Repentance, Psychotherapy, and Healing Through a Jewish Lens

The author discusses important connections between the notion of repentance, particularly as conceived in Jewish religious thought, and psychotherapy. She writes that the Jewish concept of repentance, or teshuvah, provides a path of return to one's true spiritual nature, a path that reunites the individual with a larger spiritual community. In comparison, psychotherapy provides a secular path toward a sense of individual psychic wholeness. The author proceeds to investigate the steps involved in teshuvah and the psychological importance and implications of these steps, including the important issue of the role of morality in psychotherapy.