Those with NBD have no such ability to know facts which they have not acquired by normal learning. Normal vs. Occultic Phenomena. There is an aspect to demon activity that is just plain spooky ex. These have an impact on others in the room not just the possessed. With schizophrenia, the effect of the disorder is only on the disordered, not others.
The claim to be possessed Authors who have clinical experience both with demon possession and mental illness, believe those who claim to be possessed are very likely not possessed. Demons wish to be secretive and do not voluntarily claim to be present.
Effects of Therapy. If prayer solves the problem, then it was probably not schizophrenia. If medicine helps alleviate the problem, it was not demon possession. For a free copy of the book donations appreciated , contact Dr.
You can reach him at or He is a critic of the mental health industry for ignoring the seriously ill, and has been advocating for better treatment for individuals with serious mental illness for over 30 years. He has written op-eds on the intersection of mental health and criminal justice policy for the New York Times, Wall St.
Pathogenic possession may be the easier of the two to approximate as it resembles what we would normally think of as a causal attribution theory of illness. For example, instead of explaining a depressed mood by citing a neuro-chemical imbalance, the person would do so by citing the effects of a spirit. The explanation may stop there without any specification of a detailed causal pathway.
But I found in my research that healers sometimes employ a representation of human biology of various degrees of sophistication to argue that spirits achieve their effects by directly targeting the bodily organ or centre responsible for that effect Rashed In any case, pathogenic possession can be thought of as a theory of illness based on the idea of the intrusion of an agent e. I will address how we can approach the spirit component of both forms of possession towards the end of this section.
But first, what about executive possession? Executive possession is a familiar albeit fringe notion in modern popular culture. The idea that a person's agency and identity can be displaced or eclipsed by an incorporeal agent is the subject of many movies, features in the historical record, and is currently endorsed and practiced by certain churches in the form of demonic possession.
Even though it is a familiar notion, it remains one that resists understanding by its apparent exotic nature.
How are we to approximate possession within a naturalistic view of the world? Possession, at the very least, makes a statement pertaining to agency. As Vincent Crapanzano had expressed, possession serves as.
Metaphorical as that may be, the idea is that when one is intensely in love or obsessional about an object, one is moved by emotions and compulsions powerful enough to evoke the experience of being driven if not against one's will then against one's rational judgment.
However, executive possession has a further component of identity switch, which implies a partial or total loss of agency vis-a-vis the identity in question—similar to Multiple Personality Disorder MPD or, as it is now known, Dissociative Identity Disorder DID. While the imaginative leap from possession-as-infatuation to DID may seem too great, the seeds for conceiving DID can already be found in possession-as-infatuation.
To be driven against one's rational judgement is a few steps removed from being driven against one's conscious will. The latter is an experience of a source of agency within us that is sufficiently distinct so as to become salient. Through various imaginative increments of objectification and alienation we can see how that source of agency may be identified with a persona. This persona may acquire independence with dispositions of its own, responsible for certain actions and emotions: it becomes an alter.
Perhaps we can conceive a continuum of possession states from the more familiar pull of infatuation to the unnerving cases of DID. The continuum does not suggest a shared causal structure to these phenomena, only that they can be seen as gradations of each other. Depth psychology accounts for the full range of possession phenomena without having to posit any outlandish beings.
Depth psychology refers to any theory that posits a layered psyche with hidden motivations and processes and which is capable of deceiving itself or, in extreme situations, of fragmenting.
For instance, a typical explanation for DID would cite the impact of childhood abuse on ego development such that splitting dissociation becomes the primary response to severe distress.
Conversely, a typical explanation for DID by a Qur'anic healer in the Western desert of Egypt is, in some ways, simpler: the person has been possessed by a spirit that had targeted him or her due to sorcery, attraction, bad luck or some such reason. There is no splitting in this case, distress need not be a precipitating feature, nor are childhood experiences necessarily relevant. For the psychologist the 'entity' is part of the ego where else would it come from?
This is reflected in treatment strategies: psychological treatment usually consists in managing the different personalities by fostering awareness and communication among them, seeking their integration, or cultivating the original 'core self' see Littlewood While in spirit possession interventions range from exorcising the spirit to developing an ongoing relationship with it by which the host may become a medium.
