מגדל בבל: ממדורת השבט אל כור ההיתוך ובחזרה

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis has received many interpretations, from the midrashim of ancient sages to those of modern biblical scholars. In psychoanalytic literature as well, this enigmatic story has received diverse interpretations. The authors suggest a developmental reading of the story, seeing it as the story of a post-traumatic society that seeks to secure its future through a particular form of group formation and the pursuit of knowledge. This movement, the authors contend, begins as a fundamentally healthy and developmental process, but gradually becomes pathological in its striving for idealization and perfection – perfect confidence, perfect knowledge, and a sense of a perfect whole that lacks nothing. Once retreating to and becoming enslaved by the narcissistic fantasy and state of omniscience,society loses the crucial capacity to doubt and contend with uncertainty. In this manner, the ability to learn, develop, relate, and meet the other as an individual subject with an inherent difference is lost. From here the way to an utter loss of meaningful communication and basic social integration is short. The essay makes use of W. R. Bion’s own brief but pithy reading of the Babel story and his theoretical conceptualizations, along with Michael Eigen’s interpretation of Bion’s work regarding the tension between knowing and not knowing, and between unity and multiplicity. Finally, the authors use the implications of psychoanalytic insights derived from the biblical myth in order to discuss the‘babel’ of psychoanalytic theories and their implication for acknowledging the limitations of our knowledge in the therapeutic encounter.