We call it a somnambuliform possession.
August 5, 2016 8:21 AM   Subscribe

 
Most of the people I evaluate in this role suffer from the more prosaic problems of a medical disorder. Anyone even faintly familiar with mental illnesses knows that individuals who think they are being attacked by malign spirits are generally experiencing nothing of the sort. Practitioners see psychotic patients all the time who claim to see or hear demons; histrionic or highly suggestible individuals, such as those suffering from dissociative identity syndromes; and patients with personality disorders who are prone to misinterpret destructive feelings, in what exorcists sometimes call a “pseudo-possession,” via the defense mechanism of an externalizing projection. But what am I supposed to make of patients who unexpectedly start speaking perfect Latin?

I dunno. Document it all closely, show it to James Randi, and collect your million dollars? Put some credence in your scientific background, and try to track down some linguistic history of the patient, rather than throwing up your hands and saying "A wizard did it!"? Probably you should NOT publish your conjecture in a book, because then a legion of folks are going to point out that only a really, really horrible psychiatrist would engage with their patients like this.
posted by Mayor West at 8:29 AM on August 5, 2016 [23 favorites]


collect your million dollars

He doesn't do that any more.

only a really, really horrible psychiatrist would engage with their patients like this.

I believe there's been some success managing mental illness as if it was supernatural? Working within the patient's own belief system, in other words. (At work, can't pull up links, hearsay only, happy to be shot down, etc etc).
posted by Leon at 8:34 AM on August 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


Shorter article:

"Sometimes my patients do things that are really strange. Clearly, this is proof of the supernatural. Also demons are really smart and they can't be detected by science."

I just saved everybody ten minutes that I'll never get back.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 8:36 AM on August 5, 2016 [33 favorites]


Fascinating article. He says that he's seen cases where NO OTHER EXPLANATION EXCEPT DEMONS is viable, but that claim is made without qualification and seems to be based on the premise that he has all possible explicatory tools at his disposal, which seems a bit much.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't this generally a constraint of psychoanalysis in the first place? That there are no sharp tools for examination, everything has to be interpreted through the trained psychologist? At least with a bio-disease you can see the problem first hand in a miscroscope. With mental illness it's always a trial of elimination and approximation, no? Have there been any FMRI scans if possessed people?
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:39 AM on August 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


I am actually really angry that The Washington Post apparently thinks that this is something worth printing. If an editor at a major national newspaper sits down and says "You know, we should report both sides of the highly controversial 'Demonic possession/witchcraft issue'", then American Journalism is officially worthless.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 8:41 AM on August 5, 2016 [31 favorites]


I must say I was pretty unimpressed. He says the witch he met knew things about people. Has he never heard of cold reading and seen it done? He says she didn't know Latin but spoke it when possessed. Like really, truly, spoke it fluently as in someone could ask her novel and bizarre questions and she could understand them and respond in fluent Latin? Or did she just rattle off some stock phrases?

Yes, I'm skeptical of claims of the supernatural. That's because so far, to date, every single investigation of supernatural claims has found no evidence of the supernatural and has found an natural explanation for the event. Obviously this doesn't mean there can't be supernatural events, but I know which way I'll bet.

Especially given how much money and belief is invested in supernatural claims, there's a huge motivation for people to fake it, assign supernatural explanations to natural evens, fall into confirmation bias, you name it.
posted by sotonohito at 8:42 AM on August 5, 2016 [13 favorites]


And maybe I've watched too many episodes of Bones but I can't help but wonder if there is some kind of cultural illness or influence at play, which I guess is what Leon was alluding to as well.
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:43 AM on August 5, 2016


Don't sweat it, gang. Illegitimi non carborundum. Il y a le fromage don mons pantalons. Donde estan las albondigas?

Do they have this doctor's contact info in the article? Asking for a friend.
posted by radicalawyer at 8:44 AM on August 5, 2016 [11 favorites]


This segue into culture-bound syndromes reminded me of a good interview I read on Religion Dispatches this week.

The author studies the phenomenon of penis theft, which, guess what, isn't objectively real but is subjectively real to its victims. And then there are the many people who haven't had their penises stolen but believe those who claim to be victims.

