Exorcism/Adorcism

You’ve likely never attended an exorcism, but popular culture ensures that you know what one is. Yes, we’re talking the forced removal of a demonic entity from the human psyche, but what else can we glean about this paranormal experience from shamanistic rites of exorcism and the psychological principles of dissociative identity disorder and cognitive dissonance? As 'The Exorcist' creeps in on its 43rd anniversary, Robert and Christian discuss the real and imaginary forces at work in the demon-haunted mind.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and i'm Christian Sager. Tell
me something, Christian, what's your relationship with the Actorcism? Wellism

(00:23):
in general? It's funny you should ask. I think I've
told the story on this podcast before. But I when
I was twelve going into thirteen years old, went to
a Baptist private school in Florida, and they very much
taught us as students there that demon possession was real, uh,

(00:45):
and to constantly be on guard from demon possession. And
they would um tell us stories of people that they
had performed exorcisms on and really kind of, you know,
literally put the fear of God into us. And I
had experience where my family went on vacation that same
year that I was attending that school. We went skiing

(01:06):
and I wasn't wearing um, what do you call him,
snow goggles when I was skiing and it was a
really sunny day and the sun was bouncing off of
the white snow, and I didn't realize that I was
a little kid, and I got snow blindness. That night.
I went blind in the middle of the night, I
woke up and I was blind and I couldn't see anything,

(01:29):
and because I had been at the school, I was
utterly convinced that I was possessed by a demon and
that I couldn't see anything because the demon was in
control of my body and the demon was seeing out
through me. It really, Uh, I freaked me out. I
was pretty traumatized by the whole thing. I was young. Um,

(01:52):
And therefore the movie The Exorcist was something I avoided
until I was third Yeah, I pretty much. I always
knew it was out there, as as you know, I'm
a horror fan. Uh, and I just always avoided The Exorcist.
I was like, I know, I like scary movies, but

(02:13):
I just don't know if I can handle that one.
And I finally worked up the courage to watch it
and I and I loved it. And it's I really
found that there's something there in terms of my storytelling
that I wanted to use that moment from when I
was twelve years old and was so terrified of demon
possession that I wanted to incorporate into some of my stories.

(02:37):
How about you, because I know you've told this, Uh,
previous episode about exorcism for stuff to blow your mind.
I listened to it. But then you've told me this
story as well yourself. You actually saw an exorcism, Well
it was. It was a sort of exorcism. Uh, what
we're talking about here is a back room exorcism at
a late nineties first Baptist church coffee house, youth group

(02:59):
coffee house in Fayeville, Tennessee. So to ground it properly
in the sort of the culture there, uh, spiritual warfares
they called. It was kind of a big deal in
those days, and maybe it still is in many circles.
And this was the notion that demons and angels are
actively waged in an invisible war for individual souls. So

(03:20):
it's the screwtape letters by way of Frank Peretti's This
Present Darkness, which was like a Christian young adult book
about this kind of spiritual warfare. You know, angels trying
to get you to do one thing, demons trying to
do the other, and then like having a big duke
out fight. Uh, and all of this too by way
of youthful enthusiasm to change the world and interact with

(03:41):
a hidden magic of the world. So long story short,
there's a guy at this coffee house. He wasn't feeling
so hot, so a soft exorcism, I guess you might
call it was performed to free him of the demon.
So there were no weird voices, there's no acting out,
nobody was tied down or anything. It was just some prayer. Uh.
And I don't want to knock it too much because

(04:01):
looking back on it, you had a case where two
people reached out to a third person and at least
temporarily soothed mental anguish via this mild religious practice, this
mild religious experience. But of course it all depends on
what was actually going on with that young man in
the back of the coffee house. What was he you know,
what was he actually experiencing or wrestling with and did

(04:25):
this actually help or discover it up or or give him, uh,
you know, a problematic narrative to wrestle with, because ultimately,
like that's what your story is about. Something traumatic occurred
and you had no frame of reference for what could
be occurring except for this supernatural narrative. Yeah. Absolutely, it
was like it was the prime narrative that I was

(04:46):
hearing at the time, And so of course I turned
right to that. Um. Yeah, I think that, like you know,
we should point out to at the top of this episode,
we tried to do this and any topic we're covering,
whether it's um, you know, ghost marriages or talking about
combat stimulation drugs in the military. You know, it may

(05:07):
not be something that is like in Robert in my
particular lifestyle and again frame of reference. Um, but we're
we're trying to look at this, you know, positively and
open minded. So in the sense of exorcism and demon possession. Now,
as an adult, I don't personally believe in it, but

(05:28):
I believe that those people believe. Uh, and that makes
it just as real, right, And Uh, in the situation
that you're describing, that person was maybe depressed and maybe
he was getting the only help that was available to
him in his community, right, and maybe it was a
you know, we look at that and we might go, oh,
that's weird or that was a little backward, but but

(05:50):
you know what, like maybe that helped make that guy
feel better just for one day. Yeah, And I'm guilty
of having pulled that story out before to sort of
be like, oh, wasn't this weird been you know, looking
back on it, I have to also, you know, realize
the things about it that we're not weird of all
weird at all given the context. Yeah, and this is
going to be especially important in today's episode because we're

(06:10):
gonna be talking about demon possession and exorcism. We're also
gonna be talking about another less known practice called addersism.
But it's all going to be in frame of reference
of mental health care and psychology psychological practice today. And
one of the major theories that we're going to cover
is that in order to be effective as a mental

(06:32):
health professional in situations like this, you have to be
open and understanding of the cultural beliefs of demon possession
if you're going to help the person, even if you
just think, well, they're they're actually schizophrenic or they actually
have uh an identity disorder. Um. So you know, we'll

(06:54):
we'll condense us back down and return to that later.
But there's another reason why we wanted to do this
episode this week. We've been talking about doing this for
a while now. We chose to do it this week
because it's the forty third anniversary of the movie The Exorcist.
So that's why Robert asked, what was my experience, what
was what's your experience with that movie? I think I

(07:15):
saw it for the first time when I was in college,
like watched it by myself on a DVD or maybe
even VHS I can't remember, and and being you know,
profoundly creeped out, not but so not so much by
the big moments of you know, in your face demonic possession,
but the smaller moments, uh some of what some of

(07:35):
which I strongly remember, like being like a bazoo zoo
statue that the child Reagan has made in the background. Uh,
stuff like that I found far more compelling, and also
think the character uh Arc is pretty good in that too. Yeah.
I don't think that movie is celebrated enough. I mean
it is celebrated a lot, and especially in the horror community,

(07:56):
but not enough for the excellent way it builds dread.
It's not for me, I agree with you. It's not
the like uh special effects makeup and the head spinning
around and vomit flying around the room. It's like it
builds dreads so carefully over the course of the movie
that by the time you get to that stuff, it's effective.

