messiah syndrome in jerusalem

Wonderful on the outside Treacherous on the inside....! Cults have millions of members around the world who also thought they were immune.
joe sz
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messiah syndrome in jerusalem

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The Jerusalem Syndrome: Why Some Religious Tourists Believe They Are the MessiahFebruary 17, 2012

Wired

By Chris Nashawaty

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Shortly after his 40th birthday
, the life of a man we’ll call Ronald Hodge took a strange turn. He still looked pretty good for his age. He had a well-paying job and a devoted wife. Or so he thought. Then, one morning, Hodge’s wife told him she no longer loved him. She moved out the next day. A few weeks later, he was informed that his company was downsizing and that he would be let go. Not knowing where to turn, Hodge started going to church again.

Even though he’d been raised in an evangelical household, it had been years since Hodge had thought much about God. But now that everything seemed to be falling apart around him, he began attending services every week. Then every day. One night, while lying in bed, he opened the Bible and began reading. He’d been doing this every night since his wife left. And every time he did, he would see the same word staring back at him—the same four syllables that seemed to jump off the page as if they were printed in buzzing neon: Jerusalem. Hodge wasn’t a superstitious man, he didn’t believe in signs, but the frequency of it certainly felt like … something. A week later, he was 30,000 feet over the Atlantic on an El Al jet to Israel.

When Hodge arrived in Jerusalem, he told the taxi driver to drop him off at the entrance to the Old City. He walked through the ancient, labyrinthine streets until he found a cheap hostel near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He had a feeling that this was important. Supposedly built on top of the spot where Jesus Christ was crucified and three days later rose from the dead, the domed cathedral is the holiest site in Christendom. And Hodge knew that whatever called him to the Holy Land was emanating from there.

During his first few days in Jerusalem, Hodge rose early and headed straight to the church to pray. He got so lost in meditation that morning would slip into afternoon, afternoon into evening, until one of the bearded priests tapped him on the shoulder and told him it was time to go home. When he returned to his hostel, he would lie in bed unable to sleep. Thoughts raced through his head. Holy thoughts. That’s when Hodge first heard the Voice.

Actually, heard is the wrong word. He felt it, resonating in his chest. It was like his body had become a giant tuning fork or a dowsing rod. Taking a cue from the sign of the cross that Catholics make when they pray, Hodge decided that if the vibrations came from the right side of his chest, it was the Holy Ghost communicating with him. If he felt them farther down, near the base of his sternum, it was the voice of Jesus. And if he felt the voice humming inside his head, it was the Holy Father, God himself, calling.

Soon, the vibrations turned into words, commanding him to fast for 40 days and 40 nights. None of this scared him. If anything, he felt a warm, soothing peace wash over him because he was finally being guided.

Not eating or drinking came easily at first. But after a week or so, the other backpackers at his hostel began to grow concerned. With good reason: Hodge’s clothes were dirty and falling off of him. He had begun to emit a pungent, off-putting funk. He was acting erratically, hallucinating and singing the word
Jesus
over and over in a high-pitched chirp.

“Jesus … Jesus … Jesus …”

Hodge camped out in the hostel’s lobby and began introducing himself to one and all as the Messiah. Eventually, the manager of the hostel couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t think the American calling himself Jesus was dangerous, but the guy was scaring away customers. Plus, he’d seen this kind of thing before. And he knew there was a man who could help.

Herzog Hospital sits on a steep, sun-baked
hill on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Its sprawling grounds are dotted with tall cedars and aromatic olive trees. Five floors below the main level is the office of Pesach Lichtenberg, head of the men’s division of psychiatry at Herzog.

Lichtenberg is 52 years old and thin, with glasses and a neatly trimmed beard. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, he moved to Israel in 1986 after graduating from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and has worked at Herzog more or less ever since. It’s here that he has become one of the world’s leading experts on the peculiar form of madness that struck Ronald Hodge—a psychiatric phenomenon known as Jerusalem syndrome.

On a bright, late summer morning, Lichtenberg greets me in the chaotic lobby of the hospital, smiling and extending his hand. “You missed it!” he says. “We had a new Chosen One brought into the ward this morning.” We go down to Lichtenberg’s office; on top of a bookcase is a giant shofar, a curved ram’s horn that religious Jews sound on the high holidays. A middle-aged British man under the doctor’s care had used it to trumpet the Messiah’s—that is to say, his own—coming. Lichtenberg explains that allowing me to meet his latest patient would violate hospital policy, and he can’t discuss ongoing cases. He’ll talk about past patients as long as I agree to de-identify them, as I did with Hodge. “But,” he adds, “that doesn’t mean we can’t try to find a messiah of our own. In a few days, we’ll take a walk around the Old City and maybe we’ll find one for you there.”