Reminded also of "fan death" in South Korea.
posted by radicalawyer at 8:49 AM on August 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


"Sometimes my patients do things that are really strange. Clearly, this is proof of the supernatural. Also demons are really smart and they can't be detected by science."
I just saved everybody ten minutes that I'll never get back.


Whoooo Science Tribe!

Rhetorical foul on the play, though. "My patients do things that are really strange" is a significant warping of the claim "my patients exhibit abilities I don't have any idea how to account for."

Maybe he's been fooled in some way, maybe the latter those abilities could be accounted for in some way unknown to the author (or, for that matter, the readers here). If you're going to play on team rationalist, though, at least try to argue like one.
posted by wildblueyonder at 8:56 AM on August 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


But what am I supposed to make of patients who unexpectedly start speaking perfect Latin?

Well, first I'd try and figure out if it really is 'perfect Latin', find out what they're saying, and then decide if demonic possession is the only answer, versus someone whose Grandma took them to Latin Mass enough times when they were a kid for it to make an impression, or they memorized Lorem Ipsum to win a bar bet a few years ago...

And, really, why would a demon go with "perfect Latin"? That's, like, a generation or two of translations beyond what the original stories were written in. I mean, suspension of disbelief involves still holding whatever's happening to obey its own internal rules; so, in this doctor's opinion, they're all 12th century Catholic demons possessing people? Like, that's the only option? "Weird shit's going down!" has a lot of options for what's actually occurring -- that doctor's percieved reality seems to be perturbed to fit a very specific illusion of what's happening around him, which makes him closer to what his patients are experiencing than an objective viewer.
posted by AzraelBrown at 8:58 AM on August 5, 2016 [11 favorites]


This person should immediately be stripped of all certifications and licenses, and removed from their their position as a professor.

Promoting this kind of superstitious nonsense is revolting. And no, not because "LOL religion", but because so many charlatans and con artists thrive on this crap and use it to prey on the most desperate and vulnerable. There may be value in working within the internal framework of a mentally ill person to help them, but to throw up your hands and declare "demons are real, y'all" without any apparent shred of evidence is irresponsible and dangerous.

Whoooo Science Tribe!

Maybe one of the worst results of the "New Atheist" movement is this (in some ways understandable) kind of backlash against valid skepticism regarding claims of the supernatural and framing them as pettiness or the above-mentioned "LOL religion".
posted by Sangermaine at 8:59 AM on August 5, 2016 [16 favorites]


I mean, one explanation for the perfect Latin is that the person was a really good faker who had rehearsed a lot. I think that's a lot more likely than demonic possession, to be honest.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:06 AM on August 5, 2016 [11 favorites]


While we're at it, let's talk a little bit about why he's so convinced this is demonic possession. Could it be, doctor, that you're just culturally primed to look for specific pieces of the Judeo-Christian mythos, as evinced through popular media of the past 40 years? Because when I see someone acting crazy and speaking perfect Latin, my first instinct is to look for an expert in purging contemporary souls of the pernicious and corrupting influence of Dispater, god of wealth and the underworld. Perhaps, DOCTOR, your patients have simply been digging too deeply into the earth, and have angered his dread spirit. In fact, since you haven't offered a more compelling argument, I'm going to point out that Occam's Razor demands that we treat this explanation as the most probably correct, and it is now incumbent on you to prove that the influence you're witnessing is instead due to Satan. While you're doing that, I'll be over here writing my own book, and finding a bunch of mentally ill people who I can exploitoffer counsel to.
posted by Mayor West at 9:08 AM on August 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


The "placebo effect" is nothing less than the observable and reproducible power of ritual over the human body.

The reason our standard is double-blind trials is because so much as looking at the face, the behavior of someone who knows something you don't lets you intuit things from the subtlest of cues.

These things seem spooky, even magic, but they are not in any way supernatural or proof that empiricism is wrong. Heck, the reason not to call just them magic, is because people then think the powers of suggestion and human intuition are unbound, and charlatans use that to ascribe power to false claims.

