Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and i'm Christian Sager. Tell
Speaker 1: me something, Christian, what's your relationship with the Actorcism? Wellism
Speaker 1: in general? It's funny you should ask. I think I've
Speaker 1: told the story on this podcast before. But I when
Speaker 1: I was twelve going into thirteen years old, went to
Speaker 1: a Baptist private school in Florida, and they very much
Speaker 1: taught us as students there that demon possession was real, uh,
Speaker 1: and to constantly be on guard from demon possession. And
Speaker 1: they would um tell us stories of people that they
Speaker 1: had performed exorcisms on and really kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: literally put the fear of God into us. And I
Speaker 1: had experience where my family went on vacation that same
Speaker 1: year that I was attending that school. We went skiing
Speaker 1: and I wasn't wearing um, what do you call him,
Speaker 1: snow goggles when I was skiing and it was a
Speaker 1: really sunny day and the sun was bouncing off of
Speaker 1: the white snow, and I didn't realize that I was
Speaker 1: a little kid, and I got snow blindness. That night.
Speaker 1: I went blind in the middle of the night, I
Speaker 1: woke up and I was blind and I couldn't see anything,
Speaker 1: and because I had been at the school, I was
Speaker 1: utterly convinced that I was possessed by a demon and
Speaker 1: that I couldn't see anything because the demon was in
Speaker 1: control of my body and the demon was seeing out
Speaker 1: through me. It really, Uh, I freaked me out. I
Speaker 1: was pretty traumatized by the whole thing. I was young. Um,
Speaker 1: And therefore the movie The Exorcist was something I avoided
Speaker 1: until I was third Yeah, I pretty much. I always
Speaker 1: knew it was out there, as as you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a horror fan. Uh, and I just always avoided The Exorcist.
Speaker 1: I was like, I know, I like scary movies, but
Speaker 1: I just don't know if I can handle that one.
Speaker 1: And I finally worked up the courage to watch it
Speaker 1: and I and I loved it. And it's I really
Speaker 1: found that there's something there in terms of my storytelling
Speaker 1: that I wanted to use that moment from when I
Speaker 1: was twelve years old and was so terrified of demon
Speaker 1: possession that I wanted to incorporate into some of my stories.
Speaker 1: How about you, because I know you've told this, Uh,
Speaker 1: previous episode about exorcism for stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: I listened to it. But then you've told me this
Speaker 1: story as well yourself. You actually saw an exorcism, Well
Speaker 1: it was. It was a sort of exorcism. Uh, what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here is a back room exorcism at
Speaker 1: a late nineties first Baptist church coffee house, youth group
Speaker 1: coffee house in Fayeville, Tennessee. So to ground it properly
Speaker 1: in the sort of the culture there, uh, spiritual warfares
Speaker 1: they called. It was kind of a big deal in
Speaker 1: those days, and maybe it still is in many circles.
Speaker 1: And this was the notion that demons and angels are
Speaker 1: actively waged in an invisible war for individual souls. So
Speaker 1: it's the screwtape letters by way of Frank Peretti's This
Speaker 1: Present Darkness, which was like a Christian young adult book
Speaker 1: about this kind of spiritual warfare. You know, angels trying
Speaker 1: to get you to do one thing, demons trying to
Speaker 1: do the other, and then like having a big duke
Speaker 1: out fight. Uh, and all of this too by way
Speaker 1: of youthful enthusiasm to change the world and interact with
Speaker 1: a hidden magic of the world. So long story short,
Speaker 1: there's a guy at this coffee house. He wasn't feeling
Speaker 1: so hot, so a soft exorcism, I guess you might
Speaker 1: call it was performed to free him of the demon.
Speaker 1: So there were no weird voices, there's no acting out,
Speaker 1: nobody was tied down or anything. It was just some prayer. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to knock it too much because
Speaker 1: looking back on it, you had a case where two
Speaker 1: people reached out to a third person and at least
Speaker 1: temporarily soothed mental anguish via this mild religious practice, this
Speaker 1: mild religious experience. But of course it all depends on
Speaker 1: what was actually going on with that young man in
Speaker 1: the back of the coffee house. What was he you know,
Speaker 1: what was he actually experiencing or wrestling with and did
Speaker 1: this actually help or discover it up or or give him, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a problematic narrative to wrestle with, because ultimately,
Speaker 1: like that's what your story is about. Something traumatic occurred
Speaker 1: and you had no frame of reference for what could
Speaker 1: be occurring except for this supernatural narrative. Yeah. Absolutely, it
Speaker 1: was like it was the prime narrative that I was
Speaker 1: hearing at the time, And so of course I turned
Speaker 1: right to that. Um. Yeah, I think that, like you know,
Speaker 1: we should point out to at the top of this episode,
Speaker 1: we tried to do this and any topic we're covering,
Speaker 1: whether it's um, you know, ghost marriages or talking about
Speaker 1: combat stimulation drugs in the military. You know, it may
Speaker 1: not be something that is like in Robert in my
Speaker 1: particular lifestyle and again frame of reference. Um, but we're
Speaker 1: we're trying to look at this, you know, positively and
Speaker 1: open minded. So in the sense of exorcism and demon possession. Now,
Speaker 1: as an adult, I don't personally believe in it, but
Speaker 1: I believe that those people believe. Uh, and that makes
Speaker 1: it just as real, right, And Uh, in the situation
Speaker 1: that you're describing, that person was maybe depressed and maybe
Speaker 1: he was getting the only help that was available to
Speaker 1: him in his community, right, and maybe it was a
Speaker 1: you know, we look at that and we might go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's weird or that was a little backward, but but
Speaker 1: you know what, like maybe that helped make that guy
Speaker 1: feel better just for one day. Yeah, And I'm guilty
Speaker 1: of having pulled that story out before to sort of
Speaker 1: be like, oh, wasn't this weird been you know, looking
Speaker 1: back on it, I have to also, you know, realize
Speaker 1: the things about it that we're not weird of all
Speaker 1: weird at all given the context. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: going to be especially important in today's episode because we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about demon possession and exorcism. We're also
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about another less known practice called addersism.
Speaker 1: But it's all going to be in frame of reference
Speaker 1: of mental health care and psychology psychological practice today. And
Speaker 1: one of the major theories that we're going to cover
Speaker 1: is that in order to be effective as a mental
Speaker 1: health professional in situations like this, you have to be
Speaker 1: open and understanding of the cultural beliefs of demon possession
Speaker 1: if you're going to help the person, even if you
Speaker 1: just think, well, they're they're actually schizophrenic or they actually
Speaker 1: have uh an identity disorder. Um. So you know, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll condense us back down and return to that later.
Speaker 1: But there's another reason why we wanted to do this
Speaker 1: episode this week. We've been talking about doing this for
Speaker 1: a while now. We chose to do it this week
Speaker 1: because it's the forty third anniversary of the movie The Exorcist.
Speaker 1: So that's why Robert asked, what was my experience, what
Speaker 1: was what's your experience with that movie? I think I
Speaker 1: saw it for the first time when I was in college,
Speaker 1: like watched it by myself on a DVD or maybe
Speaker 1: even VHS I can't remember, and and being you know,
Speaker 1: profoundly creeped out, not but so not so much by
Speaker 1: the big moments of you know, in your face demonic possession,
Speaker 1: but the smaller moments, uh some of what some of
Speaker 1: which I strongly remember, like being like a bazoo zoo
Speaker 1: statue that the child Reagan has made in the background. Uh,
Speaker 1: stuff like that I found far more compelling, and also
Speaker 1: think the character uh Arc is pretty good in that too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think that movie is celebrated enough. I mean
Speaker 1: it is celebrated a lot, and especially in the horror community,
Speaker 1: but not enough for the excellent way it builds dread.
