The Souls at Sinai and in the Therapy Room

By Matt Bishop, Ph.D.

SAN DIEGO — Jewish tradition loves to stretch the imagination. One teaching from the midrash says that when Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai, it wasn’t only the Israelites who had just escaped Egypt who stood there. It was every Jewish soul — past, present, and future. This idea, known as kol haneshamot (“all the souls”), means that even the unborn, the long-dead, and those who would one day join the Jewish people were mystically present. Sinai was not just a moment in history — it was a gathering across all of time.

That theme repeats every year at the Passover seder. Families pour wine into the Kos Eliyahu (“Elijah’s Cup”). Later in the evening, during the Hallel prayers, we open the door for Elijah, who tradition says, never died and will one day return. The message is simple but profound: not everyone who is present with us is visible. Presence is bigger than what our eyes can see.

I think about these ideas often in my work as a psychotherapist. Because therapy, too, is full of Jewish presences that cannot be seen but still shape my encounters with clients. The list of Jewish psychotherapeutic philosophers is so long and dense it can’t possibly be covered in one article. So instead I only want to list a few whose “souls” often accompany me in my work.

Freud: Listening for the Unconscious

Of course we have to start with papa Freud. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Sigmund Freud is remembered as the father of psychoanalysis. His relationship to Judaism was complicated — he distanced himself from religion, but never from his Jewish identity. Freud’s great contribution was uncovering the unconscious, the hidden layers of thought and desire beneath our everyday speech.

When I hear a client’s slip of the tongue, a recurring dream, or an oddly timed silence, I feel Freud’s presence. He reminds me to listen beneath the surface, because often the real story is the one that isn’t spoken aloud.

Frankl: The Search for Meaning

Viktor Frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, created logotherapy — an approach rooted in the belief that our deepest drive is meaning. His book Man’s Search for Meaning describes how even in Auschwitz, people could endure suffering if they found a purpose that transcended it.

Frankl is with me whenever a client faces unbearable loss or pain. He gives me language to ask, gently: What meaning might be discovered here? What thread of purpose might carry you through this?

Yalom: Facing Existence Honestly

Irvin Yalom, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Washington, D.C., developed existential psychotherapy. He suggested that all therapy ultimately touches four “givens” of life: death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. He is, quite amazingly, still writing and sharing his ideas on the complexity of being human. Most recently his book A Matter of Life and Death was published in 2001.

When clients whisper fears of dying or sit with the loneliness that no relationship can fully cure, Yalom is in the room. His presence challenges me not to soften the edges, but to sit squarely with life’s hardest truths, trusting that facing them can lead to deeper vitality.

Buber: The Sacred Encounter

Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher and theologian, was not a therapist but changed therapy nonetheless. His classic concept the I and Thou relationship has persuaded myself and thousands of other clinicians that true human healing comes not through clever technique but through an authentic encounter, when two people meet each other not as objects but as subjects, in full presence.

Buber’s voice is there when therapy shifts from a professional exchange to something raw, real, and alive. He reminds me that healing often happens not in the method, but in the meeting.

Perls: The Urgency of the Present

Fritz Perls, born to a Jewish family in Berlin, co-founded Gestalt therapy. He grew impatient with endless analysis of the past and insisted that the heart of therapy was awareness in the present moment when we really take notice of all thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations as they arise in the moment.

Perls is there whenever a client starts spinning stories to avoid their feelings. His whisper is clear: Come back. What are you aware of right now? He pulls the work out of abstraction and into immediacy.

Why This Matters

Freud, Frankl, Yalom, Buber, Perls — they were flawed men, complex and human. But they also carried forward a Jewish intellectual inheritance that has shaped how millions of people understand themselves.

Just as the midrash teaches that kol haneshamot stood together at Sinai, I imagine these thinkers standing with me in the therapy room. Their presence reminds me that I don’t work alone. I sit in a long line of Jewish voices, each asking in their own way:

What does it mean to suffer, to choose, to encounter another person, to live fully in the present?

And maybe this is the thread that ties Sinai to the therapy room: that we are never only ourselves in the work of seeking wisdom. The souls are still here.

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Dr. Matt Bishop is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and a doctorate in Behavioral Health Leadership. He is the founder and owner of Sonder Therapy Group (https://sondertherapysd.com/) in San Diego and serves as a faculty member in the graduate Clinical Counseling program at Point Loma Nazarene University.