(08:16):
And it's crazy to look back and realize Yeah, this
film came out December ninety three. This was a holiday
release and what a Christmas movie? Yeah, I mean, take
your grandmother to that over the holiday, I know, I
mean it was it was still the holidays. It was
granted it was the nixt in years. Uh, And that
was That's interesting because I started thinking about that. It's like,

(08:37):
all right, maybe there's something about it being the knicks
in years. This came out, And when did Bladdie's book
come out? It was a couple of years before that, right, yeah,
I believe so. I don't remember the date off hand.
But for the audience, the movie is based off of
supposed nonfiction book by William Peter Blattie, right, or it's
sort of how how how authentic is does he recognize it?

(08:59):
That I have not. I've read some Bladdy, but I've
never read The Exorcist, so you can't really really speak
to it all that. I think that he was a believer.
And my understanding is that the book was somewhat fictionalized
in the movie was even more fictionalized. Well, the movie
is interesting when you start piecing it apart. I actually

(09:20):
ran across a really cool article in History Today about
the Exorcist. Here's a quote from it. Indeed, Father Marin's
warning to be aware of the demon's voice as it
mixes lives with truth is exactly the sort of thing
President Nixon had begun to say about the American media
as it probed the breaking story of Watergate. This is

(09:41):
very interesting, especially because of the episode on heroism that
we are also doing this we talked about in Nixon
and Captain America at the time. Wow, yeah, man, that
that it's interesting. You know, I wasn't alive then, but
that that presidency really seems to have permeated out into
the popular culture hive mind. This particular iCal also touched
on the conflict between science and the forces of darkness,

(10:04):
which of course is a theme in the movie. But
there's just one scene and I completely forgot about this,
but Reagan the child predicts the death of a U
S astronaut at a part and uh, and yeah, I've
completely forgotten about that. But this is another area where
modern science is up against dartness. You know, it's dealing
with modern science is inability to treat something that is

(10:25):
ultimately a spiritual malady. Uh. It's a fun read. It's
by an author by the name of Nick Cole, and
it was published back in the year two thousand. So
the Exorcist is everywhere. I mean, we we returned back
to that, and I think still today most people's unless
they have participated in an exorcism, their understanding of exorcism

(10:49):
is probably the one from that movie. Right. It's very
catholic and ritualistic nature. Uh and uh, it adheres to
that kind of you know model. Um. And It's what's
interesting is we're coming back around on it again. There's
a lot of demon possessions stuff in popular culture. Again,
there's an Exorcist TV show right now. In fact, I

(11:10):
believe the week that this episode is publishing, the TV
show will have just ended. Uh. And I've been watching
it and it's it's kind of okay. I was surprised.
I thought it was going to be awful, but I, uh,
it really surprised me. Yeah. Um, it's nowhere near scary,
isn't is the movie. But it's got some interesting stuff
going on in it. So we're revisiting exorcism. And when

(11:33):
I say we're revisiting it, it's because Stuff to Blow
Your Mind has previously covered exorcism and cognitive disorder in
an episode with you and in former host Julie Douglas
and I went back and listened to that episode in
preparation for this one. Uh, and it's it's great. It's
a it's a So if you if you haven't heard
that episode, maybe go back and listen to that really

(11:54):
lays the groundwork for um, what we mean by exorcism
and its connection to mental health. Yeah, but you know,
don't stop listening now this We're pretty self contained in
this episode. No spoilers for that episode. Isn't so much
a part one part two. But you know, if you
dig this episode, you may go back and check that
one out. Will include a link to it on the
landing page for this episode is stuffitable mind dot com.

(12:17):
So what do we mean then, what's the definition of possession? Well,
when we hear that term, what we're commonly referring to,
and keep in mind, possession and exorcism are culturally almost universal.
They they occur all over the world. Yeah, no matter
how how much your mind is informed of that idea
of like the Catholic priest at the bed of the

(12:39):
possessed individual, it goes beyond that. It refers to a
hold exerted over a human being by some external force
that's more powerful than they are. So depending on the culture,
we're talking about demons, maybe ghosts, animistic spirits, gods, or
even alien entities. I just watched a kind of like

(13:00):
crappy but good horror movie from two thousand nine called
The Unborn. Did you ever see that one? No? Is
this the one that oh the the guy who wrote
the Blade movies. Yeah, it's David Goya. Yeah, he wrote
it and directed it. Yeah. Uh, and it the premises,
it's like, this was around that period of time where
Hollywood was like, oh, we gotta do exorcism movies, but

(13:21):
not Catholic ones. So there was a divit in it.
The um the Jewish tradition of possession, and the idea
was there was a divick that was like harassing this
young girl. Anyways, it's not that great of a movie,
but it goes to show you there's a lot of
different things. It's not just demons. Sometimes that's your ancestors
maybe or sometimes, uh, the the idea of aliens figures

(13:46):
into it. It's but the the same central premise is
common almost across all human cultures. It's often accompanied by
something that's referred to in psychology as a possession trance. Now,
recent studies on this phenomenon have located it within a
wider social and historical context, So they're basically trying to

(14:06):
describe it as a way that identity, maybe gender, and
our bodies are negotiated within our cultures. And these practices
are found in Asia, Africa, America, Latin America, Europe, and Oceania. Now,
exorcism has a different definition. This is the spiritual practice

(14:26):
has a very long history and it's common in many cultures.
Like I said, it's aim is to purposefully expel these
demons or evil spirits from the person or place that
they've invaded. And and as I said, we all often
think of the Roman Catholic one. I wonder pre exorcist
if people thought about Catholicism in relation to this. I

