The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

204 possession
body for extended periods. Successful treatment depends
not only on counseling and therapy but on communication
with these spirits to understand their presence and
persuade them to depart the victim.
Kardec’s theories were fashionable in France for a
while but did not catch on in the rest of Europe. They
found enthusiastic audiences in Brazil.
Possession as Physical or Mental Illness
In ancient times, demons and spirits were held to be the
cause of diseases and illnesses, both physical and psychological.
The oldest extant text on epilepsy, On the Sacred
Disease, attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates
(ca. 460–ca. 370 B.C.E.), but probably authored by several
of his students, states that bizarre emotions, behavior,
and sensations commonly believed to be due to demonic
possession were instead due to a brain disease. It is likely
that some cases of alleged demonic possession were either
cases of epilepsy or of Tourette’s syndrome, a rare
neurological disorder.
According to Catholicism, the New Testament distinguishes
between illness and possession, in descriptions
of Jesus both performing the casting out of unclean spirits
and healing the sick. However, some physicians and
medical professionals even into modern times have postulated
demonic interference as a cause of certain health
problems.
Epileptic seizures are characterized by unconsciousness,
violent behavior, vomiting, and visual, auditory,
and olfactory hallucinations that may seem supernatural.
Epileptics report feeling the presence of God, angels, or
other spirits, including the dead. They may smell terrible
stenches resembling brimstone or rotting flesh. Tourette’s
syndrome, often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, starts in
childhood and manifests with facial contortions, upward
eye rolling, bizarre growls, barks, and grunts, and verbal
outbursts of a sexual, blasphemous, or scatological nature—all
characteristics of demonic possession.
Schizophrenia sufferers, who also experience altered
states of consciousness and various hallucinations, may
project fragments of their own personality as external
“demons” or spirits. A theory about multiple personality
sufferers, however, holds that the repression of a great
deal of hatred, common in the disorder, acts as a magnet
for evil influences. Obsession always represents an abnormal
condition, and once one admits the existence of spirit
influence, the idea of spirit obsession cannot be ignored.
Severe physical or psychological trauma may so upset the
victim that a “window” in the mind opens, allowing spirit
influences to enter. In many cases of multiple personality,
some psychiatrists find that only exorcism, perhaps simply
invoking the Lord’s name, eliminates one or more of
the troubling personalities so that the patient can eventually
become one person.
DR. JAMES HERVEY HYSLOP, an American psychologist
famous for his research of obsession cases, states in his
book Contact with the Other World (1919) that if people believe
in telepathy, then invasion of a personality over distance
is possible. And if that is true, he found it unlikely
that sane and intelligent spirits were the only ones able to
exert influence from beyond. Hyslop also stated that persons
diagnosed as suffering from hysteria, multiple personality,
dementia praecox, or other mental disturbances
showed, in his view, unmistakable signs of invasion by
discarnate entities. He called on medical practitioners to
take such situations into account during treatment.
The American psychiatrist Dr. M. Scott Peck, a graduate
of Harvard University, claims that two of his patients
suffered from possession in addition to their other symptoms
of multiple personality. In both cases, Peck found
the spirits to be evil, actively working to destroy the mind
of the host patients.
In People of the Lie (1983), Peck describes these patients,
their awareness from the beginning of an alien
presence, and the exorcisms that eventually cleared the
way for spiritual healing. When the demonic entities finally
revealed themselves, the patients’ faces were completely
transformed into masks of utter malevolence.
One patient became a SERPENT, with writhing body,
hooded reptilian eyes, and darting efforts to bite the
exorcism team members. But what really overwhelmed
Peck was not the performance but the feeling that a tremendous
weight—an ageless, evil heaviness, or the true
Serpent—was in the room. He reports that everyone
present felt such a presence, only relieved when the exorcism
succeeded.
Peck’s experiences have corroborated those of the
California psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Allison, trained at the
University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine
and Stanford Medical Center. According to Allison,
some cases of multiple personality may be the result of
spirit possession, both nonthreatening and demonic.
His controversial book Minds in Many Pieces (1980)
discusses some of these patients and the inexplicable
paranormal occurrences surrounding them. At least one
personality in each patient—sometimes the primary but
usually a secondary one—displayed striking psychic
abilities.
One case cited by Allison was that of a young man
who began hearing a voice in his head after being struck
on the head by a heavy object. He had convulsive seizures
that could not be explained neurologically. The
voice told him he was about to die. Under hypnosis, the
voice identified itself as the Devil and said it had entered
the man when he was on military duty in Japan. The
man had rushed into a burning house to rescue someone
and was blown out by an explosion. The Devil entered
him at that time and was the cause of all his physical
and mental problems. Allison consulted a religious expert,
who opined that the spirit was not the Devil but a
stupid but evil entity who thought it was the Devil. He
performed an exorcism, and the man was relieved of all
symptoms.