| Syndrome City |
|
| Written by Alicia Oltuski | |||||
| Monday, 09 May 2005 | |||||
|
Does Jerusalem Cause Spontaneous Psychosis? As the year 2000 approached, psychiatrist Yair Bar-El of Hadassah Hospital warned his Jerusalem colleagues to brace themselves for a psychotic outbreak of unprecedented size. “Jerusalem’s psychiatrists expect to encounter, as the year 2000 approaches,” wrote Bar-El, “an ever-increasing number of tourists who, upon arriving in Jerusalem, experience psychotic decompensation.” This term refers to a mental “loss of balance”; let’s just say he envisioned the turn of the millennium drawing crazies to Jerusalem like Christian fundamentalists to a Virgin Mary-shaped grilled cheese. He wasn’t the only one: a December 1999 Wired News article reported that over 800 people were expected to seek hospitalization for the same psychotic disorder within the coming months. The Washington Times, meanwhile, reported that Israeli police were beefing up security forces, in preparation for an onslaught of violent insanity. The culprit for the much-anticipated unrest was Jerusalem Syndrome, a rare affliction in which visitors to the City of Gold suffer a sudden onset of psychotic biblical delusions. Most believe they are the Messiah; some believe they are Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, or a wide range of other figures from Old and New Testaments. Some preach doomsday by the Kotel or the Dome of the Rock, some parade through the Old City wrapped in makeshift white robes. Others attempt to trigger the Tribulations through physical attacks on the Temple Mount. The disorder is so closely tied to Judeo-Christian eschatological beliefs that, Bar-El believed, it would have been impossible for the turn of the millennium not to bring on an onslaught of biblical-apocalyptic psychosis. But some psychiatrists believed that it was Bar-El and his co-authors who may have needed their own heads examined. Doctors Eliezer Witztum and Moshe Kalian—two of Bar-El’s colleagues—disputed not only the prediction that there would be an increased incidence of the syndrome, but whether the phenomenon was actually a “syndrome” at all: “The so-called ‘Jerusalem Syndrome’ is not a defined psychiatric entity,” explains Kalian. Many holding this view believe that Jerusalem doesn’t cause insanity–that psychotic incidents there can always be chalked up to another cause than the city itself. Dr. Rimona Durst, a co-author of Bar-El’s report, explains that in the end, Jerusalem didn’t see an influx of the insane because the onset of the Intifada brought tourism down pretty much across the spectrum of sanity. Now, though, says Durst, tourism is back, and with it, healthy levels of the religiously nuts. It goes without saying that given Jerusalem’s place in the apocalyptic imaginations of all three major monotheistic religions, the city can induce religious fervor and wild emotions. But does it go further than that—can Jerusalem actually make sane people snap and crazy people crazier? Some psychiatrists say yes; others deny it. The answer, like the syndrome itself, may ultimately be in the mind of the beholder. Jerusalem has always been a natural setting for millennial anxiety, both for those anxiously awaiting the Second Coming and those seeking a Jewish Messiah’s touchdown and a Third Temple. In a 2002 article, modern skeptics Witztum and Kalian document a series of sufferers from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth–women whose religious fervor, cultural repression, and delusional inner lives sent them on missions to the Holy Land. St. Bridget of Sweden, for instance, was a widow who began to see visions that demanded she visit the Holy City; Margery Kempe was a married woman who, after 14 pregnancies, received directions from God to declare herself a “spiritual virgin” and take off for the Middle East (she arrived in Jerusalem riding a donkey and was immediately seized with fainting fits). Clorinda Minor, the wife of a Philadelphia merchant, was a Millerite—a follower of messianic wannabe William Miller, who had declared that the world would end on October 25, 1844. When the fated day arrived, Minor and her fellow believers left notes on their shops reading “Closed for King of Kings” and took off for tents in the country–only to be rewarded with a blustering storm that forced them back out of the wilderness. Following this devastating “disconfirmation,” Minor headed for Israel, spurred on by the newfound conviction that she was the biblical Esther incarnate and had a duty to prepare the Holy Land for the Messiah’s return. (Miller’s American followers, meanwhile, responded to the “Great Disappointment” by splintering into fragment groups, one of which became the Seventh-Day Adventists.) In 1930, Dr. Heinz Herman, one of the forefathers of modern psychiatry, decided to formally put the affliction on the clinical map. He had noticed a spate of messianic madmen, pseudo-Marys, and prophetic pretenders exhibiting extreme obsessions with cleanliness, white clothing, and the pending end of days. The good doctor coined the phrase “Jerusalem Syndrome,” and a disorder was born. Between 1980 and 1993, Bar-El reports