It is entirely possibly that, even empirically, addressing a mental issue as a demonic possession is the best model for understanding available and the best cure, but it is in no way proof of the supernatural. But it in no way lends credence to the idea that there is something in the universe, demonic or otherwise, that outright overrules scientific understanding sometimes because it feels like it.
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:14 AM on August 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


Like really, truly, spoke it fluently as in someone could ask her novel and bizarre questions and she could understand them and respond in fluent Latin? Or did she just rattle off some stock phrases?

I've definitely read stories where people came out of comas speaking a language fluently that they only had a sort of basic understanding of. There was an Australian guy that woke up speaking Chinese, and an English guy that woke up speaking French an dhtinking he was Matthew McConaughey. Though they both had at least some familiarity with the languages.
posted by Hoopo at 9:17 AM on August 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Fundamentalist misdiagnoses and absurd or even dangerous “treatments,” such as beating victims, have sometimes occurred, especially in developing countries.

How do you know that beating possessed patients is absurd? Maybe supernatural beings eventually get annoyed by it and leave. If they can make people levitate (as author believes, on hearsay, happens) then they can interact with the physical: maybe they don't like beatings.
posted by thelonius at 9:29 AM on August 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


Dammit, I just wasted 1 of 5 free monthly WaPo articles.
posted by Neekee at 9:32 AM on August 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


Don't worry. I'm sure the other four will be just as credulous and braindead.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 9:45 AM on August 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


"No other explanation" generally indicates a lack of imagination more than anything else.
posted by Flexagon at 10:06 AM on August 5, 2016 [6 favorites]


Maybe one of the worst results of the "New Atheist" movement is this (in some ways understandable) kind of backlash against valid skepticism regarding claims of the supernatural and framing them as pettiness or the above-mentioned "LOL religion".

I framed my comment that way because the one I was responding to is petty. Also because the approach it likely serves the cause of trying to understanding the world pretty much not at all.

Like other commenters, I'm immediately curious about the standards by which someone is judged to speak perfect latin or another foreign language, how this was noted and checked, along with their background and any possibility they might have some exposure that could kick around in a not-conscious part of their brain. Along those lines, it's absolutely worth considering how the author's observations are shaped by his religious background and or even the background of people who he works with in these cases. Or even whether some people involved in this (up to and including the author) are cleverly fabricating some effect or account for some personal purpose.

OTOH, exposure to enough latin to speak it well (even if we choose an aesthetically low-factor multiplication of entities by hypothesizing about some part of the subconscious mind that occupies itself by achieving usually pointless fluency in unused languages) is increasingly rare enough outside of certain narrow contexts, I can see why someone who encountered it might think, "yeah, this is definitely difficult to explain."

Modern rationalist thought has produced some fantastically useful and accurate models of the world. It's rational to have a lot of confidence in the reach and explaining power of those models. It's also rational to know they have limits and there are and will be places where their explaining power breaks down, even if you specifically reject catholic models of interaction between the diabolical and humanity. To the extent that skepticism means exploring the possibility that phenomenon can be explained in terms of known powerful models, that's worthwhile. To the extent that skepticism means assuming phenomenon must fit or be false -- and gives rise to flippantly dismissive rhetoric like I was responding to -- it has more in common with religious fundamentalism and other forms of tribalism than anyone should feel comfortable with.

And while we're talking about things that deserve skepticism, let's consider the remote internet commentator diagnosis of whether a particular professional deserves to hold certifications and licenses.
posted by wildblueyonder at 10:14 AM on August 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


"No other explanation" generally indicates a lack of imagination more than anything else.

The problem with supernatural explanations is, the idea with explanations is to move from the less understood to the better understood. The author is certainly free to entertain speculative or theological ideas as seem reasonable to him, but it seems dishonest to me to use his credentials as a psychologist to give credibility to those metaphysical excursions.
posted by thelonius at 10:54 AM on August 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


What's next, Trepanning as therapy? I'm sympathetic to the idea you have to understand the patient's own narratives to help them untangle the destructive, unhealthy parts of it and that requires sympathetically projecting yourself into the narrative, but you've got to grab a firm hold of Ariadne's thread first before you go venturing into that labyrinth or you're just as likely to get lost in there, too...
posted by saulgoodman at 11:13 AM on August 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


12 years ago, my sister decided that I was a witch and had summoned demons to possess my parents. It was the only thing that would explain why my relationship with them had improved so much when I went to college.

