The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, V. 11

Essays in Honor of Werner Muensterberger

L. Bryce Boyer, Simon A. Grolnick, L. Bryce Boyer, Simon A. Grolnick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317736967
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Volume 11 includes chapters on the analysis of dybbuk possession and exorcism in Judaism (Y. Bilu); crisis and continuity in the personality of an Apache shaman (L. B. Boyer et al.); culture shock and the inability to mourn ( H. Stein); charismatically led groups (L. Balter); the psychoanalytic and social aspects of telephoning (R. Almansi); and an ethnographic study of hermaphroditism ((G. Herdt & R. Stoller).

1
The Taming of the Deviants and Beyond: An Analysis of Dybbuk Possession and Exorcism in Judaism

YORAM BILU

Documented cases of dybbuk¹ possession appear in Jewish sources from the 16th century A.D. to the first decades of the 20th century. Since these sources have usually been inaccessible to the general scholar, this uniquely Jewish variant of spirit possession has been largely the subject of literary rather than scientific investigation. Ansky (1926) and Singer (1959) popularized the dybbuk phenomenon by emphasizing its colorful and dramatic nature; Ansky’s play The Dybbuk (subtitled Between Two Worlds) was the first to be performed by the Hebrew National Theater, and had widespread success. Recently, a scholar of Judaic studies collected and annotated what appears to be the vast majority of the reported cases of dybbuk possession (Nigal, 1980). Most of these reports are to be found in mystically oriented exegeses of the Holy Scriptures and in books of Hasidic tales, usually written to praise and commemorate a renowned rabbi or sage. Some cases are more detailed, and were published in special brochures or booklets, the titles of which attest to their dramatic quality, e.g., “Awful Tales,” “Terrible Deeds of the Spirit.” These provocative titles had their effect—the brochures were published in numerous editions.

In this paper I shall attempt to clarify the dybbuk phenomenon in terms of some of its psychocultural components. My study is based on an analysis of 63 documented cases over the nearly 400-year span in which dybbuk possession thrived in various parts of the Jewish world. Most of the cases seem to be authentic, located as they are in known coordinates of time and space. The reports were usually written by eyewitnesses, some of whom actively participated in the expulsion of the dybbuk; many of the victims and exorcists were identified by name, and in some instances the documents were signed by distinguished witnesses testifying to their accuracy. As ethnographic accounts, however, these reports leave much to be desired. Laconic and obscure on some points, overly elaborated and embellished on others, they were written from a definite ideological stance, which imbues them with strong moral overtones. Still, an appreciation of the literary instruction of the documents can contribute to an understanding of the dybbuk phenomenon within its sociocultural context if the motivation underlying it is correctly deciphered and interpreted.

A methodological problem involves the high variability of the sample, composed of cases so far removed in time and place. My analysis will therefore remain on a relatively molar level, concentrating on the commonalities among the various Jewish communities in which the dybbuk appeared. One factor which seems to mitigate potentially misleading effects of the variability of the cases is the very stability of the dybbuk phenomenon over time and space. The behavioral patterns of the possessed, whether in 16th-century Palestine or 19th-century Poland, bear a remarkable resemblance (although again the literary construction of the cases might have contributed to this resemblance). Throughout its history, dybbuk possession was conceived as a disease, and the possessing spirits were negatively evaluated. In contrast to possession phenomena in many other ethnic groups (Bourguignon, 1973; Crapanzano and Gattison, 1977), possession by dybbuk did not undergo a transformation into the ceremonial context of a possession cult, wherein possession is not stigmatized but socially approved and the adept seeks to establish a symbiotic relationship with the possessing agent (Bourguignon, 1976a; Bilu, 1980, p. 36).

Dybbuk possession by definition involved spirits of the dead as possessing agents. Although Jews were possessed by demons as long as two millenia ago (as the exorcisms by Jesus demonstrate) and as recently as this century (see Bilu [1980] for demonic possession among Moroccan Jews), cases of demonic possession were never considered to fall within the framework of the dybbuk phenomenon. The latter is based on the kabbalistic doctrine of the transmigration of souls (Gilgul), which explains why it appeared in mystically oriented Sephardic as well as Ashkenazic circles. The doctrine of transmigration emerged in Jewish mysticism in the 12th century and rapidly became a core concept (Scholem, 1971). The mystics of that era contended that the spirit of a deceased person might transmigrate into a newborn human (and also, although rarely, into animal and inanimate forms) as retribution for certain transgressions the person committed during his lifetime. Although considered a severe punishment, transmigration signified a divine mercy as well, since it was meant to rehabilitate and purify the sinner’s spirit by virtue of his reformed behavior in his new lifetime. In 16th-century kabbala, the idea of the transmigration of souls became a universal law. The doctrine relevant for possession was developed in the second half of the 13th century when the concept was expanded to include the entry of a spirit into a living person after he was born. According to this doctrine, not only wicked spirits but also righteous ones took possession of people (themselves innocent and just) in order to complete their quota of good deeds required for entry into Paradise. But the designation dybbuk was reserved for the spirits of the wicked who penetrated humans in order to find refuge from persecution. Since these were spirits of sinners, they were doomed to remain in limbo, wandering between the two worlds, without being allowed to enter Hell. (In Jewish tradition, Hell was not considered a place of eternal torment but of temporary retribution, from which souls would enter Paradise.) In this limbo, the spirits were exposed to ruthless persecution by angelic and demonic beings. Thus, the inhabitation of humans gave these spirits temporary shelter as well as a unique opportunity to be purified, thereby to gain access to the world of the dead, as the description of the exorcistic ritual will later show. It should be noted that the term dybbuk was introduced during the 17th century to designate this type of possession and was employed by Ashkenazic Jews only. Sephardic Jews adhered to the terminology of the early kabbalistic literature, in which the possessing agent was named “evil spirit.”