that over 1,200 people were admitted to Kfar Shaul Medical Centre—the designated treatment center for Jerusalem Syndrome, where he served as director—with, he writes, “severe, Jerusalem-generated mental problems.” While almost two- thirds of the afflicted stemmed from Jewish backgrounds, a solid third were Christian (only one percent of those affected were religiously unaffiliated). On average, he claims, about 100 tourists are examined for the syndrome each year, with around 40 requiring hospitalization and treatment. So in the year 2000, Bar-El published a warning to his colleagues in the form of a detailed report, breaking Jerusalem Syndrome down into three increasingly strange categories. Type I applies to previously-demented folks who actually book their El Al ticket with a psycho-spiritual mission in mind; Type II covers groups of the mildly insane who pursue a religiously-motivated mission together; and the still more frightening Type III refers to previously normal folks who cross the city line and spontaneously snap. Bar-El bolsters his case for Type I by relating the tale of a middle-aged American man who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and sought rehabilitation through exercise and weightlifting. Over time, he began to identify with biblical strongman Samson, then to believe he actually was Samson. Shortly afterwards, a mission presented itself to him: one stone in the Western Wall, he came to believe, was out of place, and it was up to him to head to the Holy Land and set things straight. Once in Jerusalem, he attempted to do just that–attracting the attention of the police in the process and putting an end to his landscaping career. Bar-El reports that when the strongman was brought to Kfar Shaul for treatment, the tourist’s psychiatrist—contrary to standard practices—informed him that he was not, in fact, Delilah’s biblical devotee. Enraged, the pseudo-Samson smashed a window, clambered through it, and escaped down the street. Luckily, when an assistant nurse caught up with him, she thoughtfully assured him that he had demonstrated his Samson-esque capabilities, and, satisfied, the patient returned with her to the clinic. Bar-El’s report neglects to mention why none of the psychiatric staff bothered to sit the patient down in a barber’s chair for a quick trim as a calming measure, but does argue that this case—a man already possessing a biblical psychosis—represents a prime example of Type I Jerusalem Syndrome. Most afflicted with this strain of the syndrome, like pseudo-Samson, are particularly attracted to the Temple Mount and the Kotel. “Those with Jerusalem Syndrome are literally intoxicated by the Holy City,” writes Leah Abramowitz in an article on the subject. “They revel in the special atmosphere of the Wall past midnight.” According to Wired News, there’s still a designated hotel—the Petra, located inside the Old City’s Jaffa gate—where messianic tourists take up residence, preaching to each other, discussing conspiracy theories, and trying to bring on the end of days. Which is exactly what schizophrenic Michael Dennis Rohan did in 1969. A Christian from Australia, Rohan was affiliated with the “Worldwide Church of God,” and when religious delusions prompted a trip to Jerusalem, he became intent upon setting fire to Al-Aksa Mosque. “He claimed he was ‘The Lord’s Emmisary’,” says Kalian, “acting upon divine instructions in accordance with the book of Zecharia, and claimed he did his act to help the Jews to build their temple...thus hastening the second coming of Jesus as the Messiah to rule the world for one thousand years.” Other pilgrims manifest their disease by translating familial problems into religious ones: Bar-El cites the case of a man who traveled to Israel to kill an imaginary foe who, he believed, was plotting to rape his daughter. Still others simply believe that Jerusalem holds magical curative powers. Pilgrimages were common in nineteenth-century Russia, for instance, so when renowned playwright Nikolai Gogol began suffering psychiatric symptoms that prevented his writing, he decided that Israel held the antidote to his psychosis. In Gogol’s case, unfortunately, the City of Gold seems to have failed: though the playwright made it to the Holy Land in 1848, he starved himself to death just four years later. This affliction does far more than entice a smattering of psychos to a holy city, though. Bar-El’s second variety, which likely produces a large percentage of Jerusalem Syndrome cases, features a heightening of preexisting mentally abnormal behavior, usually manifested as part of a group with a religious “mission” in the Holy Land. Because these folks travel in packs and don’t generally attempt harm to themselves or to holy sites, they usually don’t end up as patients at Kfar Shaul. But that doesn’t make them normal; Jews belonging to this category include the faction that hopes to breed a pure red heifer—a key ingredient in a purification ritual the Messiah will perform when he arrives. Since the birth of such a crimson calf may herald the messianic touchdown, both Jews and evangelical Christians, though they disagree on who that redeemer will be, have