| Abstract: | This article attempts an overview of Mordechai Rotenberg's second and third books, Dialogue with Deviance and Re-Biographing and Deviance, and an in-depth analysis of his fourth book Dia-logo Therapy. It shows how Rotenberg builds on his early studies of Protestantism and American individualism and on his Talmudic, Hasidic, and Jewish hermeneutic background to offer a challenging rereading of the task of the therapist. This includes the bridging of the rational and the irrational, the factual and the mystical, through psychonarration and re-biographing. It also includes a trenchant distinction between the unilateral truth of Aristotle, Hegel, Marx, and Freud and the multilateral truth of Socrates, the Talmud, and Martin Buber. Throughout the article a comparison is made between Rotenberg's thought and that of both Martin Buber and Maurice Friedman. |
