Exorcism/Adorcism

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, 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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?

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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, 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,

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 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, 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.

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 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 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, 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?

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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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

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

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 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 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 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 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 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. 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

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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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.

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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. This is tab