Paranormal and dissociative experiences in Middle-Eastern Jews in Israel: Diagnostic and treatment dilemmas

Four Israeli Jewish persons of Middle Eastern cultural heritage presented for consultation following unsuccessful helping attempts delivered by various folk and spiritual healers. Thefour patients suffered from the following DSM-IV defined problems: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Dissociative Disorder not Otherwise Specified, Schizophrenia - paranoid type, and Histrionic Personality Disorder coupled with a Conversion Disorder with Seizures. The patients construed their suffering in cultural idioms implicating supernatural experiences. Many of their symptoms resembled dissociative clinical pictures. However, unlike many dissociative disorder patients described in the Western scientific literature, these persons refused to accept any of their possession-like experiences as possible manifestations of their own dissociated ego-states. The paper describes the struggle to find common ground on which significant cross-cultural help could be offered to indigenous people manifesting dissociative and other symptomatology.