The similarities between DID and spirit possession have long been noted: both evince radical identity alteration and discontinuity, total or partial loss of control over behaviour, and limited memory of such states Bourguignon Writing from a historical perspective, Kenny , observes that in 19 th century spiritism, interpretations of what we would now call DID included the idea that individuals were possessed by spirits.
The decline in belief in spirit possession has seen a concurrent decline in such phenomena. The return of DID to Europe and America in the second half of the 20th century was in the context of a developed depth psychology that could no longer see DID as the incarnation of external agents but as the manifestation of an ego forced into such contortions by childhood abuse. This perspective gained popularity through publicised cases, books and movies, bringing with it the problem of false memories of abuse Littlewood The idea of possession by demonic and alien entities can still be found today among some British and American psychiatrists, doctors and clergy ibid.
Having partially approximated the notion of pathogenic and executive possession within a naturalistic worldview, there remains an important question: what about the spirits? Is spirit possession a dissociative identity disorder in which the alters are conceived as super-natural?
Is spirit possession a phenomena in its own right mediated by other-worldly entities? Can spirits be blamed for the illnesses and maladies they supposedly cause? The answer to these questions will depend on many things but mainly on our metaphysical commitments; they amount to asking if spirits and spirit possession are possible.
A materialist ontology, naturally, would deny this possibility. In fact this is the assumption implied by almost every single scholarly work on spirit possession. The psychological theory of dissociation is, at present, a popular answer for executive possession. And for pathogenic possession there are numerous theories at our disposal to explain the effects in question. But, really, what about the spirits?
Consider the physicalist doctrine that any state that has physical effects must itself be physical. This doctrine leaves two options for those who wish to defend spirits, neither of which is promising. On one hand if they insist that spirits do have effects in the physical world they would have to concede that spirits are not, after all, the ethereal creatures they are claimed to be: they are either physical or supervene on the physical.
On the other hand if they concede that spirits do not have effects in the physical world and hence spirit possession is not possible while maintaining that they exist outside the causal realm, the very possibility of spirits becomes questionable on epistemological grounds. The problem here is that an entity that cannot have any physical effects poses epistemological problems: how else would we know about it if not through our senses, which requires of such entities to be capable of influencing the physical world?
However, interactionist dualism is not a popular view in philosophy despite being an everyday, common-sensical view: the physical world affects our thinking and emotions, both of which affect our actions. If we are tempted by physicalism, then it is unlikely that spirit possession is possible. On the other hand, if we are committed Cartesians, then we might have other objections to spirit possession—say the nature of spirits —but it won't be its prima facie impossibility. We may assume that physicalism is true, in which case what is called spirit possession is just a fancy DID executive possession or a mistaken theory of illness pathogenic possession.
This position, in my view, diminishes our inquiry into spirit possession. I propose that despite descriptive and phenomenological similarities between spirit possession and DID, and despite the fact that scientific explanations of illness are often superior prediction, outcome , we have reason in many instances not to reduce spirit possession to either.
This claim does not arise out of respect for alternative worldviews—important as that may be—nor is it out of aesthetic preference for a term over another: spirit possession embodies moral, social, practical, and psychological consequences entirely different to the reductive nature of the disenchanted psy disciplines. By contrast to this myopic focus on the person, spirit possession immediately places the possessed in a much wider interpretive, experiential, and social space: in a prior existing and developed institution.
Boddy expresses this well in relation to biomedical, but I may also add psychological, frameworks:. Unlike biomedicine, which collapses into the body, possession widens out from the body and self into other domains of knowledge and experience—other lives, societies, historical moments, levels of cosmos, and religions—catching these up and embodying them Phenomena we bundle loosely as possession are part of daily experience, not just dramatic ritual.
They have to do with one's relationship to the world, with selfhood - personal, ethnic, political, and moral identity. In what follows I offer a perspective on spirit possession that makes use of the philosophical concepts of personhood and intentionality. I shall extend understanding of the variety of intentional explanation and prediction of behaviour, and of the kind of work spirit possession can do in a community. The aim is partly to reveal what can be learnt from the remarkably resilient and widespread institution of spirit possession, especially with regards to behaviours that are taken by societies around the world to imply 'madness' or 'mental disorder.
