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Sanity and Sanctity is an important and refreshing study by two secular and observant Israeli psychiatrists about their work with members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem. The authors are David Greenberg, who was trained in Britain and is now Director of the Community Mental Health Center, Herzog Hospital, Jerusalem, as well as Editor of the Israel Journal of Psychiatry, and Eliezer Witztum, who is Professor of Psychiatry, Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
The study is important for several reasons. Perhaps most relevant to psychoanalysts is the authors’ challenge to Freud's view that religion and religious practice is a form of emotional illness. Freud (1907) asserted that “one might venture to regard obsessional neurosis as a pathological counterpart of the formation of a religion, and to describe that neurosis as an individual religiosity and religion as a universal obsessional neurosis” (pp. 126-127).
On the basis of their own clinical experience, well described in the book, and their detailed knowledge of Jewish scriptures, specifically, the Torah and Talmud, Greenberg and Witztum disagree with Freud that religious precepts stunt mature development and independence. If anything, they point out that the opposite is true. For the ultra-Orthodox community (known as Haredim) the Torah and its commandments can help people to overcome “evil impulses” and promote positive living. They conclude
that religious symptoms of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) are not a separate or unique presentation of OCD but merely the form OCD typically takes in patients for whom religious beliefs and practices pre dominate. There is no evidence that religious settings encourage the development of these symptoms. (pp. 133-134)
In other words, as with most forms of emotional disturbance, the causal factors tend to be reactive, not inherent, and reflect the set