(14:47):
don't know. I mean, it didn't occur to me to
just now. But you have a very basic biological parallel
to this, the idea of eating something bad and then
vomiting it up, you know, or you know, or you're
digesting something bad and it has to be you know,
expelled out the other end. But that's basically the premise
something bad has got in you and we gotta get

(15:08):
it out of you, all right. So you know, I'm
gonna grow with some familiar notes here on this one,
because I kind of come back to cultural scripts a
lot when we're talking about supernatural. But I think it
is important to just drive home again in exorcisms and
the paranormal experience of possession adhere to specific cultural scripts.
So the scripts vary. You've got the alien gray script,

(15:28):
you got the little people, the forest, the ghosts, the devils,
and there you may be different versions of these wherever
you go, but they provide a ready made, culturally accepted,
really semi accepted set of explanations and qualifying information to
explain what and why this is occurring, as well as
a means of potentially addressing it. So something weird happens,

(15:49):
I want answers. Here is already made answer and perhaps
some hope, very similar to your experience with the snow blindness. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
And this reminds me like, um, there's like two different
kinds of horror right now. There's like the weird, right
which is like there there's your left with no answers,
and it's utterly a bizarre experience and you don't really

(16:10):
have any rule book, right, And then even that's kind
of an answer. It's like saying you don't know, but
we can't know. Yeah, exactly, that's true. It's very then, uh,
and then there's like the very like rule oriented horror,
like a silver bullet will kill a warewolf, wooden stake
will kill a vampire. And here's how to expel a
demon who's possessing somebody's body. We need to get ahold

(16:31):
of this specific ritual. And it's like it's like a
D and D like manual or something like that at
the end of day exactly. And if you're trying to
to make sense of it all, this is where confirmation
bias comes into picture, into the picture. If you've you've
dragged in this cultural script and Uh. To sum it
all up, I'd like to read just a quick excellent
summation of confirmation bias from The Drunkard's Walk, How Randomness

(16:54):
Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlada Now who also did
some screen writing. He wrote some episodes of I Think
Star Trek, Next Generations and mcgeiver but the old old mcgriya.
But he said, quote, when we are in the grasp
of an illusion, or for that matter, whenever we have
a new idea, instead of searching for ways to prove

(17:16):
our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct.
Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it presents a
major impediment to our ability to break free from the
misinterpretation of randomness. To make matters worse, not only do
we preferentially seek evidence to confirm our preconceived notions, but
we also interpret ambiguous evidence in favor of our ideas.

(17:39):
And this can be a big problem because data are
often ambiguous, and by ignoring some patterns and emphasizing others
are clever brains can reinforce their beliefs even in the
absence of convincing data. So you know, you have you know,
you have this checklist for exorcism, you have the script
for exorcism, you have your your own experience, and you

(18:00):
end up cherry picking where they want to line up
and then just to ensure that this is the path,
this is the answer, this is how I'm gonna get
out of this. Yeah, And when you think about it
in that regard to it's even more human right of
an experience it's easier to understand why someone frames the
experience as a possession, right, um, because that's easier to

(18:23):
understand than what may actually be going on mentally, right,
But of course it's I think it's also important to
to point out that a cultural script is only going
to be useful, even cherry picking how it matches up.
It's only gonna be useful if it fits the underlying,
you know, reality of the individual. It doesn't matter how
bizarre or mundane the glove is, right, the glove still

(18:45):
has to fit a hand. There's still a hand underneath it.
So that's something to keep in mind as we move
forward and we start talking about the psychological, uh side
of what is occurring. Well, let's get into that. So
there's a lot of literature that exam ends possession and
exorcism as a phenomenon, especially alongside modern mental health practices,

(19:06):
like so much that Robert and I could not possibly
have read at all for this episode, but we did
our best. An excellent source for reviewing it, though, that
I found is by j. Body, and it comes from
an article he wrote in nine called Spirit Possession Revisited.
This was published in the Annual Review of anthropology. This
is over twenty years old though, so you know, I

(19:28):
have to admit like I couldn't really find a more
current literature review, although I did find a conference paper
that was published this year by a guy named Joel
Sanford Uh and his paper was called Facing Our Demons
Psychiatric Perspectives on Exorcism Rituals Runner up because it was
a conference paper, um, and he did a really good

(19:49):
literature review in there as well. So both of those
informed what we're gonna bring to you today. But the
argument is basically vary from possession leading to a form
of group therapy, so seeing exorcism the act of an
exorcism as being grouped therapy on behalf of the individual
or something like the state itself of being in the

(20:10):
possession trance as being induced by individual stress. But attention
in the literature itself mainly goes to local contexts, the
cultures that are there, and the power of the human imagination.
Getting back to this what we're speaking of earlier about
cultural scripts, researchers have found that possession seems to be
connected to the human endeavor of figuring out ourselves and

(20:35):
our identity is basically who am I? While simultaneously challenging
forms of power in various cultures and in location. Uh so. So,
for instance, the episode that you and Julie did on this,
the major kind of touch tone example that you were
using was what if somebody is in a culture where
it's not acceptable to be homosexual, they have homosexual urges,

(20:58):
and they have this cognitive dison its between what they're
feeling and what they have learned and believe is morally wrong. Right,
and so that creates this dissonance that can sometimes lead
to something like the possession trance. Yeah, I mean it's
basically the cognitive dissonance. Take on it is, Okay, look
at exorcism. It's an outside force is making me do,

(21:21):
say or think something that I believe to be wrong.
And if you remove the supernatural element there, then you
have a scenario that looks this way, I did said
or thought something that I believe to be wrong. And
with this without you know, without any kind of supernatural
player in it. But and in this you know, you
have to somehow find it a way out of it, right, right.
So this led to a point where in nineteen two

(21:44):
there was even a proposal to include quote trance and
possession disorder in the official listing of the American Psychological
Association's d s M four. Uh So, the d s
M we talked about all the time on this show.
It's basically like the hand end book of of of
mental disorders. I believe we're on the fifth one right now.

