I know the author of this book. Born in 1929 into a family of Jewish intellectuals, he was trained academically as a chemist,
a medical physician, and a
psychiatrist. He has spent his life endeavoring to use his impressive erudition and his insight to help people...help them primarily to vanquish their own self-destructive urges, toxicomania being important in this. He has published several books in the course of these endeavors, and in some of these elaborates a kind of ecumenical view of people's spiritual longings. Here he relates the cases of specific patients (names changed, of course) of a Dr. Rex Cordis (clearly a reflection of himself) who uses a psychiatric therapy based on diverse spiritual dimensions of both the Jewish and the Catholic religious traditions. The Kabbala, for example, underpins a kind of idiosyncratic
numerology that he uses to inform the patients' self-examination and healing, as well as a suggested mnemonic. There is a balance struck between the works of Sigmund Freud and religious scripture...always directed toward a therapeutic reconciliation in the patient's mind. The narration of these attempts to heal by spiritual insight on these bases is fascinating, saturated as it is with every manner of historical fact and numerological "connection" of the patient to "the divine hand" that the author sees as patent in human events. Indeed the reader is constantly brought to a state of wonder as the text is digested. The publisher, Old Rugged Cross Press of 1160 Alpharetta Street, Suite H, Roswell, Georgia, 30075, has given us a real "Far Journey" of spiritual adventure here. Recommended.