On Transience and the Cycle of Time: Freud and Ecclesiastes with Paul Marcus, PhD (Great Neck, New York)

"The similarity between Freud and Kohelet [Ecclesiastes] is that both of them believe that there's no overarching totalistic system that integrates all the disparate experiences that one has. You have that, Freud says, in psychotics, and you have that in philosophers, and you have that in devout people - they look for systematicity. They try to cram everything into a framework of meaning. Both Freud and Kohelet reject that. They don't have a worldview in that way. However, in order to flourish, you do need a meaning-giving, affect-integrating and action-guiding set of considerations. You can't just be out there like a windowless monad floating around. There are some core beliefs and values that anchor a person, that give them footing. So there's a difference between a totalizing worldview and a workable framework that's open to critique."

Episode Description: We begin with a brief reading from On Transience and Ecclesiastes and consider how they both belong to 'Wisdom Literature' while separated by over 2000 years. Paul points out that while Freud works from a linear sense of time, Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) is drawn to the cycles of nature and human experience. He provides clinical examples that he feels are enriched by considering the teachings of Ecclesiastes which are very similar to the psychoanalytic way of thinking - "one must learn to live with what cannot be altered," the importance of the "downsizing of infantile narcissism," and recognizing that "pleasure and joy are palpable, sensual and concrete experiences." We discuss the importance of an object-related life that includes forgiveness and gratitude as well as "embracing resignation without despair." We conclude with the deeply moving time poem "To every thing there is a season/ and a time to every purpose under heaven..."

Our Guest: Paul Marcus, PhD is a training and supervising analyst at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in New York and Co-chair of the discussion group Psychoanalysis and Spirituality in the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is the author/editor of 25 books including The Spiritual Resistance of Rabbi Leo Baeck: Psychoanalysis and Religion. He is the editor of Psychoanalytic Review.

Recommended Readings:

Seow, C.L. 1997, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation. New Haven: Yale University Press

Fox, M. V., 2004, Ecclesiastes, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society

Heim, K.M., 2019, Ecclesiastes, Downers Grove: IVP Academic