(22:04):
Uh And this proposal was put forth by a somebody
named Etzel Cardana, but it wasn't approved. The whole thing
was controversial because of dissocio identity disorder, schizophrenia, and other
diagnoses which in and of themselves have controversy that we'll
talk about later. But trance and possession disorder would have

(22:24):
identified the psychosis as a diag It would give it
a diagnosis basically that could cross culturally incorporate clear perspectives
to allow us to understand human consciousness and identity. So
it was essentially embracing this idea that the possession trance
was universal across cultures. Now, specific example that I found

(22:46):
of psychology trying to understand possession as mental illness within
the context of the actual patients beliefs is in Jay
Mercer's study in Mental Health, Religion and Culture, and in
there he seeks to provide counselors and clinicians with an
understanding of specifically Pentecostal exorcism, so that those people can

(23:10):
help assist with conventional mental health treatments. So this is
what he he uncovered. Uh, The argument in the paper
is essentially that mainstream mental health professionals should have sufficient
understanding of in this case, Pentecostal deliverance principles. Deliverance is
what they refer to as their exorcism ritual. Uh, in

(23:33):
order to be effective. Well, the idea, this is the language,
this is this is the this is the the way
they're understanding what's wrong with them. So you need to
be able to speak with them about it on their
terms exactly. Yeah. Now, the Pentecostal view itself is that
mental illness, including autism, bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, etcetera, all

(23:54):
have their direct causes in the presence of demons within
a victim's body. Now, Dean in this belief system can
be drawn by a person's intentional participation in sinful actions
for example, or the sins of related people around them,
or even accidental events. So for instance, Uh, one of
the things I mentioned here is that in that in

(24:14):
that faith. Adopted children are considered more likely to be
afflicted by demons, as are those who consider abortion as
an option. Illnesses of those of close people or pets
even can invite demonic entry through grief, so like if
you grieve too much, like makes you vulnerable to demon possession.
And obviously, as you know, you and I are familiar

(24:37):
with from our upbringings, any association with the occult is
also thought to attract demons. And finally, a curse can
bring demonic forces upon a person or family. So I
just said all those things, and some of you listening
might have been like, oh, that's all ridiculous, right, Well,
whether it is or isn't, if your mental health professional
is trying to help somebody dealing with this specific uh

(24:59):
disorder here in within this faith, you still need to
understand that those are the things they believe, right right? Yeah.
I mean, like everything you described here, especially with the
you know, the role of sinful acts, all of this,
it just seems so steeped and cognitive dissonance, And in
order to reach them you kind of have to They've
built a barrier out of the cognitive distance that you

(25:21):
have to be able to break through. Um. Back in
the nineteen fifties, social psychologist Leon Festinger who coined the term,
He argued that there are three ways to deal with
cognitive dissonance, all right, And I think the easy way
to think of this is, oh I have You could say, oh,
I have homosexual feelings. But but I but I'm a
member of a faith that that says that that is sinful. Right,

(25:44):
So one thing you can do is a person may
change one or more of their behaviors or beliefs. So
you can either change what you believe to where it
lines up with how you are, or you change how
you are to line up with your belief Sometimes that's
an option, sometimes it's not. Number two, This an idea
here is that a person might try to acquire new
information or beliefs to increase the agreement between the two,

(26:06):
which will lessen the overall dissonance. So this might be
all right, I'm maybe I'm not gonna go from Pentecostal
to atheists, but maybe I'll find another like branch of
Christianity easier transition. It's somewhere where I I can fit
in his met and still hold these values. And then
number three, a person may try to forget or play

(26:26):
down the importance of the cognition that's butting up against
the contradictory cognition. So if you can't change the way
that you think or behavior, you're unable or unwilling to
change the thing that you believe. The only solution is
to go with two or three. And number two is
is where we see the possible demonic possession, because you
might not change from Pentecostal to U you know, you know,

(26:50):
United Church of Christ or something. You might just say
it's the demon You might choose that mode. Well, so
in the Pentecostal faith, the results of demonic possession and
again this is I don't I don't have personal experience
with Pentecostal faith. This is from the paper. The results
are linked to an extensive list of physical and mental ills.

(27:11):
So these are essentially symptoms infertility, obesity, asthma, seizure disorders
a d h D, schizophrenia, alcoholism and drug use, UH
and disobedience or nightmares and children are attributed to demonic activity.
That makes me think of sleep paralysis and night terrors,
which we've discussed before. Um. But Mercer in this paper

(27:32):
goes on to describe deliverance the entire ritual. I'm not
going to go through it here. Definitely check out the
paper if you're interested. Um, but it's worth for him.
The idea is, basically, this is a manual I'm giving
you mental health professionals so that you can be involved
in this process. Like if you have a patient that
comes to you and says, I need help, but I
do believe this and this is my faith system, then

(27:54):
the mental health counselor can turn to Mercer's paper, read
through it, and have a better understanding of what they're
getting into and how to basically communicate with their patient.
So why don't we take a quick break, and when
we get back, let's talk about a term that maybe
you haven't heard before that's in relation to demon possession,

(28:15):
sort of the opposite of exorcism, and it's called addersism.
All right, we're back. So the classic idea is someone
comes to the exorcist and says, hey, I got this demon.
Him and his demons making me do things that I
don't want to do, make me think things I don't
want to think. Can you rip that sucker out of me?

(28:35):
And we can go our separate ways. What happens when
you go to the the adder system instead of the exercist. Yeah. Well,
it turns out that it's This is a practice that
was observed by a guy named Luke de Hoysch, and
he's the one who really coined the term adder sism.
He saw it as the opposite of exorcism, where the

(28:56):
practices are aimed at integrating the spiritual into t into
a person or place instead of expelling it. So this
is it's kind of like the Dark Crystal scenario. Instead
of instead of killing off the skexies or driving the
skexies away, you realize that the the mystics and the
skexies should be melded together into one uh ideal being. Yeah, yes, somewhat. Yeah. Um.

