The Woman Who Wanted to Be Her Father: A Case Analysis of Dybbuk-Possession in a Hasidic Community

Abstract

This essay discusses a peculiar career of a Jewish woman in a 19th-century Eastern European hasidic community which was ended by an episode of dybbuk-possession. Although the details of this episode were not specified in the account, the case was selected for presentation because, unlike most other reports of this Jewish variant of spirit possession, it contains significant information concerning the social matrix in which it evolved, as well as the biographies of its main protagonists. On the basis of this information, an attempt will be made to render the possession episode intelligible in terms of the psychodynamic and sociocultural factors underlying it.