She told my parents that her church did exorcisms, to help them with their condition. When they declined the invitation, she cut us out of her life. (She became Pentecostal in high school at the urging of her best friend)

She still lives in the same city as my parents, not speaking to any of us. Somehow she's found a community that seems to keep her life stable. It's hard to tell when it's just gossip from friends of friends of friends. But I can't imagine it's ideal that her worldview includes a very real break with reality.

I think the harm caused by allowing for the possibility of demon possession is miniscule compared to the opportunity of bringing mental health care to a bunch of religious people who don't want to rule out demon possession. The church can't call in a professional debunker. People wouldn't consent to that care. They will consent to this guy. If he fails some of them, it's failing people who wouldn't get help any other way.
posted by politikitty at 12:06 PM on August 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


Does Randi have a worthy successor? It would be good if we had one.
posted by Baeria at 12:49 PM on August 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


wildblueyonder To the extent that skepticism means assuming phenomenon must fit or be false -- and gives rise to flippantly dismissive rhetoric like I was responding to -- it has more in common with religious fundamentalism and other forms of tribalism than anyone should feel comfortable with.

There I must disagree strongly.

I'd argue that after a given claim has been thoroughly disproven several times then it is perfectly reasonable to work on the operating assumption that future claims of that nature are probably also false.

This doesn't mean entering a denial state where you ignore evidence that contradicts that assumption, but I don't see anything wrong with working on the operating assumption that claims of possession and so forth are false until strong evidence to the contrary is presented.

We have only limited resources available for through investigations of things, squandering those resources on yet another investigation into a field long established to be nonsense seems foolhardy unless the people making the claims have something genuinely new and compelling to present as evidence for their position.

What the author of this article and you are both ignoring is that the claims he makes for evidence of demonic possession are nothing new. All the stuff about mysteriously speaking new languages, having knowledge of people and events they shouldn't know about, sudden mood and behavior shifts, all that has been investigated many times before in the past and in all cases it turned out to be either outright fraud, cold reading, or other perfectly natural explanations.

Right now he's a lot like someone trying to claim that a well known card trick is actual evidence of real magic. We've seen this before, we know how it turns out. People have, in the past, expended the resources necessary to do a through investigation (not just once but dozens of times) and it's always turned out to be a fraud.

Let him show us something new, something that hasn't been investigated and debunked dozens of times before, and then I'll be interested in something other than contemptuous dismissal of his claims of supernatural activity.

politikitty You've had a fairly benign experience with such things, and the cost has been the separation of a family member which isn't exactly light. There are many worse outcomes to unchecked belief in paranormal nonsense. In many places people (almost always women or children) accused of witchcraft are tortured, murdered, or simply abandoned to try to survive without any social support. In some places belief in witchcraft and the need for various magic ingredients to defend against it have resulted in people with something different from the norm being murdered for their "magic" body parts (albinos in some parts of Africa, for example), or the torture and death of animals including endangered species.

I don't think a belief in witchcraft, possession, magic, and so forth can be dismissed as mostly harmless.

Heck, for that matter I remember a news item not too long ago from right here in the USA involving a person who murdered his roommate because he believed his roommate was possessed.

This isn't just a harmless bit of fantasy, it has dangerous real world consequences.
posted by sotonohito at 12:56 PM on August 5, 2016 [12 favorites]


I have a question! I've been reading about alien abductions a lot lately, as it's a topic that I've been interested in/terrified by since I was a child (also, a spate of bad nightmares made me want to read about peoples' experiences). Most alien abduction cases follow a pretty standard protocol across the board, with some cases deviating a little bit. Most abduction scenarios follow the following list, but not all abductions have the same events. They are:

1. Capture
2. Examination
3. Conference
4. Tour
5. Loss of time
6. Return
7. Theophany
8. Aftermath

So basically, most abductions follow this list, but sometimes people don't have the "tour", or the "conference", etc. Since people all over are having these experiences without any contact with one another, especially reports back in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, this is evidence of abductions being a result of either common human psychology (the skeptical viewpoint), or evidence of an objective reality (what alien believers believe).

