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Some people check out things before they internalize them. They look at issues critically, perhaps even too critically, and they decide those things that are good for them or those things that are not good for them, and they try to select those things that are the right ones, ובחרת בחיים. They select the right way and the right path to go. Those people do not reflect the Eve personality.

The Eve personality has several characteristics.

The personality accepts everything.

The personality does not accept help from those who really care about them.

Let's take a look at that concept. The original Eve, back in the Garden of Eden, accepted the advice from the snake when the snake said don't worry it's all right, you can eat, nothing will happen, it'll be okay. That original Eve was foolish about doing that, but that's what she did. She didn't realize that by internalizing the wrong food, ideas, or concepts that internalization could have a negative effect on her. Perhaps she didn't even care. She certainly didn't think about it, and as a result she made some major mistakes. Those major mistakes were such that they could not be reversed and she and Adam were thrown out of the Garden of Eden as a result, and there were new concepts in the world, evil concepts, plus death, which would not have occurred had she followed the instructions. What were these instructions? The instructions came from the second aspect that she didn't take advice from the people who really cared about her. In this case the source of her care was G-d himself, who said eat whatever you want to from here except from this tree, the Tree of Knowledge. Don't eat from that tree. That's my recommendation to you. If you eat from that tree then you're going to be in big trouble.

But she listened not to the source that cared about her. Instead she listened to the snake. She took advice from anybody and anything and when the snake said don't worry, nothing will happen, it's okay, go ahead, eat from the Tree of Knowledge, she listened to the snake and as a result of her listening to anybody, believing that everybody is good, believing that everybody is on her side, believing that everybody has the right advice for her, as a result of listening to the advice she got into tremendous trouble and she caused trouble for a lot of other people who followed. As a matter of fact, the rest of mankind for thousands of years afterwards.

Since the time of Eve nearly six millennia have passed. During this time people should have learned about the problems caused by Eve. After all, that's one of the reasons why the Torah starts off with the story of Eve in order to warn us about a potential problem and so that we can learn from it. One of the problems is the most obvious of all that there is a concept of Eve and that we should be aware of it and beware of and we should act accordingly. We should act in a way so that we're not going to make the same mistakes that Eve made. This is a very important concept, but surprisingly nearly 6000 years later there are still many of us who still make the mistake of acting like Eve.

A second thing that people should learn from the story is that there are just a few individuals or sources around who can really help us and we should know who they are and we should give them our full attention and respect. In the case of Eve, G-d wanted to help, G-d was the only One who could help her and who was really looking out for her best interests. Eve, instead of that, took the advice and counsel of many others and the single counsel that she should have taken, the counsel from G-d, was the one that she ignored. She listened instead to all of the others who were not really going to help her in the right way.

There's a tremendous amount that we can learn about personality traits and about the right way to listen and accept advice, whom to take the advice from, and how to listen in a critical manner to the advice that people give. All of this is embodied in the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden, and Eve can certainly be a role model for how not to act, what not to do both as individuals, as clients, and even more perhaps as counselors.

The only thing left for psychologists to work on, and G-d left this as something for people to think about and to develop and ways to expand upon His Torah, is as follows.

It's clearly not enough to give good advice. After all, G-d gave Eve the best advice possible. The next step is for psychologists to be able to get through to the client, to explain to the client in a way that the client will understand and accept, the need to take the good advice that is given to them, to accept it and to internalize it, and to be able to distinguish between the good and positive advice of those who love them and really care for them and the advice from a tremendous number of ISBIs who surround her.

How is it possible to go on to the next step? To convince people of the right way to act? That is our goal as counselors and psychologists. That is what we have to continue to learn and that is the secret that is not written in the story of the Garden of Eden.