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- Title
כאשר האחרוּת מחוללת והחידה מקוּללת: על אזורי ההיזק ושולי הסכנה.
- Authors
רות קרא איוונוב־
- Abstract
This paper expands upon Ruth Stein’s conception of maternal primal seduction and modes of relatedness in relation to the divine. Stein’s thesis is that within the mother’s maternal role of caring and nurturing her infant, the mother simultaneously seduces her child and expresses erotic affection toward him, which establishes the foundation for his own desires and mature sexuality. In the same manner, I would argue, God, who brings the human individual into existence and cares for him or her through direct and indirect providence, must also seduce the human being. This lens allows for an exploration of the human relation with the absolute Other, explicating both the potential positive growth entailed within this relationship – i.e., as a reflection of maternal and earthly desire – and the potentially destructive element implicit within the human-divine relation. In her paper, Stein emphasized that the basis for mature sexuality is based on the recognition of “otherness.” The enigmatic and erotic dimensions of such otherness reflect hidden and inner expanses in which an individual cannot ever fully be cognizant of themselves – let alone their partner(s). The foundation of sexual experience, thus, is based on the differentiation between the mother and her infant and the “primal seduction” that transpires in this unequal and asymmetrical dyad. The riddle of the other is never solved. Nevertheless, mature sexuality allows each partner to disclose themselves within a structure that resonates throughout transpersonal and religious experiences of revelation, mystical union, surrender, and spiritual assimilation. Just as is the case in the archetypal mother-infant relationships, so too in processes of faith and encountering the irreducible, wholly Other there is an asymmetrical space – a chasm – that serves as the basis for attachment to the enigmatic other that always remains unknowable. Jacob Frank (1726–1791) and the Frankist movement will serve as the case study for our exploration of the abovementioned concept.19 Through this charismatic personality and his messianic movement, structures of abuse, sexual harassment, and exploitation will be investigated. These occurrences took place frequently within his circles – forming the very foundation of the communal society (ahṿ ah) that Jacob Frank established in eighteenth-century Poland. Frank referred to the male members of the commune as brothers and the female members of the commune as sisters, thus implying his role as supernal father of all the members – brothers and sisters – of his movement, with whom he carried on sexual relationships. As a messianic sovereign, Frank believed that he embodied the supreme and even divine power to rule and command his circle of disciples. There is even speculation regarding incestuous relations between Frank and his daughter Eva (1754–1816), who was chosen by him to fulfill the redemptive role of “Holy Mistress” (alma go’elet), and later serve as the mystic cult leader. Even if Frank did not commit incense with his daughter, and Eva stayed a virgin until her death, she was abused by her father in a variety of quasi-symbolic manners – alongside many other young women, whom he oppressed, exploited, raped, and forced to participate in orgiastic rituals in which, as the personification of the divine on earth, he allowed himself to partake. He would even suckle at the breasts of nursing mothers – imbibing the nurturing breast milk for himself. Against this backdrop, I argue that in messianic sectarian movements a special kind of exploitation and perversion is created and developed. Jacob Frank used his power in order to transgress the demarcation of privacy and dispossess the other of his or her own space. Frank, similar to past and contemporary charismatic and manipulative leaders, deliberately employed ambiguous kabbalistic terminology which intertwined conceptions of transgression and redemption in order to control the other and devour their interiority and agency. Thus, within this movement, Frank created a “confusion of tongues” in a double sense: first, on a human-to-human horizontal level – an organization that Sándor Ferenczi (1873-1933) described in his landmark 1949 paper as a mixture between an adult’s language of passion and a child’s language of tenderness – and, second, on a human-to-divine vertical level, the sphere of relations between the Godhead and human beings, in which the dimension of sanctity was converted by Frank into a space of persecution, punishment, and self-annihilation. When otherness is consumed within identity, the enigmatic chasm between self and other collapses and sexuality and primal seduction become tools of manipulation and destruction. The charismatic messianic leader, who acts as an intermediary between the divine and human, instead of embodying the always remaining gap between self and other, ultimately displaces God, leading to the profanation of the sacred and the reduction of otherness. In addition to my conclusions regarding the destructive potentialities involved in mystical unification and messianic movements, I take the opportunity to contrast this with the possibility of constructive attachment to a positive “mystifying (m)other.” In mythical imagery, such as the eating of manna, the concealing of the primordial light, and the breathing of life into the human being in the Garden of Eden, a passionate relationship with the other is reflected, and religious experience and the dimension of faith is based on boundaries that are not transgressed, but protected. Religious revelation, especially mystical experience, as already noted by Jean Laplanche (1924- 2012), Georges Bataille (1897-1962), and others, may be interpreted as forms of constructive growth, Eros and desire that are directed toward God, on the one hand; or as pathological illness, paranoia, hallucinations, and dangerous misuses of power, on the other hand. The wish to unite with the absolute and become one with divinity, referred to in religious studies as unio mystica, is situated at the heart of mystical literature and experience. Since primal seduction occurs between two unequal partners, there is always the danger of perversion, trauma, exploitation, and abuse in the interaction between mother and infant – God and human being.
- Publication
Ma'arag: Israeli Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2019, Vol 9, p421
- ISSN
2413-290X
- Publication type
Article