Eventually I bring things back to earth by examining the implications of this exercise for a range of concerns. For now, however, I urge the reader to suspend disbelief and to accept that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. I begin with a short story. Girgis is a fifty-year-old Coptic-Christian male who lives with his wife and two children at the far end of the oasis where you can see the edge of the desert. He became involved with a farmer who had unknowingly trespassed upon and damaged his habitat.
Angered by this incident and by the damage sustained to his home, Girgis began harassing the farmer. He would wake him up at night, put him in a bad mood all day, prevent him from praying at the mosque, and generally make everything difficult for him.
The farmer sought one of the local healers to intervene and arbitrate between them. The healer agreed to do so, and upon meeting with Girgis, he reminded him that both Christians and Muslims are people of the Book and should not harass each other like this. He assured Girgis that the farmer had no intention of trespassing upon his habitat, and that it is time to end this misunderstanding. The reader may be surprised to learn that Girgis is not a human person; he is a spirit of a variety known in Egypt and in Muslim societies across the world as a jinni plural jinn.
Despite not being human persons, spirits are represented as persons. They are deemed to display features required for personhood, and it is on the basis of these features that people in the community consider it possible to reason with them. Providing a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for personhood is fraught with difficulty and disagreement, and it would seem that there are several, as opposed to one, concept of the person see Braude , ch.
Features that are commonly put forward include the following: a person is a member of a "significant and ordered collectivity" Carrithers pertaining to which the entity in question has or will have rights and towards which it has or will have obligations.
It is considered a requirement for this sense of personhood that the entity must be capable now or at a future time of practical reasoning: of generating goal-directed action through deliberative reflection. Moreover, some accounts require that a person must not only be capable of acting on the basis of reasons, but must have a sense of oneself as an agent for whom things matter in accordance with certain standards.
Taylor calls these standards the "particularly human significances" such as shame and guilt Requirements for this sense of personhood are not met by all individuals, for example those with severe brain damage or who are in a coma.
Braude distinguishes this sense of personhood from what he refers to as the forensic concept of the person This refers to entities that do not have the capacity for practical reasoning—and who thus might be free of obligations—but who nevertheless are, or should be, considered bearers of rights.
Current debates on the moral status of individuals with severe cognitive impairment and certain non-human animals can be understood as pertaining to the forensic concept of the person see Kittay and Carlson These debates have become an occasion to revise what we take to be constitutive of forensic personhood. A recent account, for example, argues that the capacity to care rather than the capacity for practical reasoning should be the basis for ascribing to others moral status as persons Jaworska Recognition of forensic personhood evinces cultural and historical variation.
Historically, personhood was denied certain individuals on the basis of their status as slaves Mauss In both cases, the individual may be capable of practical reasoning but is only recognised as a person, and hence worthy of respect, on completion of the relevant initiation rites or after being granted his or her freedom.
The assumption in the previous discussion has been of a one to one correspondence between a person and a living organism see Braude , However, certain conceptions of the person do not require this.
Of note is the fact that in many cultures and religious traditions entities considered persons can inhabit many bodies and one body can be inhabited by several persons. Moreover, personhood and embodiment come apart. Spirits, as indicated earlier, are regarded as disembodied persons who are able to acquire executive control of a human individual. But acquiring a body does not add to their status as persons. This status is evident if we consider the manner they are represented and which fulfills several of the criteria listed above.
The jinn are members of a significant and ordered collectivity: they are socially organised, work, marry, and procreate. They are gendered, have human-like traits and concerns. They are capable of goal-directed action and possess moral agency which renders them subject to trial and punishment. It is by virtue of these features that it is possible for the healer to reason with them and to appeal to their sense of right and wrong as the vignette above demonstrates.
The jinn also enjoy recognition as persons in the forensic sense. Thus, healers are wary of harming the spirits in so far as it is not necessary to do so, and this stems not only from fears of retaliation, for instance, but from an understanding that spirits are persons and are, at least, worthy of respect on that basis.
By contrast to the jinn , in Islam, angels are not persons; they are emanations of god's will and hence are incapable of agentic behaviour. Given their status as persons, how do people attain knowledge of these spirits?