(29:19):
It's regarded as having a healing, beneficial practice, and it
implies an open attitude toward what is normally perceived as
negative and antagonistic to understand its real nature. So let's
um place this within the context of the movie The Exorcist,
so everybody understands the most. So in this case, the
priests would come in to Reagan's bedroom and she'd be

(29:40):
flowing around vomiting and stuff, and they would accept that
malevolent entity within her and try to beneficially integrate it
either into her or into themselves. Now, it seems like
it's more often from what I was reading, that the
the practitioner of addersism absorbs the spirit into themselves integrates

(30:01):
it into themselves, than the other way around, although there
was some contrary stuff going on in the In the literature,
Hoist himself describes addicism as accommodating these spirits and establishing
them within a medium, which is usually like a shaman
inform um. Now you're wondering, who's this the Hoish guy?
Why should I care? You know what he says? Well,

(30:24):
he was a Belgian polymath who focused on anthropology and
filmmaking who's pretty well known within France's academic system. He
was a passionate proponent of Claude leve Strauss's structuralism, and
he applied that in his study of cultures in Central Africa,
of which he was an expert on their religions, myths
and art. So while he was studying these like he

(30:47):
went in person to these uh adicism or adder cystic rituals.
Uh he would he basically, you know, I saw them
as a version of the possession trance that we were
talking about earlier, and he argued that it was a
psycho physiological state that involved a transformation of the state
of consciousness. Now within this, this is where he brings

(31:09):
in shamanism, which I know is is something that you're
very interested in and has been discussed on the show before. Um.
He tied that together with possession and dreams and sleepwalking
and modern hypnosis. And he also drew parallels between altered
states that are brought on by techno music, at least
that's what he referred to it at the time, uh,
and trances which maybe they didn't have the term trance

(31:33):
music that uh. In fact, he saw dance and music
as being a universal artistic manifestation that often accompanied states
of trance linked to possession or shamanism. Uh. And he
also notes, don't forget that shamanism, especially self induced shamanistic trances,
usually involved some kind of hallucinogenic substance. So that that

(31:57):
that just landed on two of your age your interests, right,
shamanism and dance music. Yeah, and uh yeah, yeah, they're
a number of things lining up for me here. Yeah,
because all of these things have have have proven transformative
powers when it comes to you know, to consciousness and
uh and perceptions of reality. So addercism is basically what

(32:21):
he calls deliberate possession. The idea is that the shaman's
goal is to retrieve the abducted soul from quote, the
sickness from the gods, and they basically root out the
undesirable element that resides in the person's body. Now, in
an exorcism of shaman would drive out that undesirable spirit,

(32:41):
but in addercism, they enter a trance themselves to extra
pay the spirit from their patient and incorporated into themselves
to then be expelled afterward. Now note for a second here,
exorcism and addercism are not practiced simultaneously, at least according
to the Hoist, and they're totally separate, distinct rituals. A

(33:03):
shaman controls and confronts these spirits while the possessed is
subjected to them. Okay, so it's it's basically ghostbusting. I'm
taking the ghost from you and I'm putting in in
my Yeah, I've got my trap yeah yeah uh. And
the ghost trap, I'm the physical ghost trap yeah uh.

(33:26):
And so again, like he connects it to shamanism. Uh,
and he sees that the shaman this is what allows
them to acquire spirit allies. It's basically the same premise
that we you know, we we sort of understand as
shamanistic practice around the world. The Hoist distinguished shamanism in
possession is being totally separate things. Now, this was followed

(33:46):
up on in two in an article in the Journal
of Anthropology, basically saying that in cultures with male dominated religions,
women are subject to illness that is attributed to spirit possession,
and that to treat this, the process of addersism is
often used, and that this is a form of quote

(34:07):
domesticating the spirit. It's argued that these afflictions in their
treatment served then as an instrument that retains male power. So,
for instance, by applying addersism to Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist
possession settings, the authors of this paper essentially said that
the distinction between it and exorcism isn't isn't necessarily as

(34:28):
contradictory as it would first appear. That they're both tools
of basically ensuring male dominance. And I thought that was
interesting and it was written I believe after Detische died.
Now I want to bring in one other theory here
that is that complicates things. We talked about possession, and
we talked about addersism, and we're also, you know, circling

(34:50):
around exorcism. But one thing that I hadn't heard of
and doesn't really make its way into the exorcist lore.
Actually until the TV show recently they did did bring
this into the TV show You've got a longer show run.
You got a new ideas, right, is the idea of
demon integration. Uh. According to the Catholic belief system, there

(35:10):
are different stages of attachment during demon possession. There's oppression, obsession, possession,
and finally integration. And the last stage occurs when the
person who is you know, being subjected to this chooses
to accept the demon. And I thought this was particularly
interesting because we use the same term integration when we're

(35:33):
referring to one of the treatments for dissociative identity disorder,
a disorder that is often used synonymously along with possession.
It's interesting because this this list that you you mentioned
here possession, oppression, obsession, possession, and integration. Depending on what
your individual demon might be, I could see this is

(35:53):
a very positive journey to go on. You know, it's like, oh,
this this thing that I am, it's uh oh, it's
it's it's oppressing me all right now, and I'm just
really into it is all that's going on, and then
it's it's it's taking over me a little bit, and
then oh, it's just a part of who I am exactly. Yeah,
So it's really interesting that these terms overlap. Now, I

(36:15):
couldn't find a lot of like hard, you know, pure
viewed research on demon integration. A lot of what I
found were like Catholic websites, uh, interviews with a supposed exorcists,
things like that when you get into the very like
the fringy kind of uh yeah. Basically, from what I
could tell is like the idea here, at least in

(36:37):
the Catholic belief system, is that integration is a bad thing, right, Like,
if a demon integrates with your human personality, uh, your
soul is dead. And and in the TV show they
basically say something to that effect. They're like, oh, like,
if this goes too far, they're going to integrate and
then she's lost forever something to that effect, right, Um,

(36:58):
But we see it very differently in a mental health situation. Yeah,
very very differently. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break
and we come back. We will dive into a disassociative
identity disorder. All right, we're back, So okay. There are

(37:19):
obvious parallels between what we have been calling possession so
far with what is now referred to as dissociative identity disorder.
But let's give a little bit of a primer for
everybody on what we mean by that when we're talking
about it. In psychological terms, it's characterized as an involuntary

(37:40):
escape from reality with a disconnection of thoughts, identity, consciousness,
and memory. And it's estimated that two percent of people
experience a dissociative disorder of some type, not dissociative identity disorder,
that's a subcategory. The symptoms usually develop in response to

(38:01):
a traumatic event in order to help the person keep
their memories of that event under control, and treatment involves
a combination of psychotherapy and medication. Now, symptoms of this
can include memory loss, out of body experiences, depression, anxiety,
and a lack of self identity. Sounds like possession, right,

