The The origins of David Rapaport's 'Portrait of Moses' story

Abstract

David Rapaport, one of the founders of psychoanalytic ego psychology, used a story about a portrait of Moses in three of his papers in the 1950s in order to illustrate his view that the self has the power to shape its own nature. The present article traces the origins and evolution of that story through Latin, Islamic and Jewish versions.

Keywords

• David Rapaport
• Ego psychology
• portrait of Moses
• ego autonomy