How is the general and impersonal category 'spirit' individualised into a specific spirit-person with an identity, name, gender, religion, history, traits, dispositions, and intentions? Observations of spirit possession in Egypt demonstrate that knowledge about spirits is gained through various modalities each with its own claim to certainty and level of detail: religious texts, traditions and social interaction, direct communication, embodied experience, and frank emergence.
Religious texts such as the Qur'an and the compendiums of hadiths sayings attributed to the Prophet of Islam do speak of a category of being known as the jinn. For believers, such texts while they are high on certainty are nevertheless low on detail as they can only offer knowledge of a general nature. By contrast, the oral history of the community and the exchange of stories pertaining to recent or present experiences of possession, offer more detail about the nature of spirits and how they behave.
The remaining three modalities all involve an experience of the spirit rather than hearing a story about it from other sources. As the name implies, direct communication pertains to persons having auditory and visual experiences of certain spirits, thereby coming to learn about them.
Embodied experience and frank emergence may occur spontaneously or at a healing session. Consider this typical description of a diagnostic and healing session as would be conducted by a Qur'anic healer in the community I studied. With his right hand placed over the subject's forehead, the healer reads loudly the ruqya incantation of specific Qur'anic verses and registers the subject's response: four possibilities are recognised. The first possible outcome is that the jinni emerges and animates the subject's body, whose voice and identity are now replaced.
The healer proceeds, through conversing with the jinni , to identify his or her name, religion, whether or not there is sorcery, the reasons behind possessing the subject, intentions at the present moment, and other questions relevant to getting to know the spirit. The healer then proceeds to negotiate with the spirit and secure its exit from the human host. The second and most common outcome is that the person responds with symptoms and signs such as mild tremors or numbness in the limbs, headache, screaming, stiffness, blurring of vision, arousal, violence, attempts to leave the room, crying, or perhaps would be seen scanning the room in disdain and with an incongruent smile.
Any of these are sufficient indications that a jinni is involved. Applying this to the vignette mentioned previously we find the following: initially the farmer experienced insomnia and dysphoria.
He suspected spirit interference pathogenic possession and went to the healer who administered the incantation. A jinni emerged executive possession , and the healer began conversing with it. This is how the healer was able to learn the jinni's name, religion, and understand the circumstances that occasioned the possession incident.
Note that knowledge regarding the spirit's intentions can already be suspected from more general information pertaining to it. For example, a pagan jinni —in this community—is regarded as potentially dangerous as it would have no regard for God and religious morality; it would have no qualms to harm the host or to behave in capricious ways.
On the other hand for a Muslim host, a Muslim jinni is generally considered less likely to harm the host or behave insolently, and is easier to negotiate with by appealing to his or her sense of right and wrong. The exposition, so far, sought to portray spirits as social persons who may interact with humans under various circumstances. Their identity as beings with such and such traits and capable of agentic behaviour is demonstrated and further refined when a spirit displaces the host's agency and makes its presence explicit or otherwise directly communicates with the host.
There is a female voice, sort of touching me and I get aroused. I feel this touch as if it was an illusion of oral sex. This is not real but I can clearly feel it. Male voices say they are perverted and will do with me whatever they want. One night, I could feel something in my anus, like a ghost penis.
They raped me and I felt their cum on buttocks when they finished Charles. Asked about his associations, he talked about his drunk grandmother who fondled his penis when he was 8 years old. At the age of 10, his 2-years-older cousin encouraged him to have sex. Memories of performing fellatio or being penetrated evoked conflicting emotions in Charles and made him question his masculinity.
He said he always felt compelled to prove his heterosexuality in adult life and remained extremely resentful toward his cousin, referring to him as a pedophile who raped him. In adult life, participants tended to isolate themselves and had limited social interactions, despite longing for meaningful relationships. Their social contacts usually involved immediate family, or caregivers working in a social welfare home in Greg's case.
The women emphasized feeling lonely and unimportant. Kathy hoped that her artistic family would appreciate her own talents, so she danced in front of them eagerly or showed them her poems, paintings, or YouTube videos. However, she was convinced that everyone perceived her as weird and maladjusted. She may have developed her belief in supernatural telepathic powers or her perceived ability to communicate with aliens in order to cope with loneliness.
