רבי חייא בר אבא חלש על לגביה ר' יוחנן א"ל חביבין עליך יסורין א"ל לא הן ולא שכרן א"ל הב לי ידך יהב ליה ידיה ואוקמיה. ר' יוחנן חלש על לגביה ר' חנינא א"ל חביבין עליך יסורין א"ל לא הן ולא שכרן א"ל הב לי ידך יהב ליה ידיה ואוקמיה אמאי לוקים ר' יוחנן לנפשיה אמרי אין חבוש מתיר עצמו מבית האסורים
R' Hiyya bar Abba fell ill and R' Johanan went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. R' Johanan once fell ill and R' Hanina went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. Why could not R' Johanan raise himself? They replied: The prisoner cannot free himself from jail.While this passage seems to intend to illustrate the dangerous theology of "afflictions of love" or afflictions that atone for our sins, to me this speaks volumes about the way we conceptualize mental health issues like depression, anxiety, even addiction, and perhaps offers therapeutic suggestions.
Let's take it apart. R' Yohanan, allegedly a friend of R' Hiyya bar Abba, sees his friend in pain and asks him in what I read as frustration and anger "you're enjoying this, aren't you?" as if to say there is a part of his dear friend that feeds off of being sick in this way. Perhaps that rings true for many of us, or perhaps it makes us angry to think someone might actually accuse the sick of enjoying their sickness. What this phrase is telling us, though, is that the part of us that is enjoying our sickness is in fact the sickness itself. Sometimes we are such prisoners to our afflictions that it is as if ,חביבין עליך יסורין, as if we are enjoying being sick, or rather, that the sickness has trapped us so much that we can't get out, that it leeches onto our will and emotions so much that it appears we love our condition. But of course, how could we actually love our suffering? It is like Kierkagaard's famous concept of "the sickness unto death," the sickness so strong and consuming that even death is not a cure. Somehow the sickness wants so badly to live that it appears we are enjoying it.
And then there is the incredible statement of collaborative therapy. We can't pull ourselves out from our own travails, but we can do it hand in hand with our fellows. It seems like the message of any Anonymous support group, fighting addictions with a larger army than just oneself.
This phrase חביבין עליך יסורין, essentially, "are you enjoying your grievances? are you enjoying being sick?" and the thrust of the narrative to its final point, that a prisoner cannot free himself from jail, offer us a Jewish framework to think about mental illness. It is all too easy for anyone who does not struggle with mental illness (afflictions like depression, anxiety, OCD, ED, etc.) to fall impatient through ignorance, wondering why the afflicted can't simply "snap out of it" and will themselves to health. Maybe the Gemara here is a cry our for therapeutic patience.
I really like your understanding of how people cannot simply 'pull themselves together'. Even a great healer, who has previously shown themselves able to help others with depression, cannot just free themselves.
ReplyDeleteBut I think the gemara is imagining that a person might appreciate their suffering, since the gemara has just said that suffering cleanses you of sins and so on. I find it interesting that that message is immediately undercut by rabbis who don't care, and simply want their suffering to be gone.
I like the implication you raise for mental health treatment in particular. Conceiving of the mentally ill as in a 'Beit Asurim' of which they cannot free themselves provides a healthy and hopefully compassionate way of helping to liberate people from bonds which aren't so easily seen.
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