Speaker 1: It's not for me, I agree with you. It's not
Speaker 1: the like uh special effects makeup and the head spinning
Speaker 1: around and vomit flying around the room. It's like it
Speaker 1: builds dreads so carefully over the course of the movie
Speaker 1: that by the time you get to that stuff, it's effective.
Speaker 1: And it's crazy to look back and realize Yeah, this
Speaker 1: film came out December ninety three. This was a holiday
Speaker 1: release and what a Christmas movie? Yeah, I mean, take
Speaker 1: your grandmother to that over the holiday, I know, I
Speaker 1: mean it was it was still the holidays. It was
Speaker 1: granted it was the nixt in years. Uh, And that
Speaker 1: was That's interesting because I started thinking about that. It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, maybe there's something about it being the knicks
Speaker 1: in years. This came out, And when did Bladdie's book
Speaker 1: come out? It was a couple of years before that, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe so. I don't remember the date off hand.
Speaker 1: But for the audience, the movie is based off of
Speaker 1: supposed nonfiction book by William Peter Blattie, right, or it's
Speaker 1: sort of how how how authentic is does he recognize it?
Speaker 1: That I have not. I've read some Bladdy, but I've
Speaker 1: never read The Exorcist, so you can't really really speak
Speaker 1: to it all that. I think that he was a believer.
Speaker 1: And my understanding is that the book was somewhat fictionalized
Speaker 1: in the movie was even more fictionalized. Well, the movie
Speaker 1: is interesting when you start piecing it apart. I actually
Speaker 1: ran across a really cool article in History Today about
Speaker 1: the Exorcist. Here's a quote from it. Indeed, Father Marin's
Speaker 1: warning to be aware of the demon's voice as it
Speaker 1: mixes lives with truth is exactly the sort of thing
Speaker 1: President Nixon had begun to say about the American media
Speaker 1: as it probed the breaking story of Watergate. This is
Speaker 1: very interesting, especially because of the episode on heroism that
Speaker 1: we are also doing this we talked about in Nixon
Speaker 1: and Captain America at the time. Wow, yeah, man, that
Speaker 1: that it's interesting. You know, I wasn't alive then, but
Speaker 1: that that presidency really seems to have permeated out into
Speaker 1: the popular culture hive mind. This particular iCal also touched
Speaker 1: on the conflict between science and the forces of darkness,
Speaker 1: which of course is a theme in the movie. But
Speaker 1: there's just one scene and I completely forgot about this,
Speaker 1: but Reagan the child predicts the death of a U
Speaker 1: S astronaut at a part and uh, and yeah, I've
Speaker 1: completely forgotten about that. But this is another area where
Speaker 1: modern science is up against dartness. You know, it's dealing
Speaker 1: with modern science is inability to treat something that is
Speaker 1: ultimately a spiritual malady. Uh. It's a fun read. It's
Speaker 1: by an author by the name of Nick Cole, and
Speaker 1: it was published back in the year two thousand. So
Speaker 1: the Exorcist is everywhere. I mean, we we returned back
Speaker 1: to that, and I think still today most people's unless
Speaker 1: they have participated in an exorcism, their understanding of exorcism
Speaker 1: is probably the one from that movie. Right. It's very
Speaker 1: catholic and ritualistic nature. Uh and uh, it adheres to
Speaker 1: that kind of you know model. Um. And It's what's
Speaker 1: interesting is we're coming back around on it again. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of demon possessions stuff in popular culture. Again,
Speaker 1: there's an Exorcist TV show right now. In fact, I
Speaker 1: believe the week that this episode is publishing, the TV
Speaker 1: show will have just ended. Uh. And I've been watching
Speaker 1: it and it's it's kind of okay. I was surprised.
Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be awful, but I, uh,
Speaker 1: it really surprised me. Yeah. Um, it's nowhere near scary,
Speaker 1: isn't is the movie. But it's got some interesting stuff
Speaker 1: going on in it. So we're revisiting exorcism. And when
Speaker 1: I say we're revisiting it, it's because Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind has previously covered exorcism and cognitive disorder in
Speaker 1: an episode with you and in former host Julie Douglas
Speaker 1: and I went back and listened to that episode in
Speaker 1: preparation for this one. Uh, and it's it's great. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a So if you if you haven't heard
Speaker 1: that episode, maybe go back and listen to that really
Speaker 1: lays the groundwork for um, what we mean by exorcism
Speaker 1: and its connection to mental health. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: don't stop listening now this We're pretty self contained in
Speaker 1: this episode. No spoilers for that episode. Isn't so much
Speaker 1: a part one part two. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: dig this episode, you may go back and check that
Speaker 1: one out. Will include a link to it on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode is stuffitable mind dot com.
Speaker 1: So what do we mean then, what's the definition of possession? Well,
Speaker 1: when we hear that term, what we're commonly referring to,
Speaker 1: and keep in mind, possession and exorcism are culturally almost universal.
Speaker 1: They they occur all over the world. Yeah, no matter
Speaker 1: how how much your mind is informed of that idea
Speaker 1: of like the Catholic priest at the bed of the
Speaker 1: possessed individual, it goes beyond that. It refers to a
Speaker 1: hold exerted over a human being by some external force
Speaker 1: that's more powerful than they are. So depending on the culture,
Speaker 1: we're talking about demons, maybe ghosts, animistic spirits, gods, or
Speaker 1: even alien entities. I just watched a kind of like
Speaker 1: crappy but good horror movie from two thousand nine called
Speaker 1: The Unborn. Did you ever see that one? No? Is
Speaker 1: this the one that oh the the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: the Blade movies. Yeah, it's David Goya. Yeah, he wrote
Speaker 1: it and directed it. Yeah. Uh, and it the premises,
Speaker 1: it's like, this was around that period of time where
Speaker 1: Hollywood was like, oh, we gotta do exorcism movies, but
Speaker 1: not Catholic ones. So there was a divit in it.
Speaker 1: The um the Jewish tradition of possession, and the idea
Speaker 1: was there was a divick that was like harassing this
Speaker 1: young girl. Anyways, it's not that great of a movie,
Speaker 1: but it goes to show you there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different things. It's not just demons. Sometimes that's your ancestors
Speaker 1: maybe or sometimes, uh, the the idea of aliens figures
Speaker 1: into it. It's but the the same central premise is
Speaker 1: common almost across all human cultures. It's often accompanied by
Speaker 1: something that's referred to in psychology as a possession trance. Now,
Speaker 1: recent studies on this phenomenon have located it within a
Speaker 1: wider social and historical context, So they're basically trying to
Speaker 1: describe it as a way that identity, maybe gender, and
Speaker 1: our bodies are negotiated within our cultures. And these practices
Speaker 1: are found in Asia, Africa, America, Latin America, Europe, and Oceania. Now,
Speaker 1: exorcism has a different definition. This is the spiritual practice
Speaker 1: has a very long history and it's common in many cultures.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it's aim is to purposefully expel these
Speaker 1: demons or evil spirits from the person or place that
Speaker 1: they've invaded. And and as I said, we all often
Speaker 1: think of the Roman Catholic one. I wonder pre exorcist
Speaker 1: if people thought about Catholicism in relation to this. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it didn't occur to me to
Speaker 1: just now. But you have a very basic biological parallel
Speaker 1: to this, the idea of eating something bad and then
Speaker 1: vomiting it up, you know, or you know, or you're
Speaker 1: digesting something bad and it has to be you know,
Speaker 1: expelled out the other end. But that's basically the premise
Speaker 1: something bad has got in you and we gotta get
Speaker 1: it out of you, all right. So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna grow with some familiar notes here on this one,
Speaker 1: because I kind of come back to cultural scripts a
Speaker 1: lot when we're talking about supernatural. But I think it
Speaker 1: is important to just drive home again in exorcisms and
Speaker 1: the paranormal experience of possession adhere to specific cultural scripts.
