The following is an excerpt from
Strictly Kosher Reading page 50- 51 by Dr. Yoel Finkelman. It is truly required reading by any chareidi Jew who wants to understand the relationship between Torah and general culture as manifest in popular English language chareidi literature. This is related to the previous post of whether there is a
Torah Psychotherapy? [A longer selection of the book was posted on
Seforim Blog]
Conclusion - Update 8/16/13
It is apparent from the comments to this post is that there is no such
thing as Torah Psychology or Torah Therapy that was given at Sinai.
There are psychological insights which are found in our Tradition which
can be used in therapy - but they don't constitue a program of therapy. A
psychology or therapy based primarily or exclusive on Torah sources
might be desirable - but it doesn't exist at present and it clearly is
not part of our Tradition from Sinai.
Lawrence Kelemen's parenting guide, To Kindle a Soul, for example, claims in the subtitle to contain "ancient wisdom." "At the foot of a mountain in the Sinai desert, the Creator of the universe directly revealed His profound wisdom to approximately three million people .... Those present received ... a comprehensive guide for raising great human beings." The book attempts to describe "this ancient, Torah approach to education" which is "more comprehensive and effective ... than any of the schools of child psychology I studied at university." Kelemen describes the "significant" differences between these supposedly "ancient traditions" and the practices of contemporary parents."
"Yet Kelemen's parenting approach fits neatly within late twentieth century American parenting discourse, and it differs significantly from that of pre-modern Jewish sources. Kelemen combines an American religious-right critique of supposedly decadent American family life with a child-centered parenting approach advocated by endless American mass-market parenting guides in the 1990s. Criticism of American materialism and permissiveness; advocacy of limiting the mother's time at work; polemics against spanking; emphasis on good nutrition, proper sleep time, and bedtime routine; concerns about the adverse impact of television viewing; claims to provide a "system" for raising moral children; and advocacy of "quality-time" for empathy and close communication between parents and children, all characterized American experts' suggestions to worried middle-class parents at the end of the twentieth century. Even Kelemen's claim that his approach derives from the Bible follows the pattern of American religious parenting guides. Indeed, the book's unstated assumptions - that parenting is a full-time endeavor, and that parents should actively monitor their children's moment by-moment lives - typify experts' advice and popular assumptions in America during the so-called "century of the child."
Not only does Kelemen's approach match that of contemporary parenting experts, but it differs from traditional Jewish sources on the topic. While a complete history of Jewish approaches to children and family has yet to be written, it is enough in this context to note that traditional Jewish literature speaks of childhood and parenting in spotty and unsystematic ways, scattered in works focused on other topics. This reflects a historical past in which families were considerably less child centered than they are today, and parents learned how to parent more by imitation, instinct, face-to-face conversation, and osmosis than from the written word of experts. Pre-modern Jews did not write parenting manuals since they assumed that knowing how to parent was an intuitive or natural thing.
Take the example of Kelemen's approach to corporal punishment and spanking. This is a particularly important example because traditional sources do say quite a bit on the topic, and what they do say clashes rather dramatically with the approach of contemporary Haredi parenting literature. Kelemen polemicizes against corporal punishment of children, and even harsh verbal reprimands. Instead - reflecting both contemporary notions of individual autonomy and the voluntary nature of modern religious commitments, which make it difficult to coerce people into religious conformity - he insists that parents should calmly explain to their children what is proper and improper. Parents should then serve as living role models of the proper, hoping thereby to help children come to their own appreciation of and identification with the parents' values.[...]
