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Correspondence

January 1967

Exchange about Letter from Sigmund Freud on His Limited Jewish Knowledge (1967)

Antisemitism

1. Dr. Dienstag to R. Lamm

1. Dr. Dienstag to R. Lamm (Jan. 6, 1967)

1. Dr. Dienstag to R. Lamm (Jan. 6, 1967)

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My dear [Rav] Lamm, Having spend פסח in Lakewood, I write to you from Philadelphia, before returning to Wash. after בין שבת ור״ח. You were kind enough, in the midst of the pressure of your pre-פסח increased activities, to send me a greatly appreciated most informative reply י״כ! Having mentioned, and written about, my friend, Professor Nathan H. Scott Jr. and having seen your interest in this outstanding scholar, the enclosure which I copied from a recent letter from N.S. will, I believe, because of more than passing interest to you.
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Exchange with R. Jung Regarding Jewish Center Updates (1963)

Dear Rabbi Jung: Thank you very much for your letter which arrived at The Center during the time that I was on vacation. Please, therefore, excuse the delay in my response to you. The letter was given to Fay and she, in turn, transmitted it to me. I have not sent you the bulletin as I am still securing and compiling additional information. Just as soon as I do finalize the copy, I shall be glad to mail same to you. I trust that you are being apprised of all the happenings here at our Center Family. I do hope you and Mrs. Jung are enjoying good health. Please send my very best regards to Mrs. Jung. Sincerely, Florence Fine, Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Sec’y
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Letter to Jerome Eckstein about Judaism, Privacy, and Psychiatry (1967)

Dear Jerry: I was delighted to hear from you, all the more so because your letter was so unexpected. No, I certainly do not take any offense whatsoever at your criticism; in fact, I am quite flattered by the detailed attention you gave to my article. Now let me get down to the individual points you made. 1. The vagueness in my sentence on polygraphs: "However, in certain special civil cases the machine may have limited validity, but only where it is requested by the defendant." You are right that there is confusion as to whom the machine is being applied, the witness or the defendant. You are right again when you assume from the context that I refer to the defendant. The confusion arises because that sentence belongs after the one that follows it in the text. Even then it needs clarification, and I hope to do that if and when I ever include this article in a larger work. Trivial, but much appreciated. 2. Your stylistic gloss on my last sentence on page 308 – right again. More trivial, but still much appreciated. 3. Your defensive reaction to my single comment about psychiatrists on page 309. This time I cannot accept the criticism. I certainly do not deprecate psychiatry, nor do I hold psychiatrists responsible for people’s exhibitionism. I do, however, believe that the popularity of this particular profession, symbolized by the couch, has become a fact of our culture which has certainly not impeded contemporary exhibition-ism. It is not psychiatry as such, but pop-psychiatry which is re-sponsible for this deterioration of privacy. Armchair Freudiansim, once so popular in the cocktail parties of the opinion-makers, has im-pressed several generations of Americans with the idea that to tell all your woes and to bare your heart and to talk out your problems is in and of Itself a good thing. So I do not hold it against the psychiatrists as such, but against the cultural phenomenon that they symbo-Ilze. As a matter of fact, in order to document my protestation of innoce…
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