Speaker 1: So the scripts vary. You've got the alien gray script,
Speaker 1: you got the little people, the forest, the ghosts, the devils,
Speaker 1: and there you may be different versions of these wherever
Speaker 1: you go, but they provide a ready made, culturally accepted,
Speaker 1: really semi accepted set of explanations and qualifying information to
Speaker 1: explain what and why this is occurring, as well as
Speaker 1: a means of potentially addressing it. So something weird happens,
Speaker 1: I want answers. Here is already made answer and perhaps
Speaker 1: some hope, very similar to your experience with the snow blindness. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And this reminds me like, um, there's like two different
Speaker 1: kinds of horror right now. There's like the weird, right
Speaker 1: which is like there there's your left with no answers,
Speaker 1: and it's utterly a bizarre experience and you don't really
Speaker 1: have any rule book, right, And then even that's kind
Speaker 1: of an answer. It's like saying you don't know, but
Speaker 1: we can't know. Yeah, exactly, that's true. It's very then, uh,
Speaker 1: and then there's like the very like rule oriented horror,
Speaker 1: like a silver bullet will kill a warewolf, wooden stake
Speaker 1: will kill a vampire. And here's how to expel a
Speaker 1: demon who's possessing somebody's body. We need to get ahold
Speaker 1: of this specific ritual. And it's like it's like a
Speaker 1: D and D like manual or something like that at
Speaker 1: the end of day exactly. And if you're trying to
Speaker 1: to make sense of it all, this is where confirmation
Speaker 1: bias comes into picture, into the picture. If you've you've
Speaker 1: dragged in this cultural script and Uh. To sum it
Speaker 1: all up, I'd like to read just a quick excellent
Speaker 1: summation of confirmation bias from The Drunkard's Walk, How Randomness
Speaker 1: Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlada Now who also did
Speaker 1: some screen writing. He wrote some episodes of I Think
Speaker 1: Star Trek, Next Generations and mcgeiver but the old old mcgriya.
Speaker 1: But he said, quote, when we are in the grasp
Speaker 1: of an illusion, or for that matter, whenever we have
Speaker 1: a new idea, instead of searching for ways to prove
Speaker 1: our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct.
Speaker 1: Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it presents a
Speaker 1: major impediment to our ability to break free from the
Speaker 1: misinterpretation of randomness. To make matters worse, not only do
Speaker 1: we preferentially seek evidence to confirm our preconceived notions, but
Speaker 1: we also interpret ambiguous evidence in favor of our ideas.
Speaker 1: And this can be a big problem because data are
Speaker 1: often ambiguous, and by ignoring some patterns and emphasizing others
Speaker 1: are clever brains can reinforce their beliefs even in the
Speaker 1: absence of convincing data. So you know, you have you know,
Speaker 1: you have this checklist for exorcism, you have the script
Speaker 1: for exorcism, you have your your own experience, and you
Speaker 1: end up cherry picking where they want to line up
Speaker 1: and then just to ensure that this is the path,
Speaker 1: this is the answer, this is how I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: out of this. Yeah, And when you think about it
Speaker 1: in that regard to it's even more human right of
Speaker 1: an experience it's easier to understand why someone frames the
Speaker 1: experience as a possession, right, um, because that's easier to
Speaker 1: understand than what may actually be going on mentally, right,
Speaker 1: But of course it's I think it's also important to
Speaker 1: to point out that a cultural script is only going
Speaker 1: to be useful, even cherry picking how it matches up.
Speaker 1: It's only gonna be useful if it fits the underlying,
Speaker 1: you know, reality of the individual. It doesn't matter how
Speaker 1: bizarre or mundane the glove is, right, the glove still
Speaker 1: has to fit a hand. There's still a hand underneath it.
Speaker 1: So that's something to keep in mind as we move
Speaker 1: forward and we start talking about the psychological, uh side
Speaker 1: of what is occurring. Well, let's get into that. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of literature that exam ends possession and
Speaker 1: exorcism as a phenomenon, especially alongside modern mental health practices,
Speaker 1: like so much that Robert and I could not possibly
Speaker 1: have read at all for this episode, but we did
Speaker 1: our best. An excellent source for reviewing it, though, that
Speaker 1: I found is by j. Body, and it comes from
Speaker 1: an article he wrote in nine called Spirit Possession Revisited.
Speaker 1: This was published in the Annual Review of anthropology. This
Speaker 1: is over twenty years old though, so you know, I
Speaker 1: have to admit like I couldn't really find a more
Speaker 1: current literature review, although I did find a conference paper
Speaker 1: that was published this year by a guy named Joel
Speaker 1: Sanford Uh and his paper was called Facing Our Demons
Speaker 1: Psychiatric Perspectives on Exorcism Rituals Runner up because it was
Speaker 1: a conference paper, um, and he did a really good
Speaker 1: literature review in there as well. So both of those
Speaker 1: informed what we're gonna bring to you today. But the
Speaker 1: argument is basically vary from possession leading to a form
Speaker 1: of group therapy, so seeing exorcism the act of an
Speaker 1: exorcism as being grouped therapy on behalf of the individual
Speaker 1: or something like the state itself of being in the
Speaker 1: possession trance as being induced by individual stress. But attention
Speaker 1: in the literature itself mainly goes to local contexts, the
Speaker 1: cultures that are there, and the power of the human imagination.
Speaker 1: Getting back to this what we're speaking of earlier about
Speaker 1: cultural scripts, researchers have found that possession seems to be
Speaker 1: connected to the human endeavor of figuring out ourselves and
Speaker 1: our identity is basically who am I? While simultaneously challenging
Speaker 1: forms of power in various cultures and in location. Uh so. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, the episode that you and Julie did on this,
Speaker 1: the major kind of touch tone example that you were
Speaker 1: using was what if somebody is in a culture where
Speaker 1: it's not acceptable to be homosexual, they have homosexual urges,
Speaker 1: and they have this cognitive dison its between what they're
Speaker 1: feeling and what they have learned and believe is morally wrong. Right,
Speaker 1: and so that creates this dissonance that can sometimes lead
Speaker 1: to something like the possession trance. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: basically the cognitive dissonance. Take on it is, Okay, look
Speaker 1: at exorcism. It's an outside force is making me do,
Speaker 1: say or think something that I believe to be wrong.
Speaker 1: And if you remove the supernatural element there, then you
Speaker 1: have a scenario that looks this way, I did said
Speaker 1: or thought something that I believe to be wrong. And
Speaker 1: with this without you know, without any kind of supernatural
Speaker 1: player in it. But and in this you know, you
Speaker 1: have to somehow find it a way out of it, right, right.
Speaker 1: So this led to a point where in nineteen two
Speaker 1: there was even a proposal to include quote trance and
Speaker 1: possession disorder in the official listing of the American Psychological
Speaker 1: Association's d s M four. Uh So, the d s
Speaker 1: M we talked about all the time on this show.
Speaker 1: It's basically like the hand end book of of of
Speaker 1: mental disorders. I believe we're on the fifth one right now.
