin physician, who actually started the whole idea of being able to help people psychoses and neuroses by talking to them and Freud latched on to that and ran with it. Max Wertheimer. Kurt Kafka, Kurt Lewin. Kurt Goldstein. Kurt was a fairly common German term and this is the psychoanalytic Society of Vienna. A lot of these people were the founding members. And again, everyone here is Jewish. Hans Sachs, Max iting. Alfred Adler. Erik Erikson may have heard of him if you haven't heard of him. You've probably heard of Eric from Otto rank. Bruno Bettelheim, right fairly well known psychologist Joseph Jastrow. Now here it gets to be interesting, because Joseph Jastrow is a was the son of Marcus Jestro and Marcus Jestro wrote, The created the dictionary of the Talmud Bavli the Talmud you Rashami midrashic literature and Targu MYM and this is by Professor Marcus Jastrow present Marcus Jastrow wrote what's today known as Jestro dictionary, it's almost impossible to study the depths of ancient Jewish wisdom without referring to this. It's more than one volume. By the way, I'm only able to hold one volume at a time, but it's a multi volume set, and it's my doctor, Rabbi Marcus Jastrow dictionary, and a rabbi Marcus Jastrow had a son, and his name was Joseph Jestro. And Joseph Jastrow became a psychologist. Have you heard of Noam Chomsky? And other Jewish psychologists religious Noam Chomsky, on his own will tell you himself, he's an atheist, but very Jewish, he'll tell you how Jewish he is. Abraham Maslow, Maslow's order of hierarchies. Solomon Asch, very interesting psychologist, Jewish. Oliver Sacks, the author, psychologist, author, Jewish, and it goes on and on and on. Why, what's going on here? Well, I told you that the story of Joseph Jastrow gives us a little bit of a clue. So let me tell you about that. There was a movie made in 1981. And yeah, 1981 it was called the chosen and it might make a nice movie and might interest you if any of what we're talking about rings with you, then you might want to see the chosen. It's based on a novel by Chaim Potok, a Canadian novelist, wrote a novel in 1960s '66 or '67, called the Chosun. And, in 1981, they made a movie starring Maximilian Schell and Rod Steiger in two of the starring roles.
Daniel Lapin 28:16
What was the movie about? Oh, by the way, rather, read the novel then watch the movie if if you have a choice, the novel called The Chosen by Chaim Potok, P O T. Okay. And here's the story in a nutshell, two young teenagers in Brooklyn in about 1944 Towards the end close to the end of World War Two. One of them is part of a his his party, they are both observing they are both orthodox they are both God fearing boys from God fearing families, Bible believing families, accepting Danny is from a Hasidic family. He is father wears a beard, he has side locks, he wears a long black coat, and he's part of a his the Rabbi of a Hasidic dynasty in Brooklyn. Reuven is the other boy and he is also observant, and his also follows the Torah. But he is more modern. So he dresses ordinarily like any other teenager. And these two boys are being taught Bible as they're going through high school. They're being taught the value system of Judaism. And it was assumed that Danny would take over from his father, the Hasidic Rebbi. And in due course, he would become the head of that facility dynasty, whereas Ruben was going to be go on into some profession or another. Anyway, it turns out that Danny is an outstanding scholar of Judaism. But all he wants to do is become a psychologist. And as the story goes on, and there's a sequel to the story that Potok wrote called The Promise, the boys are young men now. And sure enough, Danny took off his side locks and didn't wear a beard, retained a relationship with his father, but didn't fall into Hasidic dynasty, and he becomes a psychologist. Notice that I tell you the story, following on how Rabbi Marcus Jes Stroz son, became the psychologist Joseph Jastrow. In other words, my friends. You want to know why so many Jews became psychologists and psychiatrists. The first thing to note is that they are all virtually without exception, they are all secularized or atheistic Jews, almost that exception, they are not Bible believing or God centric Jews at all. They are cultural, ethnic Jews, tribalistic Jews, if you like. I remember when Joseph Lieberman ran with Al Gore in the year 2000 for the presidency, and were beaten by George W. Bush, in your remember very contested election. But many, many, many Jews were angry at me, but really angry at me, because I publicly announced that I would not only not vote for the Lieberman Gore ticket, I was going to vote for the George W. Bush ticket. And now you're a Jew. How can you not vote for Lieberman? He'll be the very first Jewish vice president in all of history. Well, conceding for the moment that that's a good thing, which I don't think it is. The reason I wouldn't vote for it is because I'm not a tribalistic person. tribalism has never worked. tribalism is part of the Arab world. tribalism is part of the African world. These are not places known for being the cradles of civilization. tribalism is not a good idea. And the notion that I should vote for somebody because he's Jewish, it's pure tribalism. I vote for somebody not because his skin is the same color as mine, not because his religion or his ancestry is the