(38:22):
A lot of the similar symptoms uh or at least
two possession trance as it's referred to now the d
s M identifies that there's three types of dissociative disorders.
There's dissociative amnesia, and that's where your main symptom is
that you you don't remember important information about yourself. There's
depersonalization disorder, which involves ongoing feelings of detachment, as if

(38:45):
you're kind of like watching your life play out as
a movie. And then there's dissociative identity disorder, and that's
when we're going to focus on here. It was known
as multiple personality disorder until we don't use that term
any more, at least in we at least in the
psychological discipline. They don't use that term, and it's characterized

(39:06):
by the patient alternating between identities. These identities can alternately
take control of the individual individual, so they experienced memory law,
so there might be some of that amnesia part. So
it's important to note that this isn't a proliferation of
separate identities the way we now define it as identity fragmentation,
which is I think why they changed the terminology. It's

(39:29):
a pretty controversial diagnosis to um, Yeah, this is kind
of the realm of superstar psychology and TV movies. Yeah, totally.
I mean, like, isn't there some movie coming out soon
with um, the guy who plays Professor X in those
X Men movies, not Patrick Stewart, the younger one, James McAvoy,
where he's got like a dissociated identity disorder and like

(39:50):
captures a bunch of teenage girls. Have you seen the trailer.
It's some like horror movie that's coming up. So yeah,
it's very much like popular in pop psych, especially as
applied to like storytelling. All right, but it's it's more
that actual instead of like, oh, I'm a pirate, I'm
a and this and that and the other. It's these
are different fragments of who you are already. So in

(40:14):
some of those interpretations you can see where they might
line up with with this idea that you're becoming separate people,
but we're all this kind of assembly of separate people. Yeah, exactly. Uh.
And here's the thing. Brain imaging has corroborated identity transition
in some patients, so there is some empirical evidence that
it's it's it's real. Today, we understand it as a

(40:37):
failure to integrate the various aspects of our identity, our memory,
and our consciousness into a singular self. Personality states within
this now they're referred to as altars, and they have
characteristics that distinctly contrast the individual's primary identity. Now, how
does this all relate to demon possession? Okay? In nine one,

(41:03):
a guy named MG. Kenny. I think this is the
first person who published a paper linking the two things together.
And Kenny described multiple personality because that's what was described
at the time as being surrounded by a halo of
the occult. He reviews in this paper the intellectual history
of the relationship between dissociative identity disorder and possession, and

(41:27):
then he outlines all their relationships and basically a conclusion
is that the connections between these two things became suspect
as the belief in possession declined. So it was it
was like the um the actual like psychological disorder, was
sort of tainted by possessions sort of occult background. So

(41:49):
basically we got a better script to describe what was happening,
and then we got an even even better scripts and
so that for a while led to to a decline
an interest in multiple personalities and the frequency of their
reported cases. But the D S M. Five does state
the following about dissociative identity disorder, and quoting this here,

(42:12):
it says, in settings where normative possession is common, the
fragmented identities may take the form of possessing spirits, deities, demons, animals,
or mythical figures. So there's a pretty direct connection there
in the Manual of Psychiatric Disorders that connects demon possession

(42:35):
to this particular disorder. Now, in a study conducted for
the Journal of Psychology and Theology, researchers found that dissocio
identity disorder lined up with cases of possession that they
looked at as well. And they looked at forty seven
incidents of exorcism that were conducted on fifteen different patients,
and they found five types of exorcism that used eight

(42:58):
methodological factors within their context. And these included the patient's
permission that the exorcism was non coercive, active participation by
the patient, and understanding of dissociative identity disorder dynamics by
the exorcist, implementation of the exorcism within the context of

(43:20):
psycho psychotherapy, the compatibility of the procedure with the patient's
spiritual beliefs, incorporation of the patient's belief system and encouraging
the patient's independence regarding exorcism. So you can see here
like where this is going there in that paper, they're
sort of making the argument that the exorcist should be

(43:42):
aware of the psychological theories surrounding dissociative identity disorder, and
these other papers we talked about earlier, they're basically saying, well,
the mental health professionals should be aware of the ritualistic
practices of exorcism. So they're they're sort of trying to
get these parties to meet the middle for the benefit
of their patients. Now, another study that I looked at

(44:05):
in the two thousand one Journal of Psychology and Theology
that examined incorporating the patient's view of the perceived demons
into their therapy, so by empowering their spirituality and going
along with the exorcism. There's case studies that have shown
both positive and negative results. So the idea is used
non coercive methods within the patient's own worldview, while still

(44:29):
understanding that there's psychological dynamics probably associated with the associative
identity disorder going on. Now, whether or not you're talking
about a demon or you're talking about an alter personality.
Leave that to the patient is essentially the argument of
this pagent. Okay, so don't don't engage and encourage it
beyond what is useful to communicating with the patient about

(44:52):
their problems. Yeah, exactly. Now this leads us to integration.
So remember you know, before the break we refer that
integration in the Catholic Faith is very different from integration
that's seen as a potential treatment for dissociative identity disorder. Well,
what does that mean? Exactly? This is again something that
I had difficulty locating like a really solid definition of It.

(45:16):
Seems like something that the discipline is in the process of, um,
I guess negotiating and trying to decide about whether or
not like it has official designation. But there's an article
that I found, uh for something called the Sidron Institute,
which is a nonprofit that says its mission is to
help people recover from trauma and dissociative disorders. And it

(45:39):
was written by a woman named Rachel Downing. Uh. She
writes the following about integration as it relates to dissociative
identity disorder. It's worth noting too she is both a
trained therapist and a fully integrated former dissociative identity disorder patients,
So she's speaking from experience as well as expertise. The

(45:59):
way she about it as an integration, it's not really
understood as a treatment, and it's it's controversial both with
therapists and patients alike. Some patients expressed fear of integration, uh,
and they see it as being a disrespectful of the
role that their alter personalities have played in their own survival. So,
for instance, like whatever traumatic event may be caused the

(46:23):
dissociative disorder in the first place, that personality helped you cope. Right, Yeah, Like,
I guess the like simplistic example that comes to mind,
and a lot of this would be like, all right,
this individual has they they've splintered, and so like there's
normal them and sexy them. Instead of like their sexy