Speaker 1: Uh And this proposal was put forth by a somebody
Speaker 1: named Etzel Cardana, but it wasn't approved. The whole thing
Speaker 1: was controversial because of dissocio identity disorder, schizophrenia, and other
Speaker 1: diagnoses which in and of themselves have controversy that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about later. But trance and possession disorder would have
Speaker 1: identified the psychosis as a diag It would give it
Speaker 1: a diagnosis basically that could cross culturally incorporate clear perspectives
Speaker 1: to allow us to understand human consciousness and identity. So
Speaker 1: it was essentially embracing this idea that the possession trance
Speaker 1: was universal across cultures. Now, specific example that I found
Speaker 1: of psychology trying to understand possession as mental illness within
Speaker 1: the context of the actual patients beliefs is in Jay
Speaker 1: Mercer's study in Mental Health, Religion and Culture, and in
Speaker 1: there he seeks to provide counselors and clinicians with an
Speaker 1: understanding of specifically Pentecostal exorcism, so that those people can
Speaker 1: help assist with conventional mental health treatments. So this is
Speaker 1: what he he uncovered. Uh, The argument in the paper
Speaker 1: is essentially that mainstream mental health professionals should have sufficient
Speaker 1: understanding of in this case, Pentecostal deliverance principles. Deliverance is
Speaker 1: what they refer to as their exorcism ritual. Uh, in
Speaker 1: order to be effective. Well, the idea, this is the language,
Speaker 1: this is this is the this is the the way
Speaker 1: they're understanding what's wrong with them. So you need to
Speaker 1: be able to speak with them about it on their
Speaker 1: terms exactly. Yeah. Now, the Pentecostal view itself is that
Speaker 1: mental illness, including autism, bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, etcetera, all
Speaker 1: have their direct causes in the presence of demons within
Speaker 1: a victim's body. Now, Dean in this belief system can
Speaker 1: be drawn by a person's intentional participation in sinful actions
Speaker 1: for example, or the sins of related people around them,
Speaker 1: or even accidental events. So for instance, Uh, one of
Speaker 1: the things I mentioned here is that in that in
Speaker 1: that faith. Adopted children are considered more likely to be
Speaker 1: afflicted by demons, as are those who consider abortion as
Speaker 1: an option. Illnesses of those of close people or pets
Speaker 1: even can invite demonic entry through grief, so like if
Speaker 1: you grieve too much, like makes you vulnerable to demon possession.
Speaker 1: And obviously, as you know, you and I are familiar
Speaker 1: with from our upbringings, any association with the occult is
Speaker 1: also thought to attract demons. And finally, a curse can
Speaker 1: bring demonic forces upon a person or family. So I
Speaker 1: just said all those things, and some of you listening
Speaker 1: might have been like, oh, that's all ridiculous, right, Well,
Speaker 1: whether it is or isn't, if your mental health professional
Speaker 1: is trying to help somebody dealing with this specific uh
Speaker 1: disorder here in within this faith, you still need to
Speaker 1: understand that those are the things they believe, right right? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, like everything you described here, especially with the
Speaker 1: you know, the role of sinful acts, all of this,
Speaker 1: it just seems so steeped and cognitive dissonance, And in
Speaker 1: order to reach them you kind of have to They've
Speaker 1: built a barrier out of the cognitive distance that you
Speaker 1: have to be able to break through. Um. Back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, social psychologist Leon Festinger who coined the term,
Speaker 1: He argued that there are three ways to deal with
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance, all right, And I think the easy way
Speaker 1: to think of this is, oh I have You could say, oh,
Speaker 1: I have homosexual feelings. But but I but I'm a
Speaker 1: member of a faith that that says that that is sinful. Right,
Speaker 1: So one thing you can do is a person may
Speaker 1: change one or more of their behaviors or beliefs. So
Speaker 1: you can either change what you believe to where it
Speaker 1: lines up with how you are, or you change how
Speaker 1: you are to line up with your belief Sometimes that's
Speaker 1: an option, sometimes it's not. Number two, This an idea
Speaker 1: here is that a person might try to acquire new
Speaker 1: information or beliefs to increase the agreement between the two,
Speaker 1: which will lessen the overall dissonance. So this might be
Speaker 1: all right, I'm maybe I'm not gonna go from Pentecostal
Speaker 1: to atheists, but maybe I'll find another like branch of
Speaker 1: Christianity easier transition. It's somewhere where I I can fit
Speaker 1: in his met and still hold these values. And then
Speaker 1: number three, a person may try to forget or play
Speaker 1: down the importance of the cognition that's butting up against
Speaker 1: the contradictory cognition. So if you can't change the way
Speaker 1: that you think or behavior, you're unable or unwilling to
Speaker 1: change the thing that you believe. The only solution is
Speaker 1: to go with two or three. And number two is
Speaker 1: is where we see the possible demonic possession, because you
Speaker 1: might not change from Pentecostal to U you know, you know,
Speaker 1: United Church of Christ or something. You might just say
Speaker 1: it's the demon You might choose that mode. Well, so
Speaker 1: in the Pentecostal faith, the results of demonic possession and
Speaker 1: again this is I don't I don't have personal experience
Speaker 1: with Pentecostal faith. This is from the paper. The results
Speaker 1: are linked to an extensive list of physical and mental ills.
Speaker 1: So these are essentially symptoms infertility, obesity, asthma, seizure disorders
Speaker 1: a d h D, schizophrenia, alcoholism and drug use, UH
Speaker 1: and disobedience or nightmares and children are attributed to demonic activity.
Speaker 1: That makes me think of sleep paralysis and night terrors,
Speaker 1: which we've discussed before. Um. But Mercer in this paper
Speaker 1: goes on to describe deliverance the entire ritual. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go through it here. Definitely check out the
Speaker 1: paper if you're interested. Um, but it's worth for him.
Speaker 1: The idea is, basically, this is a manual I'm giving
Speaker 1: you mental health professionals so that you can be involved
Speaker 1: in this process. Like if you have a patient that
Speaker 1: comes to you and says, I need help, but I
Speaker 1: do believe this and this is my faith system, then
Speaker 1: the mental health counselor can turn to Mercer's paper, read
Speaker 1: through it, and have a better understanding of what they're
Speaker 1: getting into and how to basically communicate with their patient.
Speaker 1: So why don't we take a quick break, and when
Speaker 1: we get back, let's talk about a term that maybe
Speaker 1: you haven't heard before that's in relation to demon possession,
Speaker 1: sort of the opposite of exorcism, and it's called addersism.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So the classic idea is someone
Speaker 1: comes to the exorcist and says, hey, I got this demon.
Speaker 1: Him and his demons making me do things that I
Speaker 1: don't want to do, make me think things I don't
Speaker 1: want to think. Can you rip that sucker out of me?
Speaker 1: And we can go our separate ways. What happens when
Speaker 1: you go to the the adder system instead of the exercist. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that it's This is a practice that
Speaker 1: was observed by a guy named Luke de Hoysch, and
Speaker 1: he's the one who really coined the term adder sism.
Speaker 1: He saw it as the opposite of exorcism, where the
Speaker 1: practices are aimed at integrating the spiritual into t into
Speaker 1: a person or place instead of expelling it. So this
Speaker 1: is it's kind of like the Dark Crystal scenario. Instead
Speaker 1: of instead of killing off the skexies or driving the
Speaker 1: skexies away, you realize that the the mystics and the
Speaker 1: skexies should be melded together into one uh ideal being. Yeah, yes, somewhat. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: It's regarded as having a healing, beneficial practice, and it
Speaker 1: implies an open attitude toward what is normally perceived as
Speaker 1: negative and antagonistic to understand its real nature. So let's
Speaker 1: um place this within the context of the movie The Exorcist,
Speaker 1: so everybody understands the most. So in this case, the
Speaker 1: priests would come in to Reagan's bedroom and she'd be
Speaker 1: flowing around vomiting and stuff, and they would accept that
Speaker 1: malevolent entity within her and try to beneficially integrate it
Speaker 1: either into her or into themselves. Now, it seems like
Speaker 1: it's more often from what I was reading, that the
Speaker 1: the practitioner of addersism absorbs the spirit into themselves integrates
Speaker 1: it into themselves, than the other way around, although there
Speaker 1: was some contrary stuff going on in the In the literature,
Speaker 1: Hoist himself describes addicism as accommodating these spirits and establishing
Speaker 1: them within a medium, which is usually like a shaman
Speaker 1: inform um. Now you're wondering, who's this the Hoish guy?
