Reframing. Maimonides called his ideal type of human being the chacham, the sage,

a Rothenophar shot, a healer of souls. Today, well, we called such a person a psychotherapist,

a word coined relatively recently from the Greek word psyche meaning soul and therapya meaning

healing. It's astonishing how many of the pioneering soul healers in modern times have been Jewish.

Almost all the early psychoanalysts were, among them Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Otterank and Melanie Klein.

So overwhelming was this that psychoanalysis was known in Nazi Germany as the Jewish science.

More recent Jewish contributions include Solomon Ash on conformity,

Lawrence Colberg on developmental psychology, and Bruno

Betelheim on child psychology. From Leon Fessinger came the concept of cognitive dissonance,

from Howard Gardner, the idea of multiple intelligences, and from Peter Salivay and Daniel Goldman, emotional intelligence.

Abraham Maslow gave us new insight into motivation, as did Walter Mitchell into self-control

via the famous marshmallow test. Daniel Carnerman and Amos Tversky gave us prospect theory and behavioral

economics. Most recently Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Green have pired empirical study of the moral emotions.

The list goes on and on. To my mind though, one of the most important Jewish contributions came from three outstanding

figures, Victor Frankel, Aaron Beck and Martin Seligman.

Frankel created the method known as Logo Therapy, based on the search for meaning.

Beck was the joint creator of the most successful form of treatment,

cognitive behavioral therapy.

Seligman gave us positive psychology,

that is, psychology not just as a cure for depression,

but as a means of achieving happiness or flourishing through acquired optimism.

These are very different approaches, but they have one thing in common.

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