Efforts to evaluate the effects of being Jewish on the individual’s role in the family and the community are the focus of a series of pioneer seminars announced today by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies for resident psychiatrists of Federation agencies. Sponsored by the Federation’s Commission on Synagogue Relations through its Task Force on Mental Health and Judaism, the in-service training program has been funded by the Board of Jewish Education of New York as part of its Jewish Orientation Training Seminars.
Designed to introduce psychiatrists to the significance of Jewishness in character structure, symptom formation and values, the six two-hour seminars are being held every two weeks in February and March. Dr. Mortimer Ostow, chairman of faculty of the pastoral psychiatry department of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, who is chairman of the task force, is presiding.
Dr. Ostow said the program was organized as “an experimental project to emphasize more directly this religious component in child care and family relationships.” He cited the sharp increase in the number of referrals by Jewish day schools of disturbed children to Federation agencies.
NEED FOR IN-DEPTH STUDY
He said the referrals “have dramatically underscored the need for an in-depth course concerned with the practical application in therapy of psychoanalytic understanding related to the theme of these seminars, namely, the dynamic interplay between individual conflicts in a religious context and social institutions and traditions.” Dr. Ostow said the course would cover development of moral values, the personal myth versus the group myth, the function of ritual, self-esteem, self-hatred and problems of identity.
Dr. Jacob Arlow, clinical professor of psychiatry of the State University Medical School of New York, introduced the first session. He is also editor of the Psychiatric Quarterly, which published extracts from four papers by members of the Commission Task Force dealing with the social and family implications of being Jewish.
Dr. Arlow said “such implications have generally been ignored in the psychiatric treatment of Jewish patients. In the present era of concern with ethnicity and community, the tendency by both Jewish and non-Jewish psychiatrists to minimize Jewishness as a source of the individual’s internal conflict appears to warrant review.”
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