Lectures to the Ukraine on Psychotherapy and the Human Spirit
The Director of the Institute for Judaism and Civilization, Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen, has recently delivered two lectures to Psychotherapists and Educationalists in the Ukraine. The lectures, delivered via Zoom, follow an earlier series of five lectures https://www.ijc.com.au/work-1/project-one-wmdy4] on the psychological thought of Viktor Frankl, delivered also to the Ukraine
The lectures are based on Dr Cowen’s studies of Frankl’s work and its coalescence with universal ethics and the concept of the soul. This is a theme documented in Dr Cowen’s book, The Rediscovery of the Human – Psychological Writings of Viktor E Frankl on the Human in the Image of the Divine, which both translates key early writings of Frankl and, in a lengthy introduction to the book, relates them to spiritual themes and sources in the Tradition from Sinai.
It is particularly significant that a strong reception of – and indeed the request for further lectures on – the theme of psychotherapy and spirituality came from the Ukraine. For it is a country under war and is also a former communist state. The interest of psychologists and educators in Ukraine in this theme shows the power and resource contained in the human spirit for overcoming crisis. It also shows the irrepressibility of the human spirit: after generations of communist rule in Ukraine, which sought to repress the concept of the soul, the concept is resurgent. Indeed, this is a feature of a number of former communist societies, to the extent that it has been remarked that if one wants to see religion in Europe, one has to look to Eastern Europe.
The reality is that the same need for recognition of the soul as part of the human personality is present latently in the West – in Europe and the Anglosphere – and yet it has been repressed, not by communism, as was the case in the East, but by an all pervasive materialism, indeed a “hedonistic materialism” as set out in Shimon Cowen’s book, Politics and Universal Ethics https://www.ijc.com.au/work-1/project-three-8ex8n. This has been evidenced in “gender ideology”, which not only has impacted psychology first and foremost, and from and beyond that to society as a whole.
The Institute is interested in canvassing interest in a multi-part online seminar on psychology and universal ethics, open to professionals, students and interested laypersons. Please contact the Institute to express your interest and receive information: Shimoncowen@gmail.com
The first five lectures to the Ukraine have been published in the Journal of Judaism and Civilization, Volume 16 under the title, “The Logotherapy of Viktor Frankl and the Present: Five Lectures”.
