Eliezer Witztum
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 99819 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Eliezer Witztum |
| PRENOMES | Eliezer |
| SOBRENOME | Witztum |
| ASSINATURA | WITZTUM E |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Ben-Gurion University of the Negev |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 41 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 126 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 41 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1987 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Post-Loss Growth (PLG) in bereavement
Posttraumatic growth in the bereaved, representing a clinically useful and evidence-based construct, refers to those dimensions of growth arising from the death of another, just as it might arise from exposure to any other highly stressful event. However, this neglects unique expressions of growth deriving from the pre- and post-death relationship of the survivor to the deceased. We propose the term Post-Loss Growth (PLG) to highlight how this re…
Mass Trauma, Multiple Losses, and the Application of the Two-Track Model of Bereavement in the Context of War
Multiple losses in wartime, both death-related and non-death-related, require multidimensional assessment to encompass both the event and the multiple levels of interpersonal and societal involvements within which individuals are embedded. We present a case study in which the traumatic death of a family member is a central, but not exclusive, element in understanding the bereavement process. The traumatic death originated with the events of Octob…
A short-term intervention program for traumatic grief guided by the Two-Track Model of Bereavement (TTMB)
The purpose of the present article is to describe and demonstrate the principles of multi-module and short-term intervention for traumatic bereavement. This intervention program is based on the Two-Track Model of Loss and Bereavement (TTMB), a model that provides a multidimensional framework for assessing and formulating interventions following interpersonal loss. Following a brief introduction to the topic of traumatic loss and bereavement and i…
Case report
Owing to their highly ritualistic rigid way of life, combined with the need for excellency in studying, Jewish Ultra-Orthodox adolescent males with AN might be at a specific risk of developing severe physical disturbances if their illness is associated with highly perfectionistic obsessional physical activity. Second, Jewish Ultra-Orthodox religious males with OCD might be at a specific risk for severe undernutrition, as their rigid relentless ob…
Extreme Risk-Taking Behaviors in Patients With Eating Disorders
All cases were females with long-standing B/P type AN, often with multiple purging behaviors, other impulsive and non-impulsive comorbidities, and many environmental vulnerabilities. Different motivations were found for these extreme behaviors in addition to ED-related factors, mostly not related to suicide. The severity of the medical and psychological condition required multimodal medical and psychological inpatient interventions. The patients …
I see no problem because there is no problem
This article discusses denial and silence pertaining to events from the Palestinian Intifada (1987–93) as confronted by medical and mental health professionals. It defines denial from a multidisciplinary perspective comprising psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, sociology, and medicine, then analyzes personal recollections as well as texts from interviews with psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists. Using the concept of Professional Hi…
Pavel Ivanovich Karpov (1873–1932?) – the Russian Prinzhorn
The complicated relationship between the discipline of mental health and the arts has barely been studied systematically. Mental hospitals, shelters and prisons – institutions that accommodate the mentally ill – sometimes promote but often discourage and disrupt the patients’ artistic creativity and the images created. In psychiatric circles, the recognition of patient art was a long, slow and frustrating process. Among the Western psychiatrists …
Dissociation
Victor Kandinsky (1849–89)
The paper describes Victor Kandinsky’s professional achievements within nineteenth-century Russian forensic psychiatry. A thorough review of nineteenth-century Russian psychiatry is presented, followed by a short biographical account of Kandinsky’s personal life. Within the backdrop of Russian forensic psychiatry toward the end of nineteenth century, Kandinsky’s pioneer innovations in psychopathology and classification as well as his contribution…
Suicide in Judaism with a Special Emphasis on Modern Israel
Judaism considers the duty of preserving life as a paramount injunction. Specific injunctions against suicide appear in the Bible, Talmud, and thereafter. Nevertheless, Jewish tradition emphasizes that one should let himself be killed rather than violate cardinal rules of Jewish law. Mitigating circumstances are found for the six deaths by suicide mentioned in the Bible, for example to account for one's sins, or avoid shameful death. Heroic suici…
Religion and spirituality in psychiatry, edited by Philippe Huguelet and Harold G. Koenig
Food Insecurity and Mental Health