These are extra-terrestrials from a different dimension, another frequency band. We have had contact for 3 years now. They can be quite intrusive. We communicate telepathically. I can hear and feel them. Sometimes we even have intercourse Kathy.
Shortly before the onset of auditory hallucinations, Alice lost two important women in her life — her aunt, who overdosed on alcohol, and a friend, who hanged herself after taking drugs. Faced with loss, Alice started hearing their voices, and they became her companions, comforting her and helping in making decisions.
This friend became even closer to me after her death because I could hear her voice in my head [. For example, they instructed me to take loans and move away from home. So I ended up in debt, but my father paid everything Alice.
The male participants said they preferred to withdraw from social life, convinced that their symptoms were weird, embarrassing or dangerous.
After his mother's death and a suicide attempt, Greg was sent by the court to a social welfare shelter for the homeless and mentally ill. He had no friends and his biological father refused to care for him. Greg grew more anxious, hostile, had delusions of reference, and could not resist making strange hand movements imitating rap singers or bending down while walking.
I was half bent over, and walked in this way. I couldn't control it and people commented about it. They said I must be ill or fucked up.
They paid attention to me because I behaved weird Greg. Charles thought he should refrain from social interaction until his condition improved. Although he felt attracted to a girl, he was afraid of harming her feelings or being rejected for his symptoms or past experiences.
I tell myself that I am ill and do not want to mix with other people. If I get back in shape mentally, I will renew my relationships. There is a woman I fancy, an old friend of mine, but I do not see her. I don't want to hurt her and I also find it difficult to talk about what happened in my past Charles. He experienced conflicts related to his own identity: he disapproved of the behavior of the men who were his only role models, and also questioned his masculinity and heterosexuality.
Initially, religious motives were not present in their delusional experiences, but emerged under the influence of the environment. They were inspired by cultural beliefs and evolved as participants' interpretations of unusual experiences. When her father moved out following a divorce, and domestic violence stopped, Kathy started sharing his interests in the occult and read his books.
She thought spirits influenced her behavior and convinced herself she had gained special powers in order to save demons. Subsequently, she developed and performed purification rituals. I often scream at home with the voices of these demons, because I have to purify them.
I have to connect to them energetically and use a special prayer for cleansing them of their sins. They simply did something, killed a family member or were cruel, and later on they felt guilty for their actions, and this condensed in a single unit of time Kathy. Alice initially heard positive voices of her deceased friends or people she had recently met in real life.
When she was told that these auditory hallucinations were demons, the voices proliferated and some became distressing, so she wanted to get rid of them. I met a meditation instructor who said they were demons who wanted something from me. I got really scared. Not only did I hear these ghosts but I also started hearing demons… and I could see them as well… Before I was admitted to hospital I heard countless voices and it was really scary, because they were demons.
Later I thought I was hearing angels when someone gave me a prayer to Archangel Michael. When I felt that something was touching me, I would pray to him and this sensation stopped Alice. Greg was hospitalized during psychotic episodes numerous times. She educated him about exorcisms and made him participate in such rituals during his leave of absence days. Finally, Greg accepted her interpretations and endorsed the notion of the demonic evil forcing him to make strange gestures, being hostile and violent.
This filled him with awe but also gave a sense of understanding of his symptoms. My mother said I was controlled by evil. She read to me about people who were possessed. She had a book written by Father Amorth, a famous exorcist. It is scary to think that I am possessed by demons.
I actually feel terrified. On the other hand, there is no other explanation for all these things I have experienced. I must have performed about 20 rituals Greg. Charles's explanatory models of his unusual experiences changed over time. Initially, he was convinced he had a chip in his brain after reading on the Internet about alien civilizations controlling humans. He even saved money for a computed tomography CT scan to confirm his theory.
These voices convinced me that I had a chip installed in my brain. I had a sensation in my head, like an electric current, an electronic impulse. I also read about it on the web. I had to find out if I was mentally ill or had an implant, but the tomography did not prove anything Charles. Because his voices and tactile symptoms persisted despite pharmacotherapy, he also refused to accept the medical diagnosis of schizophrenia, deciding instead that his problems could only be explained in terms of demonic possession.