(46:43):
self being a part of who they are, it has
become separated and is its own thing for whatever reason. Sure, yeah, yeah, um,
but it could be a survival tactic as well, Like
I had to separate the sexy side of me in
order to you know, deal with societal norms or you know,
deal with some sort of trauma. Yeah, or you know,
some people would say, depending on the cultures, Oh that's

(47:05):
sexy side of me, that's a demon. I'm possessed by
that demon and it's making me do those things. Yeah. Um.
So therapists are encouraged to not actually discuss integration as
a possibility until later stages of therapy with the dissociative
identity disorder patients. According to Downing, some consider it to

(47:27):
be a personal choice. So it hasn't really been ironed
out as like this is the way to go. It's
not like you there's one path for that kind of
therapy and it always results in integration. But the way
she defines it is essentially a means of acceptance and
ownership for the thoughts, feelings, and memories that are labeled

(47:47):
as personalities belonging to quote me, Uh, you give up
the split that says that something is not me, and
you accept all those dissociated aspects of oneself. So it's
this is a process that occurs in therapy over a
long period of time. It's not like a singular event
like I don't know, like I'm thinking of like one

(48:07):
of those movies, like wasn't Sybil that movie from like
the eighties, the TV movie about multi personality disorder. So yeah,
I don't like but I don't remember that movie very well,
but I imagine that it had some ending where it
was just like there's some event and she's just like,
I'm whole again, I'm integrated, you know, And that's not
how it works. So it's important to distinguish that integration

(48:32):
from the integration that's associated with possession in the sense of,
you know, the demon fully taken control of your body.
So this now leads to a question here. So we've
talked about exorcism, possession, addercism, and all the mental health
stuff surrounding these practices. Now I'm really curious, is are

(48:55):
any of these like a form of integration in the
sense of integrating dissociated identity disorders. So like addersism, for instance,
when I first heard about it, it struck me like, well, okay,
this is seen as like a more beneficial, positive kind
of therapeutic method, right, um, but it's not really integration

(49:16):
per se, and that like the persona, the demon is
still being pulled out of the person and but it's
being placed into the shaman, right, and then the shaman
I guess expels it later. But are there models of
that where the shaman brings the two together. Yeah, I'm
not sure. I'm not sure, and I'm I'm really curious, Like,

(49:36):
I couldn't find any literature on the idea of that
in um any religious culture like that. Integration is a
good thing. Well, I guess it boils down to the
fact that so many of these, like even the multiple personalities,
to certain extent it it makes an other out of
an aspect of yourself. And in order for integration to

(49:57):
make sense, you have to realize there is no other.
These are all aspects of myself. And uh, if you're
already playing with the language of the demonic and the spiritual,
it might not be at all, um something you would want. Now,
certainly there are cases where, you know, plenty of traditional
beliefs where one intentionally, usually temporarily, like fuses would say

(50:20):
an animal spirit right right, Well, and that's shamanistic, right,
the idea that like they're calling the spirit to them
as an ally accusing with them that way. Yeah, maybe
that's integrative. Is that the right way to describe it? Uh?
Maybe that's integration, Uh, in the sense that they're doing
it purposefully. But I wonder, like I wonder if there's

(50:43):
a cultural example of somebody who's considered to be possessed
and they sort of like shamanistic lee take control of
that spirit incorporated into themselves and it's seen as an
ally though, it's seen as a good thing, in the
same way that the integral Sian and dissociated identity disorder
is seen as you know, claiming your yourself as as

(51:06):
having you know, multiple facets sort of digest your demons. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm curious about that, you know. To uh, to draw
a line in the sand here on the healium powers
of exorcism rituals, I'd like to point out a two
thousand fourteen paper published in the Journal of Religion and
Health by Turkish researcher M. Kamal Irmack, titled Schizophrenia or Possession. Uh.

(51:35):
Some of you may be familiar with this already, because
it caused quite a stir when it came out, at
a fair amount of controversy. He sent this to me
this morning, and my jaw drop, Yeah, because you read it,
you and you're like, wait, he's not actually saying the
saying what I just thought he said. I mean, no,
he actually is. He. Here's a quick quote from it.
He says, we thought that many so called hallucinations and

(51:57):
schizophrenia are really illusions related to a real environmental stimulus.
Illusions are transformations of perceptions, with a mixing of the
reproduced perceptions of the subject's fantasy with real perceptions. One
approach to this hallucination problem is to consider the possibility
of a demonic world. So yes, he goes on to
argue too, say, what of auditory hallucinations, which are a

(52:20):
you know, a common symptom of a number of different,
uh psychological conditions, including schizophrenia, what these are really demons?
So this may sound weird coming from us because we
just spent two episodes talking about John D in his
communications with angels and demons. Keep in mind, John D
was like four years ago, and at that time, you know,

(52:42):
magical ideas like that were inherently connected to math and science.
To see something like this published today in like a
pure viewed journal really kind of shocked me because I
can see the author having this belief and write the
paper and maybe even doing it in such a way

(53:03):
that is um disciplined, right, But I would have a
really hard time understanding the thought process behind the board
at the journal itself that's publishing it, other than I
guess like this will get us attention. Yeah, I mean
it certainly got some attention, and a lot of people
were up in arms over a that he would write
this and be that the journal would publish. And how however,

(53:26):
putting that aside, and of course casting aside any scientific
consideration that there are demons, let's do it. Putting all
that aside, it is interesting that the nature of schizophrenic voices,
these auditory hallucinations, that that we hears voices, They differ
from culture to culture, with an overall trend in non

(53:46):
Western societies for the voices to take a less negative
or even positive uh spirit uh. This relationship was actually
brought to light by Stanford University anthropologist Tanya Lureman in
a paper polished in January two thousand, fifteen edition of
British Journal of Psychiatry. And the idea here is that,
especially in America, we approach the mind, is this this

(54:09):
fortress of private thoughts? Perhaps that the last fortress for
any kind of privacy, and that the schizophrenic brain is
just a cracked vessel and all our secrets will spill out.
As such, we have a tendency to focus on the
strangest and in some cases the most harmful voices in
the mind. Uh when you know schizophrenia is in play. However,

(54:31):
Indians and Africans in this study, specifically in individuals in
India and individuals in Ghana, we're influenced by ideas of
relationships over individuality and the possibility of benign and positive
communications with spirits. So she looked at in this paper,
she looked at twenty patients in Ghana, India, and in
the US. Granted, not a huge sample size, but you know,

(54:54):
a starting point and I think it's still serves as
a pretty good illustration. So in the U, s patients
fourteen of the twenty heard voices that told them to
hurt other people or themselves, Five described hearing voices of
conflict or battle, and none reported positive experiences. So all
of these schizophrenic auditorius hallucination voices, they were all negative.