Speaker 1: Why should I care? You know what he says? Well,
Speaker 1: he was a Belgian polymath who focused on anthropology and
Speaker 1: filmmaking who's pretty well known within France's academic system. He
Speaker 1: was a passionate proponent of Claude leve Strauss's structuralism, and
Speaker 1: he applied that in his study of cultures in Central Africa,
Speaker 1: of which he was an expert on their religions, myths
Speaker 1: and art. So while he was studying these like he
Speaker 1: went in person to these uh adicism or adder cystic rituals.
Speaker 1: Uh he would he basically, you know, I saw them
Speaker 1: as a version of the possession trance that we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, and he argued that it was a
Speaker 1: psycho physiological state that involved a transformation of the state
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Now within this, this is where he brings
Speaker 1: in shamanism, which I know is is something that you're
Speaker 1: very interested in and has been discussed on the show before. Um.
Speaker 1: He tied that together with possession and dreams and sleepwalking
Speaker 1: and modern hypnosis. And he also drew parallels between altered
Speaker 1: states that are brought on by techno music, at least
Speaker 1: that's what he referred to it at the time, uh,
Speaker 1: and trances which maybe they didn't have the term trance
Speaker 1: music that uh. In fact, he saw dance and music
Speaker 1: as being a universal artistic manifestation that often accompanied states
Speaker 1: of trance linked to possession or shamanism. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: also notes, don't forget that shamanism, especially self induced shamanistic trances,
Speaker 1: usually involved some kind of hallucinogenic substance. So that that
Speaker 1: that just landed on two of your age your interests, right,
Speaker 1: shamanism and dance music. Yeah, and uh yeah, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: a number of things lining up for me here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because all of these things have have have proven transformative
Speaker 1: powers when it comes to you know, to consciousness and
Speaker 1: uh and perceptions of reality. So addercism is basically what
Speaker 1: he calls deliberate possession. The idea is that the shaman's
Speaker 1: goal is to retrieve the abducted soul from quote, the
Speaker 1: sickness from the gods, and they basically root out the
Speaker 1: undesirable element that resides in the person's body. Now, in
Speaker 1: an exorcism of shaman would drive out that undesirable spirit,
Speaker 1: but in addercism, they enter a trance themselves to extra
Speaker 1: pay the spirit from their patient and incorporated into themselves
Speaker 1: to then be expelled afterward. Now note for a second here,
Speaker 1: exorcism and addercism are not practiced simultaneously, at least according
Speaker 1: to the Hoist, and they're totally separate, distinct rituals. A
Speaker 1: shaman controls and confronts these spirits while the possessed is
Speaker 1: subjected to them. Okay, so it's it's basically ghostbusting. I'm
Speaker 1: taking the ghost from you and I'm putting in in
Speaker 1: my Yeah, I've got my trap yeah yeah uh. And
Speaker 1: the ghost trap, I'm the physical ghost trap yeah uh.
Speaker 1: And so again, like he connects it to shamanism. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he sees that the shaman this is what allows
Speaker 1: them to acquire spirit allies. It's basically the same premise
Speaker 1: that we you know, we we sort of understand as
Speaker 1: shamanistic practice around the world. The Hoist distinguished shamanism in
Speaker 1: possession is being totally separate things. Now, this was followed
Speaker 1: up on in two in an article in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Anthropology, basically saying that in cultures with male dominated religions,
Speaker 1: women are subject to illness that is attributed to spirit possession,
Speaker 1: and that to treat this, the process of addersism is
Speaker 1: often used, and that this is a form of quote
Speaker 1: domesticating the spirit. It's argued that these afflictions in their
Speaker 1: treatment served then as an instrument that retains male power. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, by applying addersism to Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist
Speaker 1: possession settings, the authors of this paper essentially said that
Speaker 1: the distinction between it and exorcism isn't isn't necessarily as
Speaker 1: contradictory as it would first appear. That they're both tools
Speaker 1: of basically ensuring male dominance. And I thought that was
Speaker 1: interesting and it was written I believe after Detische died.
Speaker 1: Now I want to bring in one other theory here
Speaker 1: that is that complicates things. We talked about possession, and
Speaker 1: we talked about addersism, and we're also, you know, circling
Speaker 1: around exorcism. But one thing that I hadn't heard of
Speaker 1: and doesn't really make its way into the exorcist lore.
Speaker 1: Actually until the TV show recently they did did bring
Speaker 1: this into the TV show You've got a longer show run.
Speaker 1: You got a new ideas, right, is the idea of
Speaker 1: demon integration. Uh. According to the Catholic belief system, there
Speaker 1: are different stages of attachment during demon possession. There's oppression, obsession, possession,
Speaker 1: and finally integration. And the last stage occurs when the
Speaker 1: person who is you know, being subjected to this chooses
Speaker 1: to accept the demon. And I thought this was particularly
Speaker 1: interesting because we use the same term integration when we're
Speaker 1: referring to one of the treatments for dissociative identity disorder,
Speaker 1: a disorder that is often used synonymously along with possession.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because this this list that you you mentioned
Speaker 1: here possession, oppression, obsession, possession, and integration. Depending on what
Speaker 1: your individual demon might be, I could see this is
Speaker 1: a very positive journey to go on. You know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this this thing that I am, it's uh oh, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's oppressing me all right now, and I'm just
Speaker 1: really into it is all that's going on, and then
Speaker 1: it's it's it's taking over me a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then oh, it's just a part of who I am exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's really interesting that these terms overlap. Now, I
Speaker 1: couldn't find a lot of like hard, you know, pure
Speaker 1: viewed research on demon integration. A lot of what I
Speaker 1: found were like Catholic websites, uh, interviews with a supposed exorcists,
Speaker 1: things like that when you get into the very like
Speaker 1: the fringy kind of uh yeah. Basically, from what I
Speaker 1: could tell is like the idea here, at least in
Speaker 1: the Catholic belief system, is that integration is a bad thing, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if a demon integrates with your human personality, uh, your
Speaker 1: soul is dead. And and in the TV show they
Speaker 1: basically say something to that effect. They're like, oh, like,
Speaker 1: if this goes too far, they're going to integrate and
Speaker 1: then she's lost forever something to that effect, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But we see it very differently in a mental health situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very very differently. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and we come back. We will dive into a disassociative
Speaker 1: identity disorder. All right, we're back, So okay. There are
Speaker 1: obvious parallels between what we have been calling possession so
Speaker 1: far with what is now referred to as dissociative identity disorder.
Speaker 1: But let's give a little bit of a primer for
Speaker 1: everybody on what we mean by that when we're talking
Speaker 1: about it. In psychological terms, it's characterized as an involuntary
Speaker 1: escape from reality with a disconnection of thoughts, identity, consciousness,
Speaker 1: and memory. And it's estimated that two percent of people
Speaker 1: experience a dissociative disorder of some type, not dissociative identity disorder,
Speaker 1: that's a subcategory. The symptoms usually develop in response to
Speaker 1: a traumatic event in order to help the person keep
Speaker 1: their memories of that event under control, and treatment involves
Speaker 1: a combination of psychotherapy and medication. Now, symptoms of this
Speaker 1: can include memory loss, out of body experiences, depression, anxiety,
Speaker 1: and a lack of self identity. Sounds like possession, right,
Speaker 1: A lot of the similar symptoms uh or at least
Speaker 1: two possession trance as it's referred to now the d
Speaker 1: s M identifies that there's three types of dissociative disorders.