Do demonic possessions follow something similar? Aren't there reports of demonic possessions from many decades, even centuries, in the past? Alien abductions and poltergeist phenomena have some crossover, as well.
posted by gucci mane at 1:22 PM on August 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


And while we're talking about things that deserve skepticism, let's consider the remote internet commentator diagnosis of whether a particular professional deserves to hold certifications and licenses.

As a remote internet commentator, "Medical professional blamed illness on supernatural entities" is one of those thing I would have previously considered sufficient for being expelled from the medical profession, but your skepticism is making me reconsider my entire life and worldview.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:29 PM on August 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


[Mayor West: Probably you should NOT publish your conjecture in a book, because then a legion of folks are going to point out that only a really, really horrible psychiatrist would engage with their patients like this.]

I see what you did there.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 2:20 PM on August 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


sonohito Right now we have an unchecked belief in the paranormal. We have set up a system that people with those beliefs will not associate with the healthy system that offers other explanations. This guy is a check for 99.9% of cases because he says "I've seen demon possession. And good news, this is just a serious case of actual illness."

I think this is a helpful thing precisely because I realize how lucky I am that my sister has suffered minimal harm. But she's never going to talk to a therapist or psychiatrist, because they would pathologize her belief.

Most mental health care is voluntary. Making it less likely for people to voluntarily get treatment causes harm, even if it's true. You're fueling that unregulated market, not reducing it. When he diagnoses someone with demonic possession, there isn't additional harm. It's harm that would have existed anyway. It's harm that he acknowledges is happening right now, because many religious groups won't consider working with him. So they're doing unregulated exorcisms right now.
posted by politikitty at 2:37 PM on August 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I read this when it came out and I still have a headache from rolling my eyes so hard. This is somewhat disturbing, however:

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners nowadays who are open to entertaining such hypotheses. Many believe exactly what I do, though they may be reluctant to speak out.

There's enough credulousness in alternative "medicine," and we don't need secret believers treating mental disorders.

Also, the Post is running tons of clickbait crap these days, and I'm afraid it'll only get worse under Bezos.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:10 PM on August 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


A possessed individual may suddenly, in a type of trance, voice statements of astonishing venom and contempt for religion, while understanding and speaking various foreign languages previously unknown to them.

There are malevolent, supernaturally powerful noncorporeal entities, and they are committed to the extremely dangerous goal of talking trash about religion, mostly in latin.
posted by anazgnos at 4:57 PM on August 5, 2016 [12 favorites]


Happily their supernatural abilities fail to function in the presence of a video camera.
posted by sebastienbailard at 5:27 PM on August 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


gucci mane Interesting question, and I hadn't been aware that alien abductees routinely followed basically the same script. Knowing that now, I'd be very surprised if possession didn't follow certain culturally localized scripts.

Do you know if people reporting UFO abductions from non-Western nations have a similar script to Western abductees, or do they follow a different script? For that matter, is alien abduction a common thing in other cultures?

For that matter, I wonder what people reported before UFO's became a thing? I know that a lot of mentally ill people who hear voices switched rather suddenly from believing it was their neighbors (often with mind control rays) to believing it was aliens as UFO imagery started entering mass media.

sebastienbailard One of the things that strikes you, when reading reports of paranormal activity prior to the invention of photography, video recording, audio recording, and so on, is how much really obvious supernatural stuff people claimed happened back then vs how subtle everything is now.

There was a report I remember from a haunting somewhere in England back in the 1600's and it reported corporeal ghosts wandering the streets, upending carts and generally causing mayhem, possessed people floating, people's hair spontaneously turning white, graves opening, big huge obvious things of that nature. It was like something out of Ghostbusters, so much so that I bet the script writers were cribbing from some of the old, pre-recording, reports.

In these days of cameras and video people don't feel at liberty to invent that sort of really blatant supernatural stuff anymore. Now people merely feel a chill when a ghost is near, or sometimes small objects aren't quite where they remember putting them, or pareidolia in flames and smoke and so forth.