Value-Sensitive Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Psychiatric rehabilitation contains value-laden concepts that may be unacceptable to certain cultures and many individuals. The concepts of independence and work are examined in a clash between mental health professionals in charge of national policies in psychiatric rehabilitation in Israel and a rehabilitation center for the severely mentally ill within the ultra-orthodox Jewish community. The government professionals considered that having the…
“Spiritual Starvation” in a Holy Space—a Form of “Jerusalem Syndrome”
The purpose of this article is to study the narratives of two religious tourists who have chosen self-starvation on the streets of Jerusalem as their idiom of distress. Both were hospitalized involuntarily due to self-endangering behavior. It appears that in specific groups, restrictions of food intake are regarded as particularly holy, pure, and blessed. Extreme cases of self-starvation using religious explanatory models could be regarded as for…
Bereavement Customs, Grief and Rituals among Ethiopian Immigrants to Israel
Based on clinical experience with Ethiopian patients referred to a Mental Health Center the authors observed a “double” cultural discrepancy: On one hand discrepancy between cultural and mourning practices as practiced by Jews in Ethiopia and Israel, and on the other between the professional team and their Ethiopian patients. The article discusses social displacement related to death, mourning customs and rituals as experienced by Ethiopian Jewis…
Therapeutic Issues and the Relationship to the Deceased
Psychological intervention with the bereaved can provide critical assistance to individuals, families, and communities contending with the loss of significant others. In the organizational paradigm of the Two-Track Model of Bereavement, the outcome of both successful and problematic mourning are manifest along two distinct but interrelated tracks of functioning and relationship to the deceased. Reworking relationships to the deceased can help peo…
Vladimir Bekhterev
Bekhterev was one of the prominent scientists of his era. He played a crucial role in the study of the development of the brain’s organization, neurophysiology and neuropathology and in the objective study of psychological phenomena. Due to a trick of fate, Bekhterev’s name and scientific contributions were neglected and consigned to oblivion. In this article we would like to restore the historical injustice done to Bekhterev. Based on newly disc…
Victor Kandinsky, MD
Trauma and Bereavement
The article re-examines trauma and bereavement and the category of loss considered to be traumatic bereavement. It is argued that the perspective of the relation to the deceased is an insufficiently acknowledged source of traumatic disruption following bereavement. The significance of the relational aspect in bereavement is present in the paradigm of the Two-Track Model of Bereavement (S. Rubin, 1981, 1999). The implications of this approach are …
Jerusalem Syndrome as reflected in the pilgrimage and biographies of four extraordinary women from the 14th century to the end of the second millennium
A previous presentation surveyed a selection of descriptive accounts of the so-called Jerusalem Syndrome, as observed and documented by six different writers, from the 19th century to the end of the second millennium (Witztum & Kalian, 1999). The current presentation focuses mainly on the subjective religious and psychological experience of specific visitors, as reflected in their biographies. This paper presents the cases of four extraordinary w…
Cross-cultural encounters between careproviders
All in faith
This paper describes the way that people for whom religion is at the heart of their cultural and personal life try to cope with their problems via religious dogma or practise. It illustrates this through the three cases drawn from the ultra-Orthodox Jews of Jerusalem. The first describes a situation wherein religious beliefs and practises become the patient's vehicle for configuring and articulating his disorder. The second and third illustrate a…
War-Related Loss and Suffering in Israeli Society
T SITUATION OF PROTRACTED MILITARY conflict and ensuing existential threat, in which Israel has been involved since its inception, has informed its ethos, social institutions, and public discourse in a myriad ways.' The routinization of military and security considerations as self-evident, integral aspects of social reality is predicated on a special state of mind, designated civilian or cognitive militarism.' This pattern of militarism may be vi…
Narrative Construction of Distress and Therapy
Based on therapeutic work and research carried out in a psychiatric clinic in Israel that specializes in the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox community, we suggest a culturally adapted narrative paradigm for the understanding and treatment of mental disorders. We analyze five stories of illness to show how individual distress is constructed as a dramatic narrative inspired by shared cultural symbols and enacted in specific interpersonal and social contexts.…
Further Reflections on Therapy, Psychology, Anthropology and the Haredim
Les AA. repondent a plusiers commentaires critiques sur leur etude (parue dans le meme numero) relative a un modele psychotherapeutique elabore a partir de la construction du recit sur la douleur et la maladie parmi des patients originaires d'une communaute religieuse ultra-orthodoxe (Heredim) de Jerusalem. Ils posent les questions de la valeur d'une specificite des themes de narration, des liens entre l'individu, la communaute et les modes de na…
