Everyone has passions and strong opinions about something. Even many so-called pacifists who espouse a “let-and-let-live” attitude can ironically respond with aggression toward those who do not share their “peaceful” philosophy. How do you know when your passions represent your best instincts, and when they are just distorted and overrated?
Our Gemara on Amud Aleph mentions a rabbinic decree regarding the sacrificial meats. If the sacrifice was invalidated by the cohen having improper intent during the sacrificial service to eat them outside of the required time frame (piggul), the rabbis decreed a defilement on the meat that makes the cohen’s hands ritually impure. One reason offered for this ruling is to discourage a cohen from being vindictive against an enemy and deliberately introducing defiling intent in the service to invalidate the person’s sacrifice. Since now this will also render the cohen impure, he would be less likely to do this out of a vendetta against the owner.
Tosafos (85b משום חשדי) raises the obvious question: If the cohanim are unconcerned about defiling the sacrifice with improper intent, why would they be deterred by becoming ritually impure? Tosafos answers that there are situations in Shas were we see that the cultural taboo of impurity can be felt as more severe to cohanim than even murder, quoting a Gemara in Yoma 23a. That Gemara recounts that one time a cohen stabbed another over in rivalry to qualify for a “kibbud” in the Temple service. To make matters worse, while the young priest was in his death throes, the boy’s father was more concerned about making sure the knife did not become impure than his son’s impending death.
A similar example comes to mind from Mishna Nedarim (3:4) which permits one to make a false oath that the produce he is carrying is Terumah so as to deter bandits from stealing it. As the commentaries on the Mishna state, these bandits would even murder in order to steal, however they would refrain from defiling Terumah.
The DSM describes the concept of an overvalued idea as “an unreasonable and sustained belief that is maintained with less than delusional intensity (i.e. the person is able is to acknowledge the possibility that the belief may or may not be true).”
Some feature of overvalued ideas are:
- They are more central and key to the person's overall life, unlike delusions which may be more random.
- They are ego-syntonic, compared to most obsessions. That is, unlike obsessive thoughts which are unwanted and intrusive these beliefs are along the lines of the person's general personality.
- There is usually strong passion and emotion associated with the belief, especially if this belief is threatened or challenged by an idea or action.
An overvalued idea can present as a belief or a value. The difference between a belief and value is that usually beliefs are thought up as a result of subjective or objective learned experience and evidence. On the other hand, a value is an intrinsic ideal about what is important morally or materially significant. A belief is learned, a value is incorporated. Thus, a belief might be that a person who wakes up late cannot be trusted in business. A value might be, it is important to wake up on time, so you can be trustworthy.
In personal mental health and relationships, overvalued beliefs or values can lead to poor function in that a person may cling too rigidly to these beliefs or values despite the psychological or relational fallout.
Often these values and beliefs can be about religious, moral or spiritual ideas, and is applied rigidly and out of proportion to other concerns. For example, in our Gemara the target of the rabbinic decree were cohanim who valued refraining from technical impurity even more than the obvious psychic impurity of being vindictive and purposefully disqualifying an enemy’s sacrifice.
If you have a strong stomach, ask your spouse to tell you about your inconsistencies, misapplied and overvalued beliefs and values. It will be educational and worth more than a dozen mussar Sefarim and therapy sessions.
Source:
David Veale, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Royal Free Campus, Royal Free and University College School of Medicine, University College, University of London, London, UK Accepted 7 February 2001
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