same as mine, I vote for somebody whose value system is as close to mine as possible. Talking about a very different story, very different story. And so it got to understand that all of these and all the others that I didn't have space to list, all these people, these people have Jewish ancestry is where I put it, who have become famous in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. They are people who have no connection with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I don't know of a better way of putting it. I know that that sounds harsh. I'm not saying they're not nice people. I'm not saying they're not good people. But I am saying they're not good Jews. They are not Jews who have any connection whatsoever with a God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and with his book at all right? That's just not. That's not what we're talking about. That's a big clue. Because here's what's going on. The biggest mystery on the planet is the human being. One little fingernail is more astounding than the biggest factory, the biggest nuclear power station. The biggest exit particle accelerator. The human being is the miracle of creation. The human being is astounding and inexplicable. And when we want to try and understand the human being the latest science and technology tells us nothing. Go back 400 years to William Shakespeare you will learn more about you Human Nature then you will learn from the latest papers being published at your local university. If you want to know about human nature, look backwards, ultimately, look here for the source. Now, what do we do about problems in human nature, problems of the physical being of the physical part of the human being? Why that we understand that's medicine? That's real medicine. That's right. I'm questioning whether these men practice real medicine. I don't think they do. They're practicing psychiatry and psychology, which are attempts to come up with a secular God free approach to understanding human nature. That's what it's about. And that's why in the chosen Chaim Potok has the son of the facility Rebby, basically turning his back on the Hasidic dynasty, and becoming a psychologist. Happy warrior is if somebody has no connection with God, desires, no connection of God, and wants to help people at the deepest human level, then you become a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Let me put it this way, a psychologist or a psychiatrist is a secular rabbi. It's an attempt at somebody trying to probe the secrets of the human soul. Without God, that's all it is. And as such, it is completely doomed. You know why it's doomed? I'll give you three seconds to answer it yourself. Why is the attempt to find a secular solution to you to the human being doomed? 123 Because we human beings are made up of two parts, there are two sides to us, the physical and the spiritual. And there is no way to say that either the physical or the spiritual is more important. We need both parts in order to function properly. As a matter of fact, the first the spiritual part, often seems more important than the physical, what do I mean by that? Spiritual means something that cannot be measured in a laboratory. That's what spiritual means. Please, don't confuse spiritual with holy, spiritual with religious spiritual with godly, spiritual avert, you know, spiritual simply means something that cannot be measured in a lab. And
Daniel Lapin 38:13
if you are hiring somebody to work in your business, my bet is you are much more interested in the spiritual characteristics than the physical. Right? I mean, after all, are you that interested in what they look like? Are you they're interested in the gender or the skin color? Or no, unless, you know, maybe you're maybe you're in the swimsuit industry, and you're looking to hire a model. I get it. Okay, fine. But other than that, the qualities you want are integrity, not measurable. No lab instrument measures integrity, resilience, optimism, the ability to keep on going, even when you've been knocked down a few times, those are the things we need. Those are non measurable in a lab. If there was way too, if you came up with a way to measure them, you'd make a million dollars, because there's not a recruiting company in the world that wouldn't want to buy your test. But there is no such thing. There is no test because there's no lab. These are spiritual characteristics. And so if you want to understand the issues of human integrity, human optimism, human resilience, human resourcefulness, then you turn to this book. You do not turn to the fields of psychology and psychiatry. Because these are spiritual, and psychology and psychiatry, try and explain the human being with no recourse to spiritual reality whatsoever. This is something that is so important that it is almost impossible for you to succeed, even at the things that you consider, at first glance to be very important, your physical health, your family, relationships, your finances, even those three important things, you will never be able to be truly successful at them, if you don't have an understanding of the spiritual dimension to that's what's I mean, you've heard of things like placebo placebos, right where the human body reacts to sugar tablets, as if they were medication, provided that you believed that they were medication, it's the placebo effect, very, very worrying