War-Related Loss and Suffering in Israeli Society
T SITUATION OF PROTRACTED MILITARY conflict and ensuing existential threat, in which Israel has been involved since its inception, has informed its ethos, social institutions, and public discourse in a myriad ways.' The routinization of military and security considerations as self-evident, integral aspects of social reality is predicated on a special state of mind, designated civilian or cognitive militarism.' This pattern of militarism may be vi…
Working with Jewish ultra-orthodox patients
Cross-cultural encounters between careproviders
Trauma and Bereavement
The article re-examines trauma and bereavement and the category of loss considered to be traumatic bereavement. It is argued that the perspective of the relation to the deceased is an insufficiently acknowledged source of traumatic disruption following bereavement. The significance of the relational aspect in bereavement is present in the paradigm of the Two-Track Model of Bereavement (S. Rubin, 1981, 1999). The implications of this approach are …
Therapeutic Issues and the Relationship to the Deceased
Psychological intervention with the bereaved can provide critical assistance to individuals, families, and communities contending with the loss of significant others. In the organizational paradigm of the Two-Track Model of Bereavement, the outcome of both successful and problematic mourning are manifest along two distinct but interrelated tracks of functioning and relationship to the deceased. Reworking relationships to the deceased can help peo…
Patients, chaperons and healers
The ‘Zar’ possession syndrome among Ethiopian immigrants to Israel
This article describes a cultural pattern related to altered states of consciousness, observed amongst new immigrants from Ethiopia in Israel. The belief in possession by Zar spirits is one of the most common possession phenomena in Africa and in other continents. Possession by Zar is expressed by a wide range of behaviours, such as involuntary movements (often resembling epileptiform convulsions), mutism and incomprehensible language. Such behav…
Mysticism and psychosis
This paper examines the link between psychosis and mystical study through the cases of four young men who ‘entered the garden’ of Jewish mystical speculation and subsequently became psychotic. The role of such study as a precipitating factor is suggested, as three had no signs of disturbance prior to their mystical studies. All had suffered personal losses, and their choice of mystical texts and rites showed that their attraction to mysticism inc…
Mental illness and rèligious change
Over the last 20 years there has been a revival of interest in orthodox Judaism in Israel. In an area of Jerusalem with a large concentration of academies of study for ‘baalei teshuva’ (those who have undergone change to orthodox Judaism), it was noted that 12.6 per cent of referrals to the community mental health centre were newly religious. These referrals tended to have schizophrenia or severe personality disorders and were less likely than ot…
A short-term intervention program for traumatic grief guided by the Two-Track Model of Bereavement (TTMB)
The purpose of the present article is to describe and demonstrate the principles of multi-module and short-term intervention for traumatic bereavement. This intervention program is based on the Two-Track Model of Loss and Bereavement (TTMB), a model that provides a multidimensional framework for assessing and formulating interventions following interpersonal loss. Following a brief introduction to the topic of traumatic loss and bereavement and i…
Between Sacred and Medical Realities
The ArgumentOne disconcerting aspect of the role of culture in shaping human suffering is the gap between the explanatory models of therapists and patients in multicultural settings. This gap is particularly noted in working with Jewish ultra-Orthodox psychiatric patients whose idioms of distress are often derived from a sacred reality not easily reconcilable with psychomedical reality. To meet the challenge to therapeutic efficacy that this inco…
Scrupulosity
The attitudes of Catholicism and Judaism to scrupulosity are presented and the similarity between their management programmes and present‐day behavioural psychotherapy is noted. Two famous cases are presented from 16th‐century Europe and a further four cases from our 20th‐century clinic in Jerusalem. Certain common features are noted, typical of obsessive‐compulsive disorders, while some features, typical of scrupulosity, are best understood by c…
The belief in the transmigration of souls
In this paper the culture‐sensitive psychotherapy of a 19‐year‐old Druze patient with severe anxiety reaction is described. The patient explained his anxiety and his symptoms as stemming from violent death in his former life and subsequent transmigration. The therapists joined the patient's explanatory model and previous traditional healing, adding hypnotic suggestion which relieved the symptoms. The relationship of patient symptomatology to cult…
Myths and Rituals
Myth is often used in family therapy as a synonym for erroneous belief or fallacy which preserves a distorted reality of the family, and the concept of ritual is commonly limited to well-defined behavioral prescriptions. Anthropologists, however, emphasize the positive functions of myth and agree on both the ceremonial and symbolic nature of rituals. They also provide a framework for relating the two concepts. This paper presents three anthropolo…