Same with possession. The possessed used to do all manner of things that blatantly and obviously violated the laws of physics, back when no one could actually photograph it or take video. These days the possessed are limited to saying mean things about religion and speaking a few memorized Latin phrases.
posted by sotonohito at 7:45 PM on August 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh, and of course pareidolia in random noise. Which is the most obvious explanation for electronic voice phenomenon.
posted by sotonohito at 7:48 PM on August 5, 2016


I would not trust somebody this credulous to take my car to the mechanic, let alone deal with a sick child.

She could tell some people their secret weaknesses, such as undue pride.

Have any of you guys ever met somebody who wasn't afflicted with undue pride? Nope, me neither.
posted by ostro at 9:31 PM on August 5, 2016 [6 favorites]


Can't believe a "reputable" newspaper published this
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:34 PM on August 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


For a man who has apparently studied the classics, and considers himself to be a skeptic, Xenophanes would make short work of Dr. Gallagher:
"Men believe that, like themselves, the gods have clothing, language, and a body." ... "The Ethiopians claim that their gods are flat-nosed and black-skinned; the Thracians, that they are blue-eyed and have red hair." ... "If oxen, horses, and lions had hands with which to draw and make works like men, horses would represent the gods in the likeness of a horse, oxen in that of an ox, and each one would make for them a body like the one he himself possessed?"
Most Catholics have the self awareness to consider a Devil who would talk to them in Latin to be made in their own self image, a supposedly divine entity measured by the yardstick of their own religious habits.

The kind of 'witch' who would seek the attention of a Catholic priest could be reasonably assumed to have an interest in learning, or at least googling and practicing, some Latin for use as a fetish in largely the same way many priests use it. ...But why would Satan pick Latin? It is a very important language in Catholicism, what with so much of the accumulated theology of the last two millennia being written in Latin and its historical importance as a lingua franca is a hideously language diverse church, but its certainly not a divine one. Even in Catholic theology God, his messengers, and his enemies are no more or less fluent in Latin than any other language - Latin has a lot of important meaning, but thats not it. So surely The Great Deceiver or one of his minions would be aware of the impact it would have on the poor doctor, and not use it accidentally, but I thought these demons wanted to stay hidden? If he is thinking of Latin fluency as being a slip up, something that reveals the true nature of the event by accident, I think he is right, but not in the way he is thinking.
posted by Blasdelb at 1:09 AM on August 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


For that matter, I wonder what people reported before UFO's became a thing?

Kidnapping people, particularly lonely travellers out in the woods, by paralysing then abducting them, who when returned to the real world experienced a loss of time, committed by small creatures with large eyes who also quite like stealing/swapping babies/impregnating women and stealing livestock...

That all used to be the faeries' job, until the Reticulans muscled in.
posted by reynir at 1:38 AM on August 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


The kind of 'witch' who would seek the attention of a Catholic priest could be reasonably assumed to have an interest in learning, or at least googling and practicing, some Latin for use as a fetish in largely the same way many priests use it.

If someone was googling things in the late 80s, I would certainly believe they were some kind of witch or wizard.
posted by ymgve at 8:15 AM on August 6, 2016


So surely The Great Deceiver or one of his minions would be aware of the impact it would have on the poor doctor, and not use it accidentally, but I thought these demons wanted to stay hidden?

I think it's kinda funny to see people saying: Devils and demons definitely don't exist, that's nonsense. Also I'm pretty confident I know them well enough to predict what they would and wouldn't do.
posted by straight at 9:44 AM on August 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


No, it's non-believers expecting consistency from believers (which, come to think of it, is kinda funny).
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:46 AM on August 6, 2016


I'm a psychiatrist. This degree of credulity is embarrassing. Shades of John Mack, Cornelia Wilbur or even Larry Pazder.
posted by meehawl at 6:49 PM on August 6, 2016 [5 favorites]


I believe there's been some success managing mental illness as if it was supernatural? Working within the patient's own belief system, in other words.