to this crowd, because it shouldn't happen. Because the human beings should be nothing but a physical entity. physical entity means it's an organic entity, putting certain chemicals and certain things happen. It's like a test tube, you run a reaction in a lab, you post up into a test tube, you know what's going to happen. But the human being, you never know what's going to happen. Because we're spiritual, not physical. And in day to day interactions, there are people who will sometimes injure their own interests, because they feel insulted. Right, you've come across that Shakespeare writes about that you understand it. But that makes no sense to this crowd, they can't deal with that idea. Because why would anybody do that. And so they try to come up with explanations for that. And the explanations they come up with, I'll explain to you in just a moment. But in order to get a clearer picture of the, of the spiritual and the physical, I want to recommend that if you haven't yet become happy warrior member, you should do so. And you can even take out an annual membership. And you can have a special access membership, which will enable you to get access to huge amounts of material, written audio printed video that will help explain this. You know, I'll give you an example. You probably you probably many times heard of the first sentence of the Bible, the first verse of the Bible, in the beginning, God created heaven and earth, could have just said in the beginning, God created everything. entirely, the universe, what is heaven? Well, that's the beginning of us being introduced to the idea of heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical, it starts right there. But these are things that as a happy warrior, you would have access to. And so I want to recommend that you visit the website, Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. and delve into that, and look for the happy warrior page, and become part of our community of happy warriors. Because that way, you won't need to hear the basic stuff, because you'll have access to it right there. You won't need to ponder about mysteries that have baffled you for so long. Because it's right there. It's all accessible to happy warrior members, members who have become part of our community of people who have special access to all the material. So please go to Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And join us become part of the happy warrior community. And and when you do that, you will be able to get a clear grasp on the spiritual and the physical, because this is very fundamental to understanding yourself, your own motivations, your own urges and desires, all of that. Now, how does this crowd deal with it? Well, the way they deal with it is they speak about the subconscious. That was Uncle Sigmund Freud, who spent a lot of time on the subconscious. And the idea was that there are various things beneath the surface things you don't know. It'll take a Sigmund Freud to tell you what's in your subconscious. And what cause. And these things cause you to have feelings of guilt and repressive pneus. And we're going to free you of that. It's it's interesting that ordinarily, if you go to a scientist, a doctor, and let's say you've got a problem with you, you have an infection of some sorts, you don't expect to be going to the same doctor for that infection, six years later, they cure you. But if you go into one of these chaps, and you're going to psychoanalysis, or you're going to therapy, how long does that take to cure you? Usually, never. Usually, if you just keep going and going and going and going, one of the things Freud lied about was the fact Oh, he's cured people. Wow, didn't quite work out that way. And so the idea in, in the fields of psychiatry and and psychology are that you've got these forces in you that are are battling you, and that you've got to free and liberate says that you don't, all right, all of that. The truth is that we are physical and spiritual. And the truth is that inside and each and every one of us, there is a tug towards that which makes us less than a tug towards the lazy, the indolent, the lethargic, the indulgent. But there's also another part of us that pulls us upwards. In other words, each and every one of us has a part that pulls us downwards, in a path that pulls us upwards. And each and every one of us are in a struggle all the time. On the one hand, we want to become better husband's better fathers better brothers and sisters, better siblings, better children, we want to become better friends, better business associates, we want to become better in every way. But at the same time, there's a pot that's tugging us in the wrong direction. And we battle with that. There's a principle, which again, you can get from Shakespeare, but you can also get it from in your own head, you know this, and that is that every time you win a victory, every time you deny yourself another chocolate, cream it clear, because you're on a diet, you make it a little easier, easier to stick to the diet next time. Every time you go to the gym and you work out, it's a little easier to do it the next day. And conversely, every time you yield, every time you indulge yourself, it becomes harder to resist the next time. These things are called habits, and eventually they can even become addictions. How are you supposed to solve these things?