Suicide in Judaism with a Special Emphasis on Modern Israel
Judaism considers the duty of preserving life as a paramount injunction. Specific injunctions against suicide appear in the Bible, Talmud, and thereafter. Nevertheless, Jewish tradition emphasizes that one should let himself be killed rather than violate cardinal rules of Jewish law. Mitigating circumstances are found for the six deaths by suicide mentioned in the Bible, for example to account for one's sins, or avoid shameful death. Heroic suici…
Food Insecurity and Mental Health
Value-Sensitive Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Psychiatric rehabilitation contains value-laden concepts that may be unacceptable to certain cultures and many individuals. The concepts of independence and work are examined in a clash between mental health professionals in charge of national policies in psychiatric rehabilitation in Israel and a rehabilitation center for the severely mentally ill within the ultra-orthodox Jewish community. The government professionals considered that having the…
Scrupulosity
The attitudes of Catholicism and Judaism to scrupulosity are presented and the similarity between their management programmes and present‐day behavioural psychotherapy is noted. Two famous cases are presented from 16th‐century Europe and a further four cases from our 20th‐century clinic in Jerusalem. Certain common features are noted, typical of obsessive‐compulsive disorders, while some features, typical of scrupulosity, are best understood by c…
Supernatural impotence
The historical and cultural background of the belief in supernatural impotence is presented, emphasizing its possible implications for clinical practice. A brief historical survey of the concept in Judaism and Christianity is followed by a short anthropological survey of supernatural impotence in different ethnic subcultures in Israel. A case demonstration exemplifies the connection between understanding the patient's cultural background and beli…
Myths and Rituals
Myth is often used in family therapy as a synonym for erroneous belief or fallacy which preserves a distorted reality of the family, and the concept of ritual is commonly limited to well-defined behavioral prescriptions. Anthropologists, however, emphasize the positive functions of myth and agree on both the ceremonial and symbolic nature of rituals. They also provide a framework for relating the two concepts. This paper presents three anthropolo…
Paradise regained
Mental illness and rèligious change
Over the last 20 years there has been a revival of interest in orthodox Judaism in Israel. In an area of Jerusalem with a large concentration of academies of study for ‘baalei teshuva’ (those who have undergone change to orthodox Judaism), it was noted that 12.6 per cent of referrals to the community mental health centre were newly religious. These referrals tended to have schizophrenia or severe personality disorders and were less likely than ot…
The Dark Mirror of the Soul
Biographie du savant physicien Refael Mordekhai Malki, ancien catholique converti au judaisme, qui, a la fin du XVII e siecle, quitte la Peninsule Iberique pour s'installer a Jerusalem. L'A. utilise les methodes psychologiques et psychanalytiques pour tenter de comprendre, a partir des compte rendus de ses reves, le monde interieur de Malki et la souffrance que sa double identite lui fit endurer
The belief in the transmigration of souls
In this paper the culture‐sensitive psychotherapy of a 19‐year‐old Druze patient with severe anxiety reaction is described. The patient explained his anxiety and his symptoms as stemming from violent death in his former life and subsequent transmigration. The therapists joined the patient's explanatory model and previous traditional healing, adding hypnotic suggestion which relieved the symptoms. The relationship of patient symptomatology to cult…
Mysticism and psychosis
This paper examines the link between psychosis and mystical study through the cases of four young men who ‘entered the garden’ of Jewish mystical speculation and subsequently became psychotic. The role of such study as a precipitating factor is suggested, as three had no signs of disturbance prior to their mystical studies. All had suffered personal losses, and their choice of mystical texts and rites showed that their attraction to mysticism inc…
Recent trauma in psychiatric outpatients
Psychiatric clinic outpatients were screened for recent traumatic events, and post-traumatic symptomatology was evaluated in those reporting occurrence of one or more events within the two years prior to screening. Clear symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder were revealed in 18% of the reporting patients, and the distribution of diagnoses was found to be different in the trauma-reporting group than it was in a comparison diagnostic group
Battle exhaustion
Working with Jewish ultra-orthodox patients
Patients, chaperons and healers
Commentary on Rotenberg's 'Cabalic Sexuality and Creativity
Rotenberg's grand theory hypothesizes that the emanation cosmogony (creation myth) predominating in the West may have disseminated a unilateral physical and aggressive style of phallic-erective sexuality, whereas the cabalic contraction myth entails a bilateral space-evacuating unification model encompassing spiritual sexuality. Although Rotenberg's dichotomizing over- generalizations seem to miss the less aggressive-assertive sexual norms that m…