There’s a joke in psychiatry: If you talk to God, it’s called praying; if God talks to you, you’re nuts. In Jerusalem, God seems to be particularly chatty around Easter, Passover, and Christmas—the peak seasons for the syndrome. It affects an estimated 50 to 100 tourists each year, the overwhelming majority of whom are evangelical Christians. Some of these cases simply involve tourists becoming momentarily overwhelmed by the religious history of the Holy City, finding themselves discombobulated after an afternoon at the Wailing Wall or experiencing a tsunami of obsessive thoughts after walking the Stations of the Cross. But more severe cases can lead otherwise normal housewives from Dallas or healthy tool-and-die manufacturers from Toledo to hear the voices of angels or fashion the bedsheets of their hotel rooms into makeshift togas and disappear into the Old City babbling prophecy.

Lichtenberg estimates that, in two decades at Herzog, the number of false prophets and self-appointed redeemers he has treated is in the low three figures. In other words, if and when the true Messiah does return (or show up for the first time, depending on what you believe), Lichtenberg is in an ideal spot to be the guy who greets Him.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/tag/god-complex/
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David McCarthy
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Re: messiah syndrome in jerusalem

Unread post by David McCarthy »

Great article Joe, thank you,
Gave me some new insights.
This quote gave me a big chuckle... although its a very important and serious subject.
There’s a joke in psychiatry: If you talk to God, it’s called praying; if God talks to you, you’re nuts. In Jerusalem, God seems to be particularly chatty around Easter,
I do believe that trauma can drive people into irrational and dangerous places such as cults, the problem is that this momentary lapse of reason’ brought on by a series of life events, a slow motion train wreck' o sorts! may be so overwhelming the only relief found is an immersion into irrational thinking and fantasy, easy prey for cults.
Just prior to my “discovering’ RSE, and entering the messiah syndrome at RSE...
I was also in a very "vulnerable" state of mind.
Now there's a clue… :idea:

David
But he has nothing on at all, cried at last the whole people....
joe sz
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Re: messiah syndrome in jerusalem

Unread post by joe sz »

Yes, It must be Easter!

we just now admitted a new 22 yr old "messiah" at our hospital. "Jesus" was going "to make the world burn on Sunday", so the police brought him in. At same time a middle aged chronic patient brought in by police was holding a bible, kneeling and praying in front of "Jesus" in her purple underwear and one shoe.

working in a psych hospital brings a different perspective on obsessive religious behavior.
WofthesunEofthemoon
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Re: messiah syndrome in jerusalem

Unread post by WofthesunEofthemoon »

With apologies to anyone addressing the serious side of this article posted by Joe, I have to say that I have not yet stopped laughing. It is one of the funniest things I have read, in a long time. The material (whatever the serious side), the writing style, the presentation, all had me doubled up.

Thanks, Joe, for brightening up my Easter.

W.E.
joe sz
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Re: messiah syndrome in jerusalem

Unread post by joe sz »

WE

you can't make up what I've seen over the 12 years in psych intake..psychotic patients come in at their worst and sometimes you just have to laugh. However, processing them is a real headache and demanding on staff prior to admission.

btw, the "shoe" was a high-heeled tan suede ankle boot trimmed with fur.
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Dove
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Re: messiah syndrome in jerusalem

Unread post by Dove »

:lol: Yes thanks Joe, I can see how you'd have to keep your sense of humour - I just can't get that fur lined shoe visual out of my mind :mrgreen:

Luckily you're there to help these poor people
WofthesunEofthemoon
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Re: messiah syndrome in jerusalem

Unread post by WofthesunEofthemoon »

Hi, Joe,

Yes, been there, done that, but on the opposite side of the fence to yourself. Which is why I found both the article and your experiences so hilariously funny.

I didn't exactly think I was the Messiah, but something very similar and I seem to remember that I was wearing a burgundy coloured fur coat, which would have gone very nicely with 'your' lady's purple underwear and fur trimmed ankle boot. ROFL

W.E.
joe sz
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Re: messiah syndrome in jerusalem

Unread post by joe sz »

w.e. et al:

3 more stories of recent admits here, then I will quit because this is neverending

1. Latino male 24 arrived with police who said they apprhended him at a convenience store. he was scaring the clerk by saying he was the "Antichrist". I had to physically redirect the Antichrist with what little Spanish I know from entering a restricted area of the hospital. The Antichrist sat down and waited when i told him to.
2. Right after Antichrist arrived, our ambulance brought in a male who said he was "God" in another ER, and he claimed that St. Michael was the Antichrist. We kept the two "deities" apart in our lobby.
3. tall female exotic dancer ordered by judge to get evaluated after she threatened to kill her mother who the dancer says is 'the devil'. she says her 2 year old child is "the Christ" that was taken away from her, and that he will remove 'a third of the human race' that should all be dead. she was trying to get a gun permit.

Cases like this remind me how thin the line is between someone like Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Madame Blavatsky or any channeler like JZ and the mentally ill with delusions. If Eliz Prophet had threatened to "take someone out" with a weapon, she would have been committed, but she merely tried to take "dark force" people out with a voodoo like weapon called "smash, blast, and annihilate" decrees, which she literally believed was the "most powerful force in the universe." crazy but not dangerous in any judge's mind, which speaks volumes as to just how truly effective the decrees or commands of "God's" energy are.
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