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

Abstract

This chapter discusses the dybbuk phenomenon in terms of some of its psychocultural components. It describes the possessed within a psychiatric diagnostic category, in the light of their social roles in the cultural matrix from which the phenomenon emerged. The dybbuk idiom also served as a culturally molded outlet for nonsexual urges and desires whose expression was forbidden in Jewish communities. The implications of dybbuk possession and exorcism were too far-reaching to be exhausted by the aspect of individual control. The impact of the spirits' recitations was all the greater when the setting of the exorcism was public. Since the dybbuk role embodied a complicated set of behaviors, culturally defined and constrained, its enactment called for certain assets that only a select group of "deviants" possessed. The chapter argues that dybbuk possession is an example of a subgroup within culture-specific syndromes that involves a kind of working alliance between society and a selected group of deviants.