Shevet Musar and the History of Psychology
Ilaria Briata
One of the most celebrated and widespread musar-texts of the early modern age, Shevet Musar (The Rod of Rebuke) was written in Hebrew by Elijah ha-Kohen Itamari, a prolific rabbi and preacher who lived in Smyrna between ca. 1659 and 1729. Shevet Musar was first published in Istanbul in 1712, quickly disseminating throughout the Jewish world with about sixty reprints from 1712 to 1959, including translations into Yiddish and Ladino. One of the reasons for this editorial success can be attributed to the nature of its content: a comprehensive yet non-specialistic abridgement of Jewish spiritual lore, expressed in an effectively plain language, tailored for the Jewish common man.
From an intellectual point of view, the themes treated in Shevet Musar––such as the nature and destiny of the soul, its relation with corporeality, the role of humans in the cosmos, and social interaction between human types––approximate to psychology, rather than ethics, as they compose a literary discourse (logos) on and for the soul (psyche), understood as the cluster of cognitive, emotional, volitional faculties forming the human self both as a sentient lining of a corporeal person and as an atom of a social body. In light of this case study, my original hypothesis is to interpret musar as a premodern landmark of Jewish culture in the long-durée history of psychology, or discipline of the soul.
The text offers in fact compelling views on psychologic topics such as the essence of human nature, the relationship between body and soul, the pragmatic role of emotions in spiritual development, and the psychagogic application of somatic training. These textual materials will be anthologized and discussed according to three thematic guidelines: (I) Psychopoiesis: Making the Soul, Shaping the Self; (II) Psychagogy: Guiding the Soul through the Emotion Machine; (III) Psychodynamics of Fear: Transformative Powers of Horror.