The fact that the first cases of dybbuk possession appeared in the second half of the 16th century, almost 300 years after the theosophical foundation underlying it had been established, has not yet been explained. It may be that such an interval is required for novel, “disembodied ideas” to be transformed into a set of tangible behaviors; the onset may have been precipitated by specific circumstances within the Jewish milieu (such as the dispersion of the Jews following their traumatic exile from Spain in 1492) or outside it (the witch craze in Europe); or finally, the cases of the 16th century may simply have been the first to have been written down, as part of the general proliferation of Jewish literature in that era.² Coordinated interdisciplinary research by Judaica scholars and social scientists should suggest answers to this question.

In any event, the first reports of dybbuk possession came from 16th-century Sephardic communities in Safed, Palestine (the cradle of that century’s Lurianic kabbala), and in Italy. In the 17th century, cases were reported in Safed, Damascus, and Cairo, and later in Turkey and Italy. Only towards the end of the 17th century did the first eastern-European cases appear, but in the 18th and 19th centuries mystically oriented Hasidic communities, mainly in Poland and Russia but also in Germany, Hungary, and Lithuania, supplied most of the case reports. Throughout this period, cases from the Mideast continued to appear in print. In the 18th century, for example, Jerusalem, Tiberias, Damascus, Beirut, and Baghdad were represented on the dybbuk map. The last cases to be documented appeared in the first decades of the 20th century in Lithuania, Palestine (Jaffa and Jerusalem), and Baghdad. Whereas the timing of the onset of dybbuk possession has not been fully explained, its disappearance was apparently related to the gradual disintegration of Jewish traditional centers in Europe as a consequence of modernization and emigration, and finally their physical extermination during the Holocaust. The mass emigration of Jews from the Moslem orbit to modern Israel brought an end to possession in those areas as well.

Despite the vast cultural differences between east and west in Judaism, all the communities in which dybbuk possession appeared shared a common tradition, with a “complex of commandments which governed the day to day discipline of the Jew, his piety, his morals, his rules for personal life at home, in the synagogue and in the market place” (Bokser, 1981, p. 22). Indeed, it might be argued in somewhat tautological fashion that the very appearance of dybbuk possession in these communities points to a certain degree of common mystically oriented understanding. Only a few reported cases emerged from a nonmystical matrix.³

In analyzing dybbuk possession, I have found it profitable, following Obeyesekere (1970) and Crapanzano (1977a), to conceive of it as an idiom for articulating and structuring certain inchoate experiences and events. An idiom, according to Crapanzano, “provides the basis for those schemata by which reality is interpreted” (1977a, p. 11). An act of articulation separates events from the flow of experience and renders them meaningful. When these events are construed on a phenomenological level within a culturally shared idiom, the entire experience undergoes “symbolization” (Gendlin, 1964): “Chaos [is] fashioned into cosmos” (Schweder, 1980, p. 64). Borrowing Crapanzano’s terms, I view the articulatory function of the dybbuk spirits as essentially “vectorial.” That is, the spirits are a vehicle for articulating unacceptable, conflict-precipitating desires and demands. Since the idiom of possession is culturally constituted, this articulation may result in relief for the actor. He does not suffer “the consequences of his idiom” as a Western paranoid does (even while both are considered sick in their respective cultures).

Although I am concerned in this paper with both individual motivation and societal cultural constraints, my emphasis is on the latter—the collective (or control) level. This is partially due to the fact that I am dealing with written documents rather than with actual cases observed in vivo. Starting with the assumption that the desires and demands underlying dybbuk possession constituted a threatening challenge to the Jewish traditional way of life, I shall depict the impressive dialectical process by means of which deviance was transformed into a conformity-strengthening vehicle, a process involving three levels of control: (1) The articulation of unacceptable desires within the possession idiom, the tenor of which was set by an externalized, ego-alien agent. (2) The rectification of individual deviance through the exorcism of the dybbuk. (3) The strengthening of conformity in the community by way of the moral implications of the dybbuk episodes.