He believed that spirits could produce symptoms resembling mental illnesses and could also mess with his mind. I also read that some evil spirits can imitate mental illness. I don't know if that is the case because I never had problems with my faith. But I read that these spirits feed on human weakness. These are spirits. It is hard to explain.
Three of them are responsible for my symptoms. There is a female voice and two male voices. I don't believe them because God would not interfere with someone's mind. How can I believe that God or Jesus would use [rape] me in such a tragic way. They constantly comment on my actions and judge me.
They have no insight into my heart, how I feel and what I am really like Charles. All participants were referred to priests, because families or communities labeled them as possessed. Kathy said that her mother had tried to help her get rid of spirits by taking her to a tarot reader, pranic healer, and a hypnotist. She was later consulted by an exorcist called by nuns.
Kathy admitted she did not expect him to perform any rituals. Instead she wanted to teach the exorcist that his view about demonic beings was wrong, and to demonstrate her auto-exorcism skills. After visiting all these practitioners, I went to visit nuns. I thought it would be so extraordinary if demons could pray together with them but they panicked and called an exorcist.
They were scared because I articulated these demons. I had to set them free to purify them. The content was actually not that bad but the sound terrified them. It was demonic. He meets so many of them but knows so little.
I wanted to inform him about the real nature of evil, that there is nothing to be afraid of. If he had accepted that, I could have helped him in his services but he just sent me here. He said he had to make sure I did not have any mental issues Kathy.
Alice, on the other hand, attended regular monthly exorcism rituals for 18 months. I was attending exorcisms and this priest told me that Satan was messing with my head. He used his book of demons and prayed over me.
He commanded them to leave my body, and I felt something leaving. At the same time, something else entered. This was probably Lucifer… After these rituals I stopped hearing the demons and only Lucifer remained.
I think he helped me by making the other spirits disappear. He is an angel and has great power. He is so strong. Her relationship with the new voice was dynamic and changed over time. While initially Lucifer's voice caused distress, she later found his company comforting and reassuring. It also helped her control her aggressive impulses. Lucifer is bad — that is what I thought at first, so I fought against him and was really scared, like I was scared of the demons.
But later things changed. I realized that if I cannot get rid of him, I need to collaborate with him and things became different. At first I thought he wanted to take the [aunt's and friend's] ghosts with him, and I did not want to let them go. I didn't want to let him harm them. I was not afraid anymore. He says I should discriminate between good and evil and refrain from any bad actions or he will punish me.
He says that taking drugs or alcohol is bad, and that I should be kind to others Alice. Because her exorcist did not approve of the voice, which represented to him demonic influence, Alice decided to stop the exorcisms and terminate her relationship with the priest. She also tried to develop her own understanding of the symptoms independently from the explanatory models of priests and doctors. I stopped attending these rituals because I am happy that I can hear Lucifer, and the other voices are gone.
I do not need that priest any more really. According to him, Lucifer is bad. I think I have a mental illness but I also have supernatural experiences Alice. After Greg's mother died, he continued meeting exorcists, who became one of his very few sources of support. He also got involved in a charismatic Christian movement which enhanced his belief in demonic possession.
He denied having a mental illness and was reluctant to take medicines prescribed by his doctor or participate in psychotherapy sessions offered at the social welfare home. However, he also admitted that not all exorcists agreed that he was really possessed. Initially, they were certain about my possession because I behaved weird. Others said they had doubts about that because they used the holy water and it did not work. They said that if the exorcized water and prayers have no effect, it means I am not possessed Greg.
Participating in exorcisms became impossible when he was incapacitated in a social welfare shelter. After that he could only attend prayers with his exorcist on the phone. Greg liked talking to priests who were friendly and interested in his story, but did not enjoy meeting exorcists who were harsh or restrained him. Some meetings with exorcists were based on a kind of investigation about what is wrong with me. Some of them were really nice, kind-hearted.
At least, this is how I saw them. Others were kind of harsh, radical. They used leather belts or called other men to restrain me Greg. To confirm his theory about possession, Charles also consulted an exorcist. The priest did not refute his ideas and encouraged regular meetings to investigate that possibility.
0コメント