Introduction

This chapter begins with the proposition that perhaps it is the neoplatonian-Christian creation myth of “emanation” that has molded aggressive patterns of procreation and creativity that affected the Western culture at large. It proposes that this Greco-Christian dualistic dichotomy between body and soul has disseminated a “pendulum” system of vacillations between extreme trends of sexual repression and extreme forms of sexual expression that are often recognizable as the “sexual revolution” and its counterrevolution. Since Judaism, as such, never repressed mysticism and sexuality, it promulgated the yetzer-yetzira as a regulative continuum that teaches people how to spend the tremendous power of energy that the sexual yetzer produces not only on physical sex but also on the spiritual yetzira. Since “spiritual sexuality” facilitates the experience of “penetration” into the deeper wombs of romantic creativity for males and females alike, this book of lectures culminates with an illustrative discussion of the psychotherapeutic implications we may discern from the yetzer-yetzira “contraction” paradigm.