I confess to not having RTFA yet and can't wait to read it, but I was compelled (by Satan???) to comment. My mother led the Association of Christian Therapists and has a book on how to differentiate mental illness from demonic possession. (by Francis McNutt, which is a beautiful name) I am bipolar, and in one of my more manic unhinged phases, she had me believing my rageyness was the spirit of a dead Cherokee relative (family folklore not even sure if it's true) who was wronged and who had allegedly possessed my also bipolar aunt. My aunt had just died and my mom was insinuating that the soul was now possessing me. I was believing and thinking that anyway, so I was already halfway there, so you could say that it was my belief system at that time. However, when not manic, I am a solid atheist, rationalist and would not believe such a thing.

I think that's part of the problem; you can externalize your mental illness because you are out of touch with reality and lack insight. I understand that cultural beliefs come into play and perhaps they can be useful, but I still think it's very dangerous to encourage a lack of insight into one's state of mind. I think it will encourage relapse, and possibly blaming other people for "passing on the demons". When you are ill, you can be highly suggestible, you can believe you are Christ and so on. Personally, I think this is dangerous; then what would we do with people who had Jerusalem syndrome, encourage their belief that their delusions are real because they are overwhelmed by the power of visiting the Holy Land?

I know anthropologists advocate for keeping a culture intact and not imposing western views, but the encouragement of believing in possession is dangerous. It's led to beatings and all kinds of abuse. In my milder case, it just delayed me from realizing I had a manic reaction to an antidepressant and it encouraged me to babble even further and delayed proper treatment.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 10:29 AM on August 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


In my milder case, it just delayed me from realizing I had a manic reaction to an antidepressant and it encouraged me to babble even further and delayed proper treatment.

I think this is a false dichotomy. If you grew up in a healthy environment with healthy parents, you would have been at lower risk for mental health issues. Growing up in an unhealthy environment, you need some opening for mental health care. If your mom believed so strongly in a mental health framework that allowed for possession, you were always going to be diverted completely from an agnostic rational system. The real question is how irrational the care would be.

In high school, I had a friend come out to his parents at 15. His parents quickly shipped him to the very best therapists they could find. They fired the first three, because they tried to argue that it'd be healthiest for them to accept his sexuality. His fourth therapist recognized that continuity of care was more important than proving his parents wrong. He was out in therapy, at High School, and socially. At home, he was a confused kid working hard to fix his sexuality. It wasn't ideal. But it was the best possible solution given he didn't have full autonomy over his health care.
posted by politikitty at 11:29 AM on August 8, 2016


I get what you're saying Politikitty, that there is more than just the biomedical model vs. the superstitious model. It's not a binary selection of options.

But my mother did actually send me to a legit therapist at age 15 and did not interfere. And I've been in psychotherapy for 30 years and still have had manic episodes and psychosis. Plus mental illness (which yes, there is a psychosocial component) has occurred on both sides of my family tree, involving schizophrenia, bipolar, shock treatment and institutionalization. My mom's pretty bananas, sure and it affected me, no doubt. But I tend to think that her extreme religiosity (we're talking speaking in tongues and 'slaying in the spirit' holy roller pentacostal-type shit from a sect called Charismatic Christians) is actually a form of mild mania.

Hyperreligiousity can be found in some mental illnesses. I think I grew up in a wacky environment, sure, but I also think I inherited some genetic funkiness that created that wacky environment because my parents were both a bit off.

Nature and nurture intertwine when you have a mentally ill parent who is also a sketchy parent. No, not everything is biologically driven, but some of it is most definitely.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 11:42 PM on August 8, 2016


I don't think a belief in witchcraft, possession, magic, and so forth can be dismissed as mostly harmless.'QMFT

Murders and beatings have happened in its name.

The mental health profession needs more rationalism and better diagnostic methods, not a bunch of wackadoo voodoo bullshit. People suffer the consequences; not getting the proper treatment is the least of those consequences.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 11:46 PM on August 8, 2016


That isn't what I was trying to say. I don't believe in the spiritual model, at all. To me, that's completely separate from what this psychiatrist is accomplishing. Let me try again:

I agree that your parents probably have mental issues. And that caused them to act a specific way. It made your mother prone to hyperreligiosity, which she exposed you to.

