M.H. Publications
|
A new book by Michael Haft
|
|
Yael Haft
Relationships in our hands
|
|
Who are you? What are you? What can you become?
Learn about yourself through a scientific psychological
study of your hands that has been proven empirically.
The term Psychochirology, as used in the present
context, has nothing to do with the prejudices one might harbor
regarding 'hand-reading' or 'future-telling.'
The hands express a wealth of information about
ourselves that can enable us to understand certain latent tendencies in
our natures, both positive and negative.
A serious study of the hands can be exceedingly
instrumental to those who wish to know more about themselves, their
problems and capabilities, as well as providing a valuable help to
psychologists in their work.
|
|
|
Relationships are a
topic of so much importance in today's world - with cultural conflicts,
constant upheavals and extremes in almost every field. Many books were
written on relationships. Yael Haft's book is a unique one, it is a
book that calls for some measure of understanding, balance and
togetherness through human contact and relationships among people at
both personal levels and global dimensions, a book about OUR HANDS as
an inner map that directs us to understand better the complexity of our
relationships - whether they are to ourselves, within ourselves, to
others or to the world around us.
152 pages, ISBN 0-9673837-0-6, $14 /
Sfr. 20 / UK£ 8
|
Foreword
For more than three decades Yael Haft has practiced. Now she came out
with a book that shows the fruits of maturity, experience, knowledge
and empathy. It is a book written with great distinction. It is a
precise piece of professional work, presented by an expert with
literary skills. It is a clinical gem, also relevant in the area of
psychoanalytic literature. Yael Haft produced a book which deals with
elements of collective experience and emotions of mankind. In her
account of the use of psychochirology she describes what is visible to
her in looking to the fingers, mounts and lines within the palms in a
masterful voice. The book is singularly instructive.
-- Alberta B. Szalita, M.D. and D.P.H.
|
Preface
Once again Yael Haft presents us with valuable insights derived from
her practice as a psycho-chirologist. She shows us how our hands and
fingers express archetypal energy patterns and the ways these interact
with family traits and early experiences to structure our personalities.
Following her in this work, we can learn to see and explore the many
ways our hands reveal what the author calls our inner family as well as
our personal strengths and limitations. We learn that chirology can be
a powerful tool to help us to become aware of many aspects of ourselves
that are too often lived out unconsciously in relationships to our own
inner depths and to other people. Finally, in a chapter called
"Spirituality in Relating," the author puts forth some of her thoughts
about working with what we can discover in our hands to enable our
creating a more conscious, responsible and individuated life.
-- Sylvia B. Perera
Review by Judith Issroff
This is a wisdom book written by a wise woman. It is very much a
Jungian book, drawing on mythology and anecdote in enriching ways. It
is a book as much about life and experience as about how this very
skilled practitioner of chirology and psychotherapy has amassed and put
her knowledge into her own original practice and this thoughtful
addendum to our common human[e] heritage. It is not a book for anyone
who is looking for a scientific evidence-basis for these very difficult
to acquire skills. It takes at least nine years to train a chirologist,
and this is not a text book for amateurs or beginners. Nor is it a book
for soothsayers – chirology does not foretell but does reveal
character, personality, past traumas, present traits and attributes,
present conflicts, defenses and hints about problematic areas. The
brain remains plastic throughout life. Brain and skin develop from the
same structure embryologically. Hands have a very large and sensitive
skin and musculature. Plethysmography – finger tip pressure measurement
– has been shown to be a very sensitive way of measuring feelings
imagined by Manfred Clynes (1977, 1988). Running through the range of
one’s emotions as a baby does is of lifelong importance and sentics
cycles practice are overall balancing and calming, as important for
health as physical exercise, playing and dreaming. Galvanic skin
responsiveness is used in lie detection. Why should the musculature of
the hands not reflect fine aspects of what is being felt and/or
being/not being expressed constantly? Achieving a measure of affect
regulation is the final common most important aim and common factor in
any kind of psychotherapy (Bradley 2000).
In my experience as a psychoanalyst-psychiatrist with a scientific
bend, chirology can also be used as a clinical tool if such an able and
properly, responsibly trained practitioner as is Yael Haft-Pomrock
happens to be available – but that is rare. In improperly trained hands
it is no more useful than say, using an inexperienced psychologist to
deal with a Rorschach or Thematic Apperception Test TAT, or a
graphologist. As in everything from chess and snooker to tennis, the
practice of law or of psychotherapy, there are grand masters and those
who will always remain impostors or hopelessly untalented amateurs. But
in skilled hands, because I have put this to the test, there is likely
to be a high degree of convergence and agreement, including with my
well-trained and experienced clinical evaluation between that and
psychological testing, graphology and chirology. This somewhat allayed
my skepticism. I sent handprints abroad, together with a picture of the
hands of several of my patients who were in psychoanalysis or
psychotherapy to Yael Haft-Pomrock. I told her nothing about these
patients. One man’s first words to me were:
“I’ve never been honest in my life. I’ve come to you in the hope that
you can help me to become honest. Do you think you can?”
Yael received the prints abroad and called me: “How can you work
with this man? He is so dishonest. He doesn’t know how to tell the
truth.” I was astonished and tested her further over a period of years.
One anecdote is not evidence. I urged her to get the aid of a computer
expert to feed in the hand prints and the details from which she
carefully constructed her readings – which took many painstaking hours
and measures. I wanted her to create the kind of computerized data that
will be irrefutable or garner a measure of statistically reliable
validity. She does refer to studies carried out in a psychiatric
hospital where the changes during therapy are demonstrable. That has
happened also in cases I’ve followed up with her. This is not a
convincing, sufficiently reliable data base – such work remains to be
done. But this is a book that can and deserves to be read by those
skeptical of this art because of the wide, deep reading, perceptiveness
and weltanschauung – the life
philosophy articulated with such loving care by a very professional
woman of great sensitivity and experience. The quotations alone make it
worthwhile – like contemplating a semi-precious gemstone. And to what
she quotes, we can add what she says in this beautifully written and
produced slim volume. It deserves a wide and thoughtful audience.
Judith Issroff
Psychoanalyst, child adolescent, family and social psychiatrist
London, UK
References
Bradley, S.J. (2000) Affect regulation and the development of
Psychopathology. New York: Guilford.
Clynes, M. (1977). Sentics: The Study of the Emotions. London: Souvenir
Press.
Clynes, M. (1988). Generalized emotion: how it may be produced, and
sentic cycle therapy, in Emotions and Psychopathology, Eds. Manfred
Clynes & Jaak Panksepp (pp. 107-170) Emotions and Psychopathology.
New York: Plenum.
Excerpts available online:
Other essays by Yael Haft :
|
Yael Haft
is a member of the new Israeli Jungian Society. She has been an
archetypal psychochirologist and therapist for almost forty years. She
has conducted workshops in Israel, Europe and the United States.
She is a member of the Israel Association for Psychotherapy and the
National Expressive Therapy Association (U.S.A) and is the founder and
head of the Center for the Study and Research of Modes of Conciousness
in Israel. |
Also by Yael Haft:
HANDS-
Aspects of Opposition and Complementarity in Archetypal Chirology
(published by Daimon
Verlag, Switzerland)
|
|