Speaker 1: There's dissociative amnesia, and that's where your main symptom is
Speaker 1: that you you don't remember important information about yourself. There's
Speaker 1: depersonalization disorder, which involves ongoing feelings of detachment, as if
Speaker 1: you're kind of like watching your life play out as
Speaker 1: a movie. And then there's dissociative identity disorder, and that's
Speaker 1: when we're going to focus on here. It was known
Speaker 1: as multiple personality disorder until we don't use that term
Speaker 1: any more, at least in we at least in the
Speaker 1: psychological discipline. They don't use that term, and it's characterized
Speaker 1: by the patient alternating between identities. These identities can alternately
Speaker 1: take control of the individual individual, so they experienced memory law,
Speaker 1: so there might be some of that amnesia part. So
Speaker 1: it's important to note that this isn't a proliferation of
Speaker 1: separate identities the way we now define it as identity fragmentation,
Speaker 1: which is I think why they changed the terminology. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty controversial diagnosis to um, Yeah, this is kind
Speaker 1: of the realm of superstar psychology and TV movies. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, isn't there some movie coming out soon
Speaker 1: with um, the guy who plays Professor X in those
Speaker 1: X Men movies, not Patrick Stewart, the younger one, James McAvoy,
Speaker 1: where he's got like a dissociated identity disorder and like
Speaker 1: captures a bunch of teenage girls. Have you seen the trailer.
Speaker 1: It's some like horror movie that's coming up. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very much like popular in pop psych, especially as
Speaker 1: applied to like storytelling. All right, but it's it's more
Speaker 1: that actual instead of like, oh, I'm a pirate, I'm
Speaker 1: a and this and that and the other. It's these
Speaker 1: are different fragments of who you are already. So in
Speaker 1: some of those interpretations you can see where they might
Speaker 1: line up with with this idea that you're becoming separate people,
Speaker 1: but we're all this kind of assembly of separate people. Yeah, exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. Brain imaging has corroborated identity transition
Speaker 1: in some patients, so there is some empirical evidence that
Speaker 1: it's it's it's real. Today, we understand it as a
Speaker 1: failure to integrate the various aspects of our identity, our memory,
Speaker 1: and our consciousness into a singular self. Personality states within
Speaker 1: this now they're referred to as altars, and they have
Speaker 1: characteristics that distinctly contrast the individual's primary identity. Now, how
Speaker 1: does this all relate to demon possession? Okay? In nine one,
Speaker 1: a guy named MG. Kenny. I think this is the
Speaker 1: first person who published a paper linking the two things together.
Speaker 1: And Kenny described multiple personality because that's what was described
Speaker 1: at the time as being surrounded by a halo of
Speaker 1: the occult. He reviews in this paper the intellectual history
Speaker 1: of the relationship between dissociative identity disorder and possession, and
Speaker 1: then he outlines all their relationships and basically a conclusion
Speaker 1: is that the connections between these two things became suspect
Speaker 1: as the belief in possession declined. So it was it
Speaker 1: was like the um the actual like psychological disorder, was
Speaker 1: sort of tainted by possessions sort of occult background. So
Speaker 1: basically we got a better script to describe what was happening,
Speaker 1: and then we got an even even better scripts and
Speaker 1: so that for a while led to to a decline
Speaker 1: an interest in multiple personalities and the frequency of their
Speaker 1: reported cases. But the D S M. Five does state
Speaker 1: the following about dissociative identity disorder, and quoting this here,
Speaker 1: it says, in settings where normative possession is common, the
Speaker 1: fragmented identities may take the form of possessing spirits, deities, demons, animals,
Speaker 1: or mythical figures. So there's a pretty direct connection there
Speaker 1: in the Manual of Psychiatric Disorders that connects demon possession
Speaker 1: to this particular disorder. Now, in a study conducted for
Speaker 1: the Journal of Psychology and Theology, researchers found that dissocio
Speaker 1: identity disorder lined up with cases of possession that they
Speaker 1: looked at as well. And they looked at forty seven
Speaker 1: incidents of exorcism that were conducted on fifteen different patients,
Speaker 1: and they found five types of exorcism that used eight
Speaker 1: methodological factors within their context. And these included the patient's
Speaker 1: permission that the exorcism was non coercive, active participation by
Speaker 1: the patient, and understanding of dissociative identity disorder dynamics by
Speaker 1: the exorcist, implementation of the exorcism within the context of
Speaker 1: psycho psychotherapy, the compatibility of the procedure with the patient's
Speaker 1: spiritual beliefs, incorporation of the patient's belief system and encouraging
Speaker 1: the patient's independence regarding exorcism. So you can see here
Speaker 1: like where this is going there in that paper, they're
Speaker 1: sort of making the argument that the exorcist should be
Speaker 1: aware of the psychological theories surrounding dissociative identity disorder, and
Speaker 1: these other papers we talked about earlier, they're basically saying, well,
Speaker 1: the mental health professionals should be aware of the ritualistic
Speaker 1: practices of exorcism. So they're they're sort of trying to
Speaker 1: get these parties to meet the middle for the benefit
Speaker 1: of their patients. Now, another study that I looked at
Speaker 1: in the two thousand one Journal of Psychology and Theology
Speaker 1: that examined incorporating the patient's view of the perceived demons
Speaker 1: into their therapy, so by empowering their spirituality and going
Speaker 1: along with the exorcism. There's case studies that have shown
Speaker 1: both positive and negative results. So the idea is used
Speaker 1: non coercive methods within the patient's own worldview, while still
Speaker 1: understanding that there's psychological dynamics probably associated with the associative
Speaker 1: identity disorder going on. Now, whether or not you're talking
Speaker 1: about a demon or you're talking about an alter personality.
Speaker 1: Leave that to the patient is essentially the argument of
Speaker 1: this pagent. Okay, so don't don't engage and encourage it
Speaker 1: beyond what is useful to communicating with the patient about
Speaker 1: their problems. Yeah, exactly. Now this leads us to integration.
Speaker 1: So remember you know, before the break we refer that
Speaker 1: integration in the Catholic Faith is very different from integration
Speaker 1: that's seen as a potential treatment for dissociative identity disorder. Well,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Exactly? This is again something that
Speaker 1: I had difficulty locating like a really solid definition of It.