Your manic episodes and psychosis are absolutely biologically driven. You were at risk once their genes became the basis for your genes. And then your environment shaped the way your mental illness presented itself. If you had grown up in an environment more aware of mental health issues, your symptoms may have been addressed in a way that you never needed a diagnosis. If you had gotten slightly different genes, you may not have been susceptible to your manic episodes or psychosis.

You're trying to say that if things were better, you could have gotten the care that you needed. But you need the level of care that you need *because* things were not better. Luckily your mother was able to reconcile her religious beliefs with mental health, so that you were able to see someone. If she hadn't, you would have been in more harm. Your manic episodes would have been addressed by a priest or shaman or anyone without medical training.

I am currently working on the inverse of this in therapy. My sister dealt with our biological inheritance by rejecting reality for religion. Instead, I ignored my cluster of symptoms, up until the point that they were destroying my life and I had to acknowledge I had a medical condition. I couldn't bring myself to care about my feelings. But I could care about a real thing proven by Science!. Meds have only lessened my symptoms, and I'm having to acknowledge that somehow talk therapy based on emotions and my upbringing works. There's empirical evidence that proves that.

We're starting to understand the extent that emotions (especially at a young age) actually change the structure of the brain. Because otherwise I'm not sure that I could consent to something that felt so woo and unnatural to me. I'm still probably stunting my progress because I am hyperaware that maybe it's not my mom acting a certain way that caused this, but telling myself it's because my mom acted a certain way helps reshape pathways in my brain to relieve my symptoms. So I should just stop overthinking it and stop caring if it's true or not. The human psyche was not meant to live on truth alone.
posted by politikitty at 11:27 AM on August 9, 2016


I guess I didn't understand what you meant by "false dichotomy" then. I don't follow your argument. It seems almost that we are saying the same thing. I didn't get what you were saying by "false dichotomy".

Or are you then saying that this psychiatrist's method and views are helpful in order to help people who have that framework? If so, then I believe a tactful doctor can say "Sure, this might be possession, but it's more likely this". They don't have to invalidate a superstition with a condescending dismissive demeanor, but they don't have to validate it either. That's what I've been trying to say; I think we're misundertanding each other.

I understand that emotions and childhood trauma affect the brain, I get all that. But I think where we differ is that validating certain beliefs may be helpful in working with a patient and that's where we seem to part ways.

To me, it's very clear that my mother reinforcing my view of a spirit inhabiting my soul was a blind alley when I just needed to get off of Effexor which makes me manic, as I have had manic episodes on antidepressants (common in bipolar). I had other symptoms as well. She unwittingly encouraged my manic delusions (which I do not have when I am well). I guess I'm not following what you are saying in your experience. Perhaps you are saying that had you had a doctor who worked within that religious framework, you could've gotten help earlier.

That just wasn't the case for me; I had rational therapy, but I also had faith healers and all kinds of wackadoos wasting my time when I was an adolescent, and my mother didn't understand how her behavior (in many ways) was making me worse and traumatizing me. She could simply say "It's evil spirits, it's not me screaming at you irrationally on a regular basis". That's a clear lack of insight on her part. That obstructed the healing process of a screwy family dynamic. That's where I see the danger in validating this view: you can have a whole dysfunctional family and if you externalize the pathology where you imply "yeah, it's Satan or your dead uncle" then the family never understands the effects of their own dysfunctional behavior.

Again, perhaps we are saying the same thing. I'm just not following what you are disputing in my statements about my experience.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 12:12 PM on August 9, 2016


If so, then I believe a tactful doctor can say "Sure, this might be possession, but it's more likely this". They don't have to invalidate a superstition with a condescending dismissive demeanor, but they don't have to validate it either.

Yeah, but who would a parent convinced their child is posessed by a demon trust more to tell them, "actually this is a case of mental illness" than a physician who claims to have participated in dozens of exorcisms? Maybe his primary reason for telling these stories is to have the credibility to tell people in what he says are "the overwhelming majority" of cases he sees that this is mental illness rather than demon possession.
posted by straight at 7:49 AM on August 10, 2016


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