(55:18):
In India, thirteen of the twenty patients heard voices of
kin family members offering guidance, scolding, or telling them to
do certain household chores. These voices voices were regarded as
good and even if they were demanding or even frightening,
and only four out of the twenty heard harmful voices.
And in Ghana, sixteen patients reported hearing God or another deity,

(55:42):
Ten described voices and entirely or mostly positive, and others
heard bad voices but insisted that the good voices, usually gods,
were more powerful. Only two people in that group said
that the voices told them to kill or fight or
enact violence. So this can really show you that, like,
even though the idea of like a possession trance is

(56:03):
universal across human experience, that depending on the culture, what
they're what they're going to take away from that is
very different, right, um. And it seems to indicate that
our culture is inherently uh negative and violent, at least
in the sense of like what we're repressing, or at

(56:25):
least that the identities that are fracturing, right, I mean,
because even if you're in in the U. S. Patient,
even if you're completely putting aside any you know, visions
of the exorcist or what have you, you still have
you you're can have that very clinical, maybe even media
driven idea of what schizophrenia is, like what the what
the the experience of the voices is like, and it's

(56:45):
gonna always take that that negative approach, or at least
that that's what the the results seem to indicate here
and yet in in India and God, i'd love to
see further research on this, like just do like a
cross cultural examination around the world, but it seems like
an Indian and Ghana they're very different and sometimes beneficial
maybe yeah, or at least it's like, uh, in the

(57:07):
paper she talks about in India, for example, you have
there's a there's often this case where they'll be the
individual that's suffering from voices and they're kind of regarded
as all right, they're they're a little weird or they
have you know, they they hear voices, but they're okay.
You know, it's not a call of the authority situation
in many cases. Uh. And it's it's important to note

(57:29):
that these unreal voices, that that that the the schizophrenic
individual hears like they can even drown out real world voices.
Studies have shown, and one of the accepted strategies has
always been for the patient to learn to cope with
and ignore the voices. In some cases with the aid
of of medication. But but generally you often hear this,
this idea that you do not speak back to the

(57:52):
voices in your head. So that's the opposite of integration.
It's basically like an avoidance tactic and conflict resolution, Like
instead of grading that into your personality and accepting it
and communicating with it, you just pretend it's not there,
or a or varying levels of straight up exorcism. It's
like I'm either going to drive the voice away with
medication and or the demon will leave if I just

(58:14):
stopped paying attention to right. But there's another approach out
there that takes uh it really reminds me of integration
a lot more. And that's an example we see with
the Hearing Voices Network. This is an international community of
voice here is founded in by Dutch social psychiatrist Maurice Rome,
and in his model, voices are not signs of illness

(58:37):
but bears of clues about traumatic histories. So these are
metaphorical emotional storage uh um nodes in our minds that
need to be worked out essentially integrated. Yeah, it's like
just just in like the last like I don't know
how long we've been recording forty minutes or an hour
or whatever we've struck upon like at least, like I

(59:00):
don't know, six or seven different cultural approaches to this
idea of possession. Uh, whether it's an approach that says
these are demons or these are ghosts, or these are
mental health issues. And it really seems like, you know,
again bringing it back to what we were saying at
the beginning, like the people that believe, regardless of whether

(59:23):
or not it's real, they're in pain, like they're they're
experiencing suffering, and in order to help them, uh with that,
you really have to approach it from multiple angles, Like
you have to be both uh willing to embrace the
sort of scientific side of this is what we know

(59:43):
about these psychological disorders and how to treat them, alongside
this is what we know about the patient's cultural beliefs,
the context surrounding them, and how that may help them
as well. Yeah, it really makes the prospect of ghost
busting all the more problematic because they imagine, like, based

(01:00:04):
on what we've been talking about here, can you imagine
an actual ghostbuster walking to in a house and having
to deal with the very you know, eon esque descriptions
of what what level spirit this is and how we're
going to remove it using this nuclear device versus, Oh,
that's the spirit of my grandma. That's she's here because
I disappointed her. Yeah, you can't just strap on the

(01:00:24):
proton pack with this like you need to. It's really
like like it seems like you need two people on
hand for this, like whatever the belief system's version of
an exorcist is or shaman or whatever, right, and then
like a clinically trained psychiatrist, and those people need to
be working together collaboratively. Oh man, this is the next

(01:00:45):
big buddy supernatural TV show. A ghostbuster and an exorcist.
Whoa buddy Cops? I think, get AMC on the phone.
We've got a pitch. This will go alongside our historical
series about John d and Edward Kelly green light it. So,
in the tradition that we've been trying to keep up
in the last couple of weeks, we'd like to throw
out a quick shout out to a nonprofit that's related

(01:01:08):
to the topic we're talking about. Maybe this is a
topic that resonated with you, or maybe you know somebody
that could use some help. So we wanted to let
you know about this group called an Infinite Mind. It's
a five oh one c three nonprofit and they're dedicated
to improving the lives of survivors with trauma that's based
on dissociation, with a primary focus on dissociative identity disorder. So,

(01:01:31):
if you heard some of the things we're talking about today, uh,
and you said, hey, you know that that sounds like
somebody I know, Uh, maybe this is a group that
you could turn to and they could help them out. Cool.
All right, Well, in the time being, if you want
to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's where you'll find all of the episodes catalog for

(01:01:53):
your your use. You'll also find blog posts, you'll find videos,
and you'll find links out to various social media account Yeah,
and on those social media accounts, we would love it
if you would tell us what you think about this
whole proposal that we've put in front of you today.
Possession mental health. Are they one and the same? Should

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we bring them together collaboratively for the healing process? Or
are they totally different things? And are we missing the
point entirely here? Let us know on those platforms, or
you can just write us at blow the Mind at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and

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thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.

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This is tab