Daniel Lapin 48:09
And the answer is, you have to recognize the spiritual dimension. There is a pull towards sin. But there's also a pull towards the bus. There's a pull towards God. And ultimately, our ability to overcome the downward pull. Our ability to become better people is assisted by a connection with God, who as it were helps give us a pull upwards and helps us overcome the negativity. In these guys worldview, there is no God. And so there is no way to get any help other than well through them, of course. And that's what they tried to do, very often promoting the very disease that they claim to care. Because after all, what is meant mental illness and anxiety of some kind brought about by what well brought about. Let me tell you how it is. And again, if you're an ordinary Western educated person, you are going to shatter with revulsion at what I'm going to say. But mental problems mental stress usually comes from sin. Old Fashioned ly now, but it does, in other words, doing the wrong thing. Because every time we do something that we know to be wrong, it becomes a little easier To do it the next time, and a little harder to resist do it again the time after that, pretty soon it becomes built into us, it becomes our second nature. And yet we know that it's no good. That's right. That's part of where it starts. One, one can choose to move in one direction or the other in one direction. And it's not an easy direction. Life isn't easy. It's the direction upwards towards God. It's the direction towards doing the right thing and towards becoming a better person. But then we can also let it slide we can go the other way. And it might at first seem delightful, because there's no rules, whatever you feel like doing do. And if you feel bad about it, well, one of these chaps will help you. Because there's no reason to feel bad about doing the wrong thing. Because there's no right and wrong. That's, that is really one of the main differences. And so what do we do? It's so easy to slide into doing the wrong thing. And then part of with that comes mental stress and anxiety that can easily be diagnosed as a mental disease. But mental diseases have to be solved spiritually, because they are spiritual. physical diseases, different physical disease can be measured in a laboratory, you take a thermometer, you measure your temperature, hey, you got a you got a fever. But there's no instrument to tell you whether you have a mental disease, only one of these guys will tell you that. But you know yourself, if you're feeling mental stress, and you sometimes feel you're going crazy with it, search the catalog of sin, find out what it is that you will allow it to become part of your nature that is causing it. And then you have to turn for divine help you have to turn for supernatural assistance. Because we can't do it by ourselves. And don't for a moment think one of these guys can do it for you. They can't. It's basically between you and him. And that's how we deal with it. Now, look, I know what people are gonna say this is very dangerous. You're telling people? Yeah, I am. I actually am. I just have as a matter of fact, I didn't imply it. I stated unequivocally. That mental equilibrium, either being very in very good mental shape, or terrible mental shape is a spiritual issue. And if it's a spiritual issue, it's got to do with him above. And that's the way it can be solved. And that's the way it can be good. That's the only way to do it. And so yes, the overwhelming majority of the founders of psychiatry, Jewish, yeah, of course, secular Jews, who understood that the spirituality intrinsic to the human being is the best evidence of God. And they are desperate to transform the human being into nothing more than $9 worth of common chemicals. We're just a bunch of molecules of hydrogen and carbon, and a bunch of molecules of water. And when you do certain things, certain things will result. And everything can be solved, pharmacologically, we've just got to give you the right tablet and you'll be fine. Everything will be fixed up. We're not like that. We're spiritual beings. But if you are a Jew, and you're a secular Jew, and you want to validate your secular view of the world, one of the best things to do is to become a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and try and work at developing a coherent model of the human being. That doesn't depend on God, and that has no spiritual dimension. And as we say, in Jewish, lot's of luck, not gonna work. So, that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we have for today. Take a look at the website Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And join us become a member of our happy warriors community. And until next week, If you focus on your five F's, regardless of what's happening in the world politically, regardless what's happening militarily, regardless of what's happening economically, these are all big, big picture things. But none of them should be able to in any way. Handicap your progress with your family, your finances, your faith, your friendships, and your fitness, your family, your faith, your finances, your friendship, and friendships, and your fitness. Until next week, I'm your rabbi Rabbi Daniel Lapin. God bless.