Speaker 1: Seems like something that the discipline is in the process of, um,
Speaker 1: I guess negotiating and trying to decide about whether or
Speaker 1: not like it has official designation. But there's an article
Speaker 1: that I found, uh for something called the Sidron Institute,
Speaker 1: which is a nonprofit that says its mission is to
Speaker 1: help people recover from trauma and dissociative disorders. And it
Speaker 1: was written by a woman named Rachel Downing. Uh. She
Speaker 1: writes the following about integration as it relates to dissociative
Speaker 1: identity disorder. It's worth noting too she is both a
Speaker 1: trained therapist and a fully integrated former dissociative identity disorder patients,
Speaker 1: So she's speaking from experience as well as expertise. The
Speaker 1: way she about it as an integration, it's not really
Speaker 1: understood as a treatment, and it's it's controversial both with
Speaker 1: therapists and patients alike. Some patients expressed fear of integration, uh,
Speaker 1: and they see it as being a disrespectful of the
Speaker 1: role that their alter personalities have played in their own survival. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, like whatever traumatic event may be caused the
Speaker 1: dissociative disorder in the first place, that personality helped you cope. Right, Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I guess the like simplistic example that comes to mind,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this would be like, all right,
Speaker 1: this individual has they they've splintered, and so like there's
Speaker 1: normal them and sexy them. Instead of like their sexy
Speaker 1: self being a part of who they are, it has
Speaker 1: become separated and is its own thing for whatever reason. Sure, yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but it could be a survival tactic as well, Like
Speaker 1: I had to separate the sexy side of me in
Speaker 1: order to you know, deal with societal norms or you know,
Speaker 1: deal with some sort of trauma. Yeah, or you know,
Speaker 1: some people would say, depending on the cultures, Oh that's
Speaker 1: sexy side of me, that's a demon. I'm possessed by
Speaker 1: that demon and it's making me do those things. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So therapists are encouraged to not actually discuss integration as
Speaker 1: a possibility until later stages of therapy with the dissociative
Speaker 1: identity disorder patients. According to Downing, some consider it to
Speaker 1: be a personal choice. So it hasn't really been ironed
Speaker 1: out as like this is the way to go. It's
Speaker 1: not like you there's one path for that kind of
Speaker 1: therapy and it always results in integration. But the way
Speaker 1: she defines it is essentially a means of acceptance and
Speaker 1: ownership for the thoughts, feelings, and memories that are labeled
Speaker 1: as personalities belonging to quote me, Uh, you give up
Speaker 1: the split that says that something is not me, and
Speaker 1: you accept all those dissociated aspects of oneself. So it's
Speaker 1: this is a process that occurs in therapy over a
Speaker 1: long period of time. It's not like a singular event
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like I'm thinking of like one
Speaker 1: of those movies, like wasn't Sybil that movie from like
Speaker 1: the eighties, the TV movie about multi personality disorder. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like but I don't remember that movie very well,
Speaker 1: but I imagine that it had some ending where it
Speaker 1: was just like there's some event and she's just like,
Speaker 1: I'm whole again, I'm integrated, you know, And that's not
Speaker 1: how it works. So it's important to distinguish that integration
Speaker 1: from the integration that's associated with possession in the sense of,
Speaker 1: you know, the demon fully taken control of your body.
Speaker 1: So this now leads to a question here. So we've
Speaker 1: talked about exorcism, possession, addercism, and all the mental health
Speaker 1: stuff surrounding these practices. Now I'm really curious, is are
Speaker 1: any of these like a form of integration in the
Speaker 1: sense of integrating dissociated identity disorders. So like addersism, for instance,
Speaker 1: when I first heard about it, it struck me like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: this is seen as like a more beneficial, positive kind
Speaker 1: of therapeutic method, right, um, but it's not really integration
Speaker 1: per se, and that like the persona, the demon is
Speaker 1: still being pulled out of the person and but it's
Speaker 1: being placed into the shaman, right, and then the shaman
Speaker 1: I guess expels it later. But are there models of
Speaker 1: that where the shaman brings the two together. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I'm not sure, and I'm I'm really curious, Like,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any literature on the idea of that
Speaker 1: in um any religious culture like that. Integration is a
Speaker 1: good thing. Well, I guess it boils down to the
Speaker 1: fact that so many of these, like even the multiple personalities,
Speaker 1: to certain extent it it makes an other out of
Speaker 1: an aspect of yourself. And in order for integration to
Speaker 1: make sense, you have to realize there is no other.
Speaker 1: These are all aspects of myself. And uh, if you're
Speaker 1: already playing with the language of the demonic and the spiritual,
Speaker 1: it might not be at all, um something you would want. Now,
Speaker 1: certainly there are cases where, you know, plenty of traditional
Speaker 1: beliefs where one intentionally, usually temporarily, like fuses would say
Speaker 1: an animal spirit right right, Well, and that's shamanistic, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that like they're calling the spirit to them
Speaker 1: as an ally accusing with them that way. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: that's integrative. Is that the right way to describe it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Maybe that's integration, Uh, in the sense that they're doing
Speaker 1: it purposefully. But I wonder, like I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: a cultural example of somebody who's considered to be possessed
Speaker 1: and they sort of like shamanistic lee take control of
Speaker 1: that spirit incorporated into themselves and it's seen as an
Speaker 1: ally though, it's seen as a good thing, in the
Speaker 1: same way that the integral Sian and dissociated identity disorder
Speaker 1: is seen as you know, claiming your yourself as as
Speaker 1: having you know, multiple facets sort of digest your demons. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm curious about that, you know. To uh, to draw
Speaker 1: a line in the sand here on the healium powers
Speaker 1: of exorcism rituals, I'd like to point out a two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen paper published in the Journal of Religion and
Speaker 1: Health by Turkish researcher M. Kamal Irmack, titled Schizophrenia or Possession. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of you may be familiar with this already, because
Speaker 1: it caused quite a stir when it came out, at
Speaker 1: a fair amount of controversy. He sent this to me
Speaker 1: this morning, and my jaw drop, Yeah, because you read it,
Speaker 1: you and you're like, wait, he's not actually saying the
Speaker 1: saying what I just thought he said. I mean, no,
Speaker 1: he actually is. He. Here's a quick quote from it.
Speaker 1: He says, we thought that many so called hallucinations and
Speaker 1: schizophrenia are really illusions related to a real environmental stimulus.
Speaker 1: Illusions are transformations of perceptions, with a mixing of the
Speaker 1: reproduced perceptions of the subject's fantasy with real perceptions. One
Speaker 1: approach to this hallucination problem is to consider the possibility
Speaker 1: of a demonic world. So yes, he goes on to
Speaker 1: argue too, say, what of auditory hallucinations, which are a
Speaker 1: you know, a common symptom of a number of different,
Speaker 1: uh psychological conditions, including schizophrenia, what these are really demons?
Speaker 1: So this may sound weird coming from us because we
Speaker 1: just spent two episodes talking about John D in his
Speaker 1: communications with angels and demons. Keep in mind, John D
Speaker 1: was like four years ago, and at that time, you know,
Speaker 1: magical ideas like that were inherently connected to math and science.
Speaker 1: To see something like this published today in like a
Speaker 1: pure viewed journal really kind of shocked me because I
Speaker 1: can see the author having this belief and write the
Speaker 1: paper and maybe even doing it in such a way
Speaker 1: that is um disciplined, right, But I would have a
Speaker 1: really hard time understanding the thought process behind the board
Speaker 1: at the journal itself that's publishing it, other than I
Speaker 1: guess like this will get us attention. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it certainly got some attention, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: were up in arms over a that he would write
Speaker 1: this and be that the journal would publish. And how however,
Speaker 1: putting that aside, and of course casting aside any scientific
Speaker 1: consideration that there are demons, let's do it. Putting all
Speaker 1: that aside, it is interesting that the nature of schizophrenic voices,
Speaker 1: these auditory hallucinations, that that we hears voices, They differ
Speaker 1: from culture to culture, with an overall trend in non
Speaker 1: Western societies for the voices to take a less negative
Speaker 1: or even positive uh spirit uh. This relationship was actually
Speaker 1: brought to light by Stanford University anthropologist Tanya Lureman in
Speaker 1: a paper polished in January two thousand, fifteen edition of
Speaker 1: British Journal of Psychiatry. And the idea here is that,
Speaker 1: especially in America, we approach the mind, is this this
Speaker 1: fortress of private thoughts? Perhaps that the last fortress for
Speaker 1: any kind of privacy, and that the schizophrenic brain is
Speaker 1: just a cracked vessel and all our secrets will spill out.
Speaker 1: As such, we have a tendency to focus on the
Speaker 1: strangest and in some cases the most harmful voices in
Speaker 1: the mind. Uh when you know schizophrenia is in play. However,
Speaker 1: Indians and Africans in this study, specifically in individuals in
Speaker 1: India and individuals in Ghana, we're influenced by ideas of
Speaker 1: relationships over individuality and the possibility of benign and positive
Speaker 1: communications with spirits. So she looked at in this paper,
Speaker 1: she looked at twenty patients in Ghana, India, and in
Speaker 1: the US. Granted, not a huge sample size, but you know,
Speaker 1: a starting point and I think it's still serves as
Speaker 1: a pretty good illustration. So in the U, s patients
Speaker 1: fourteen of the twenty heard voices that told them to
Speaker 1: hurt other people or themselves, Five described hearing voices of
Speaker 1: conflict or battle, and none reported positive experiences. So all
Speaker 1: of these schizophrenic auditorius hallucination voices, they were all negative.
