Intrapsychic Conflicts Arising While Meeting Ultraorthodox Patients

Abstract

The article addressed the key psychological issues that arise in encounters between the world of analytical psychotherapy and the inner world of patients belonging to the ultraorthodox (Haredi) community in Israel. The ultraorthodox community is characterized by isolationism and withdrawal, whether as a means of protecting itself from the influence of unacceptable lifestyles or as an ideal that eschews mingling with secular or semi-secular communities. Thus, the community maintains itself apart from the mainstream Israeli public in terms of its religious beliefs and independent culture. Ultraorthodox leadership has been instrumental in building fences around the community in order to preserve its unique identity and clear-cut rules of conduct. The article reviews the internal conflicts that exist between the ultraorthodox belief system and the values of dynamic psychotherapy, the presence of the “analytic third”—God—in the therapeutic space occupied by the therapist and patient, and the fear of “knowledge” that exposes members of the community to existential questions over unquestioning acceptance of the community’s social authority. Two case studies are presented that shed light on the incongruity that exists between sanctification by the ultraorthodox community of the halachic (Jewish law) authority of its rabbis and the psychoanalytical viewpoint that upholds self and subjectivity as prime goals in therapy.