In what follows, I shall analyze these three levels of control in detail, drawing on examples from the case reports. I shall then attempt to locate the possessed within a psychiatric diagnostic category, in the light of their social roles in the cultural matrix from which the phenomenon emerged. Finally, some implications for the analysis of culture-specific syndromes will be discussed.

FIRST LEVEL OF CONTROL: OUTWARDLY DIRECTED CULTURAL MOLDING OF ABERRANT IMPULSES

Through the dybbuk idiom forbidden wishes were articulated and symbolized in a way that considerably decreased their potential threat both to the individual and his community. From a psychodynamic point of view, this process can be formulated in terms of projection,⁴ whereby repressed impulses found expression in an externalized (although internally located) entity—the possessing spirit. What were the cardinal impulses underlying the articulated scheme of the dybbuk? One need not be a devoted Freudian to single out sexual wishes as a major motivating force behind this type of possession. Open expressions of sexuality were strictly regulated and curtailed in Jewish traditional communities of former centuries (Zborowski and Herzog, 1962, pp. 134–138), leaving few nondeviant forms of expression (without resulting, however, in an overall devaluation of sexuality). Since a discussion of these regulations and prohibitions, relevant as it may be to an understanding of the cultural matrix from which the dybbuk phenomenon emerged, is beyond the scope of this paper, I shall focus here instead on the textual evidence of sexual themes in the documented cases.

Dybbuk Possession as an Articulation of Sexual Urges

According to Crapanzano (1977a, p. 18) and Spiro (1967, p. 72), the elements in the idiom of spirit possession must constitute appropriate metaphorical representations of the impulses putatively underlying them—there must be some degree of congruence between symbol and referent. Such congruence is pronounced in the phenomenon under discussion, in that an act of penetration is essential both to dybbuk possession (and spirit possession in general) and sexual intercourse. So compelling is this congruence that the scholars who elaborated the theosophical doctrine underlying the dybbuk could not disregard it. The first kabbalists linked transmigration specifically with sexual transgressions (Scholem, 1971), and in Jewish mystical texts the residence of a spirit in a human being was designated “impregnation” (ibbur).

The sexual meaning of penetration in spirit possession is even more accurately (and therefore more convincingly) conveyed when the genders of the dramatis personae, penetrator and penetrated, correspond with those in the standard heterosexual act. Hypothetically, since spirits and victims alike are unequivocally sex-typed, four gender combinations are possible. What is their distribution in the cases under discussion? The sample consists of 41 female victims and 22 male victims. The ratio of almost two to one is consistent with massive evidence for the preponderance of women among the possessed in a great variety of culturally unrelated social groups (Bilu, 1980; Bourguignon, 1973; Lewis, 1971; Oesterreich, 1930; Prince, 1977; Walker, 1972). Explanations of this recurrent finding usually emphasize the culturally defined inequality of the female role in male-oriented societies (see, especially, Lewis, 1966, 1971), which is also consistent with Jewish mystical traditions concerning spirit possession. The author of Emek Hamelech (“The Valley of the King”), a kabbalistic text, argues that women are excessively vulnerable to possession because “the impurity stemming from the serpent still abounds in them.” Here an allusion is made to Eve’s primordial sin of succumbing to the temptation of the snake, the nature of which temptation was blatantly sexual, according to mystically oriented sources (Rubenstein, 1968, p. 54). In another text, Minkhat Eliahu (“The Gift of Elijah”), the relative immunity of men to possession is attributed to the fact that “a man cannot refrain from the sin of nocturnal pollution, out of which demons are engendered; these creatures always encircle him, so how can [the possessing spirit] enter him?” Male sexuality procreates demons that haunt wandering human spirits and dispel them. This cosmological proposition, which is verified by many dybbukim in the recitations of their ordeals, is based on a conception of male sexuality as outer-oriented, rendering men relatively immune to penetration, in contrast to women, who are relatively accessible to penetration because their sexuality is inner-oriented, a point to which I shall return below.

The gender distribution of the spirits is even more one-sided. Fifty-eight of the spirits (92 percent) were male, only five female. As a result, the most prevalent gender combination in the sample is that of a male spirit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Editors
• Contributors
• Table of Contents
• Bibliography of Werner Muensterberger
• 1. The Taming of the Deviants and Beyond: An Analysis of Dybbuk Possession and Exorcism in Judaism
• 2. After the Death of The Primal Father
• 3. Crisis and Continuity in the Personality of an Apache Shaman
• 4. Sakulambei—A Hermaphrodite’s Secret: An Example of Clinical Ethnography
• 5. “Culture Shock” and the Inability to Mourn
• 6. The Charismatically Led Group: The Mental Processes of Its Members
• 7. On Telephoning, Compulsive Telephoning, and Perverse Telephoning: Psychoanalytic and Social Aspects
• Author Index
• Subject Index