Speaker 1: In India, thirteen of the twenty patients heard voices of
Speaker 1: kin family members offering guidance, scolding, or telling them to
Speaker 1: do certain household chores. These voices voices were regarded as
Speaker 1: good and even if they were demanding or even frightening,
Speaker 1: and only four out of the twenty heard harmful voices.
Speaker 1: And in Ghana, sixteen patients reported hearing God or another deity,
Speaker 1: Ten described voices and entirely or mostly positive, and others
Speaker 1: heard bad voices but insisted that the good voices, usually gods,
Speaker 1: were more powerful. Only two people in that group said
Speaker 1: that the voices told them to kill or fight or
Speaker 1: enact violence. So this can really show you that, like,
Speaker 1: even though the idea of like a possession trance is
Speaker 1: universal across human experience, that depending on the culture, what
Speaker 1: they're what they're going to take away from that is
Speaker 1: very different, right, um. And it seems to indicate that
Speaker 1: our culture is inherently uh negative and violent, at least
Speaker 1: in the sense of like what we're repressing, or at
Speaker 1: least that the identities that are fracturing, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: because even if you're in in the U. S. Patient,
Speaker 1: even if you're completely putting aside any you know, visions
Speaker 1: of the exorcist or what have you, you still have
Speaker 1: you you're can have that very clinical, maybe even media
Speaker 1: driven idea of what schizophrenia is, like what the what
Speaker 1: the the experience of the voices is like, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna always take that that negative approach, or at least
Speaker 1: that that's what the the results seem to indicate here
Speaker 1: and yet in in India and God, i'd love to
Speaker 1: see further research on this, like just do like a
Speaker 1: cross cultural examination around the world, but it seems like
Speaker 1: an Indian and Ghana they're very different and sometimes beneficial
Speaker 1: maybe yeah, or at least it's like, uh, in the
Speaker 1: paper she talks about in India, for example, you have
Speaker 1: there's a there's often this case where they'll be the
Speaker 1: individual that's suffering from voices and they're kind of regarded
Speaker 1: as all right, they're they're a little weird or they
Speaker 1: have you know, they they hear voices, but they're okay.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not a call of the authority situation
Speaker 1: in many cases. Uh. And it's it's important to note
Speaker 1: that these unreal voices, that that that the the schizophrenic
Speaker 1: individual hears like they can even drown out real world voices.
Speaker 1: Studies have shown, and one of the accepted strategies has
Speaker 1: always been for the patient to learn to cope with
Speaker 1: and ignore the voices. In some cases with the aid
Speaker 1: of of medication. But but generally you often hear this,
Speaker 1: this idea that you do not speak back to the
Speaker 1: voices in your head. So that's the opposite of integration.
Speaker 1: It's basically like an avoidance tactic and conflict resolution, Like
Speaker 1: instead of grading that into your personality and accepting it
Speaker 1: and communicating with it, you just pretend it's not there,
Speaker 1: or a or varying levels of straight up exorcism. It's
Speaker 1: like I'm either going to drive the voice away with
Speaker 1: medication and or the demon will leave if I just
Speaker 1: stopped paying attention to right. But there's another approach out
Speaker 1: there that takes uh it really reminds me of integration
Speaker 1: a lot more. And that's an example we see with
Speaker 1: the Hearing Voices Network. This is an international community of
Speaker 1: voice here is founded in by Dutch social psychiatrist Maurice Rome,
Speaker 1: and in his model, voices are not signs of illness
Speaker 1: but bears of clues about traumatic histories. So these are
Speaker 1: metaphorical emotional storage uh um nodes in our minds that
Speaker 1: need to be worked out essentially integrated. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: just just in like the last like I don't know
Speaker 1: how long we've been recording forty minutes or an hour
Speaker 1: or whatever we've struck upon like at least, like I
Speaker 1: don't know, six or seven different cultural approaches to this
Speaker 1: idea of possession. Uh, whether it's an approach that says
Speaker 1: these are demons or these are ghosts, or these are
Speaker 1: mental health issues. And it really seems like, you know,
Speaker 1: again bringing it back to what we were saying at
Speaker 1: the beginning, like the people that believe, regardless of whether
Speaker 1: or not it's real, they're in pain, like they're they're
Speaker 1: experiencing suffering, and in order to help them, uh with that,
Speaker 1: you really have to approach it from multiple angles, Like
Speaker 1: you have to be both uh willing to embrace the
Speaker 1: sort of scientific side of this is what we know
Speaker 1: about these psychological disorders and how to treat them, alongside
Speaker 1: this is what we know about the patient's cultural beliefs,
Speaker 1: the context surrounding them, and how that may help them
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, it really makes the prospect of ghost
Speaker 1: busting all the more problematic because they imagine, like, based
Speaker 1: on what we've been talking about here, can you imagine
Speaker 1: an actual ghostbuster walking to in a house and having
Speaker 1: to deal with the very you know, eon esque descriptions
Speaker 1: of what what level spirit this is and how we're
Speaker 1: going to remove it using this nuclear device versus, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's the spirit of my grandma. That's she's here because
Speaker 1: I disappointed her. Yeah, you can't just strap on the
Speaker 1: proton pack with this like you need to. It's really
Speaker 1: like like it seems like you need two people on
Speaker 1: hand for this, like whatever the belief system's version of
Speaker 1: an exorcist is or shaman or whatever, right, and then
Speaker 1: like a clinically trained psychiatrist, and those people need to
Speaker 1: be working together collaboratively. Oh man, this is the next
Speaker 1: big buddy supernatural TV show. A ghostbuster and an exorcist.
Speaker 1: Whoa buddy Cops? I think, get AMC on the phone.
Speaker 1: We've got a pitch. This will go alongside our historical
Speaker 1: series about John d and Edward Kelly green light it. So,
Speaker 1: in the tradition that we've been trying to keep up
Speaker 1: in the last couple of weeks, we'd like to throw
Speaker 1: out a quick shout out to a nonprofit that's related
Speaker 1: to the topic we're talking about. Maybe this is a
Speaker 1: topic that resonated with you, or maybe you know somebody
Speaker 1: that could use some help. So we wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know about this group called an Infinite Mind. It's
Speaker 1: a five oh one c three nonprofit and they're dedicated
Speaker 1: to improving the lives of survivors with trauma that's based
Speaker 1: on dissociation, with a primary focus on dissociative identity disorder. So,
Speaker 1: if you heard some of the things we're talking about today, uh,
Speaker 1: and you said, hey, you know that that sounds like
Speaker 1: somebody I know, Uh, maybe this is a group that
Speaker 1: you could turn to and they could help them out. Cool.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, in the time being, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where you'll find all of the episodes catalog for
Speaker 1: your your use. You'll also find blog posts, you'll find videos,
Speaker 1: and you'll find links out to various social media account Yeah,
Speaker 1: and on those social media accounts, we would love it
Speaker 1: if you would tell us what you think about this
Speaker 1: whole proposal that we've put in front of you today.
Speaker 1: Possession mental health. Are they one and the same? Should
Speaker 1: we bring them together collaboratively for the healing process? Or
Speaker 1: are they totally different things? And are we missing the
Speaker 1: point entirely here? Let us know on those platforms, or
Speaker 1: you can just write us at blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
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