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Biomedical subjects

B Beit-Hallahmi

Publications and source records attributed to B Beit-Hallahmi.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Dybbuk-possession as a hysterical symptom: psychodynamic and socio-cultural factors.

The Dybbuk is the traditional Jewish variant of the phenomenon spirit-possession, involving spirits of the dead. Manifestations of such supposed possessions have always been considered malevolent and treated by exorcism. Descriptions of such cases have always been found in folklore, but have not been discussed in psychological or anthropological literature. Based on analyses of 63 documented cases of dybbuk, this paper seeks to analyze the Jewish variant of spirit-possession from psychodynamic and socio-cultural points of view. Psychodynamically, dybbuk-possession is conceived of as a hysterical syndrome expressed by repressed impulses, primarily sexual. By analyzing the psychological content of dybbuk-possession, specific psychoanalytically derived hypotheses concerning the dynamics of underlying hysterical symptoms may be validated. From the perspective of psychiatric ethnology, the dybbuk is a culture-bound syndrome viewed as a working alliance between society and a selected group of deviants.

Conversion Disorder↗
PubMed1985

Dangers of the vagina.

Beliefs, myths, and literary expressions of men's fear of female genitals are reviewed. Both clinical evidence and folklore provide evidence that men imagine female genitals not only as a source of pleasure and attraction, but also as a source of danger in a very physical sense. The vagina dentata myth has many versions, including some modern ones, and its message is always the same: an awesome danger emanating from a woman's body. The prevalence of such feelings in folklore and in literature is noted.

Fantasy↗
PubMed1977

Religious ideas and psychiatric disorders.

The evidence presented above points to the need for considering factors other than purely religious ones in determining the role of religious ideas in psychiatric disorders. The occurrence of religious ideas as part of the content of individual delusional systems in psychiatric patients can be explained on the basis of exposure to religious ideas through the social environment. It may be also related to the prominence of religion, vis-a-vis other belief systems, in the social envirnment. When considering psychopathological explanations for intense religious experiences, one has to be conscious again of the social factors involved. When an unusual experience having religious content becomes normative in a certain group (for whatever reasons), trying to explain its appearance on the basis of individual psychodynamics or psychopathology becomes very difficult. There seems to be an inverse relationship between the social nature of a religious experience and its psychopathological nature, i.e., there is more psychopathology in individuals reporting solitary religious experiences, or individual religious ideas. Thus the solitary experience seems to be more influenced by disturbed individual dynamics, but in other cases social factors seem to be crucial. Our overall conclusion is that a psychiatric analysis of the role of religious factors in psychopathology has to be first a social-psychiatric analysis. An individual presenting psychiatric symptoms and religious ideas has to be evaluated in light of his social background, since the specific content of psychiatric symptoms seems to be determined by social background factors. Individual psychodynamics determine the appearance of symptoms, but their particular form will be the result of these background factors, one of which is religion.

Delusions↗