been trying their darndest to breed one. So far, though, to no avail. For Bar-El and his colleagues, all of this adds up to one conclusion: Jerusalem can be a significant factor in psychosis, and Jerusalem Syndrome is a disorder to be reckoned with. “Whether it is an entity by itself is of course a question, but a syndromal entity, there is no doubt,” explains Durst. Yet despite this wealth of apocalyptic antics, despite prophecies galore, “Jerusalem syndrome does not actually exist as a distinct diagnosis in any formal nosological [disease classification] system,” says Dr. Melissa Hunt, associate director of clinical training in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Type I sufferers, she argues, should simply be understood as garden-variety psychotics: “In those cases,” she says, “there is little difference between Jerusalem Syndrome and the fellow who tried to assassinate president Reagan because he believed it would impress the actress Jodi Foster.” Kalian and Witztum would tend to agree: “Jerusalem Syndrome is treated just like any other psychotic condition,” says Kalian. “Patients are given anti-psychotic medications, as well as supportive therapy trying to help them make sense of what they have just experienced while arriving at the geographic ‘axis-mundi’ of their faith.” People whose psychoses drive them to Jerusalem, by this philosophy, are clinically speaking no different from people whose psychoses drive them to do pretty much anything else. And people whose religious affiliations bring them to Jerusalem in droves–well, it’s more likely their religious sect that drove them nuts than the city itself. But it still leaves the even more mysterious Type III Jerusalem Syndrome. People in this category have no previous mental illness and no membership in religiously extreme groups. They tend to arrive in Jerusalem as tourists, accompanied by friends or family. Then they snap. Type III folks usually experience a progression of symptoms that begin with anxiety, followed by obsessive washing and shaving. Once clean, they tend to turn to outerwear: white robes are usually the garment of choice, and the afflicted have been known to fashion these from hotel linens if no other fabric is available. Once clothed properly, these syndrome sufferers are known to voice eccentric articulations of religious texts, make a procession-like trip through the Old City, and, on some occasions, deliver an imprecise sermon near the Temple Mount (just think Life of Brian). The strangest symptom of all is that most of these maniacs return to normal just days after their episodes. Most are unable to explain what came over them. In fact, psychiatrists have had great difficulty studying the phenomenon because so many of the afflicted are too embarrassed to describe their Jerusalem Syndrome experiences. If sane tourists can spontaneously go nuts visiting the Holy City, it only stands to reason that the cause is the city itself—proving the syndrome to be no figment of the psychiatric imagination. But even this is not evidence enough for Hunt. Type III, she argues, would just be classified as Brief Psychological Disorder. Catalysts for this condition include stress—which can be caused by the sense of wonder that Jerusalem sometimes provokes—and sleep deprivation. “Talk to the guards who work at Elvis’ tomb year-round about people who are overcome when visiting an emotionally evocative site. If we worked at it, we could probably define a ‘Graceland Syndrome,’” she explains. This seems to pinpoint the syndrome precisely. “It is a cultural-religious phenomenon,” explains Kalian, “which characterizes and colors the psychotic content and thus dictates the fantastic behavior of the inflicted individuals.” It’s not that the sufferers aren’t crazy, it’s just that Jerusalem is the content of their insanity more than it is the underlying cause. Jerusalem figures so large in the religious imagination that it’s no wonder that those whose imaginations aren’t in check gravitate to it. And it’s not so unheard-of for a city to induce insanity: Florence has long been known to afflict its visitors with Stendhal Syndrome, a disorder said to make tourists so overwhelmed by the city’s beauty that they experience fainting and physical distress. As it happens, even the father of psychoanalysis was not impervious to the effects of a culturally significant landmark: NYU psychology professor Paul Vitz reports that Freud introduced his discussion of derealization—feelings of disorientation and altered reality—by describing his own experience while visiting the Acropolis. Though Jerusalem Syndrome’s effects are more extreme than others, its existence may be no more than proof that Jerusalem is a cultural treasure on the level of Florence and Athens. Even so, as long as the Holy City looms large in the religious imagination, you can bet it’ll loom larger in the imagination of religious loons, and psychos in Jerusalem will be crazier than psychos anyplace else. For now, book your return flight in advance and repeat, “I am not Moses.”
Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.12 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved. | |||||