Between Sacred and Medical Realities
The ArgumentOne disconcerting aspect of the role of culture in shaping human suffering is the gap between the explanatory models of therapists and patients in multicultural settings. This gap is particularly noted in working with Jewish ultra-Orthodox psychiatric patients whose idioms of distress are often derived from a sacred reality not easily reconcilable with psychomedical reality. To meet the challenge to therapeutic efficacy that this inco…
The ‘Zar’ possession syndrome among Ethiopian immigrants to Israel
This article describes a cultural pattern related to altered states of consciousness, observed amongst new immigrants from Ethiopia in Israel. The belief in possession by Zar spirits is one of the most common possession phenomena in Africa and in other continents. Possession by Zar is expressed by a wide range of behaviours, such as involuntary movements (often resembling epileptiform convulsions), mutism and incomprehensible language. Such behav…
Ethnic Background and Antecedents of Religious Conversion among Israeli Jewish Outpatients
This study explored the association of ethnocultural background (Ashkenazi vs Sephardi origin) with antecedents of religious conversion among Israeli Jewish penitents who applied for psychiatric help in an outpatient clinic. A basic assumption underlying the comparison was that Sephardic Jews in Israel are more inclined toward Jewish tradition and collectivistic than Ashkenazim. The interview data indicated that for both groups emotional factors …
Narrative Construction of Distress and Therapy
Based on therapeutic work and research carried out in a psychiatric clinic in Israel that specializes in the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox community, we suggest a culturally adapted narrative paradigm for the understanding and treatment of mental disorders. We analyze five stories of illness to show how individual distress is constructed as a dramatic narrative inspired by shared cultural symbols and enacted in specific interpersonal and social contexts.…
Further Reflections on Therapy, Psychology, Anthropology and the Haredim
Les AA. repondent a plusiers commentaires critiques sur leur etude (parue dans le meme numero) relative a un modele psychotherapeutique elabore a partir de la construction du recit sur la douleur et la maladie parmi des patients originaires d'une communaute religieuse ultra-orthodoxe (Heredim) de Jerusalem. Ils posent les questions de la valeur d'une specificite des themes de narration, des liens entre l'individu, la communaute et les modes de na…
All in faith
This paper describes the way that people for whom religion is at the heart of their cultural and personal life try to cope with their problems via religious dogma or practise. It illustrates this through the three cases drawn from the ultra-Orthodox Jews of Jerusalem. The first describes a situation wherein religious beliefs and practises become the patient's vehicle for configuring and articulating his disorder. The second and third illustrate a…
War-Related Loss and Suffering in Israeli Society
T SITUATION OF PROTRACTED MILITARY conflict and ensuing existential threat, in which Israel has been involved since its inception, has informed its ethos, social institutions, and public discourse in a myriad ways.' The routinization of military and security considerations as self-evident, integral aspects of social reality is predicated on a special state of mind, designated civilian or cognitive militarism.' This pattern of militarism may be vi…
Jerusalem Syndrome as reflected in the pilgrimage and biographies of four extraordinary women from the 14th century to the end of the second millennium
A previous presentation surveyed a selection of descriptive accounts of the so-called Jerusalem Syndrome, as observed and documented by six different writers, from the 19th century to the end of the second millennium (Witztum & Kalian, 1999). The current presentation focuses mainly on the subjective religious and psychological experience of specific visitors, as reflected in their biographies. This paper presents the cases of four extraordinary w…
Cross-cultural encounters between careproviders
Victor Kandinsky, MD
Trauma and Bereavement
The article re-examines trauma and bereavement and the category of loss considered to be traumatic bereavement. It is argued that the perspective of the relation to the deceased is an insufficiently acknowledged source of traumatic disruption following bereavement. The significance of the relational aspect in bereavement is present in the paradigm of the Two-Track Model of Bereavement (S. Rubin, 1981, 1999). The implications of this approach are …
Vladimir Bekhterev
Bekhterev was one of the prominent scientists of his era. He played a crucial role in the study of the development of the brain’s organization, neurophysiology and neuropathology and in the objective study of psychological phenomena. Due to a trick of fate, Bekhterev’s name and scientific contributions were neglected and consigned to oblivion. In this article we would like to restore the historical injustice done to Bekhterev. Based on newly disc…
Psychology (34 obras) · Psychiatry (24 obras) · Medicine (18 obras) · Psychotherapist (17 obras) · Sociology (16 obras) · History (15 obras) · Social Psychology (13 obras) · Psychoanalysis (12 obras) · Judaism (11 obras) · Art (10 obras)