Despite huge advances in mental health science over the last couple of centuries, many in the religious community continue to believe in demonic possession. In Part 5 of our series on exorcism – in anticipation of Warner Bros. Pictures’ The Rite, releasing January 28th – B-D’s Chris Eggertsen delves into the debate between religious leaders who continue to support the practice and those in the scientific field who are intent on putting an end to it. It’s an issue that doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon – with a rise over the last few decades in the number of exorcisms being performed around the world, the controversy will surely continue well into the 21st century.
The belief in demonic possession has persisted for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in religions and cultures all across the world. It was only with the emergence of psychiatry in the 1800s that emotional disturbance was seen as having a biological basis that could be treated or cured through advances in medical science. Nevertheless, even in the 21st century a large percentage of the world’s religious population continues to believe in the possibility of possession by evil spirits.

In ancient times, people afflicted with mental or neurological illnesses were thought to be possessed by demons. The involuntary convulsions of a person suffering from epilepsy; the hallucinations, paranoia, and violent behaviors brought on by schizophrenia; and the loud, random vocal outbursts and physical tics of Tourette’s Syndrome, among other disorders, were all believed to be signs of evil forces playing upon a person’s soul. Only by performing an exorcism, it was presumed, could the person be freed from the influence of the devil.

The rise of the field of psychiatry in the late 1700s and into the the 19th and 20th centuries led to a change in popular attitudes. The research of figures such as Philippe Pinel, Benjamin Rush, Sigmund Freud, and Emil Kraepelin, among many others, suggested that it was disorders of the brain, not the influence of demons, which led to divergence in human behavior.

Despite this new school of thought, the belief in evil spirits persisted into the 20th century, with the Roman Catholic Church continuing to officially sanction exorcisms in certain cases where it was determined that a person’s mental disturbances could not be explained or treated by medical means. Of course, the very fact of the Church’s willingness to take the possibility of mental illness into account just goes to show that even the Vatican could no longer deny the overwhelming body of empirical evidence proving the existence of psychiatric disorders. Exorcism surely never went away following the establishment of psychiatry as a legitimate scientific field, but the popularity of the method nevertheless declined considerably.

And yet the practice continues to this day, not only in Catholicism – where it is still recognized as an official rite by the Church – but in other religions around the world (though not in any officially-authorized capacity). Indeed, it seems even the advent of modern psychiatric theory was incapable of stamping out the influence of centuries of religious indoctrination. As a matter of fact, a 2005 Gallup poll showed that a whopping 42% of Americans still believe in possession by the Devil.

This large number, while it may seem surprising, is indicative of a pendulum swing in religious thought that occurred around the middle of the last century. In the 1960s and early 1970s the phenomenon of “charismatic renewal” – a movement within Christianity that emphasizes a form of ecstatic worship characterized by speaking in tongues and spirit healing, among other supposed manifestations of the Holy Spirit – grew quickly in popularity, leading to an increase in the number of exorcisms performed throughout the world in what have become known as “deliverance ministries”. These ministries have become a huge point of controversy in the last few decades given that many of them charge a fee in exchange for performing an exorcism ritual (with some even televising “mass exorcisms”) and are therefore seen as profiting off their parishioners’ belief in demonic possession without offering any real benefit.

The oft-repeated claim of skeptics and those in the mental health community is that by performing the exorcism ritual for those suffering from legitimate mental illnesses in place of proper psychiatric treatment, a deliverance ministry or other religious institution is in effect harming the person by preventing him/her from seeking the help they need to correct the disorder. And while those performing the exorcism will often point to the supposedly possessed person’s own belief in their possession to justify the practice, most mental health professionals would argue that merely suggesting the possibility of demonic possession to someone in a non-rational state of mind will of course lead that person to actually believe that they have fallen under the devil’s control. They will then begin to act in a way that validates this diagnosis, by, for example, speaking in a demonic tone of voice or demonstrating an aversion toward sacred objects.

There are of course many cases in which individuals undergoing exorcisms have suffered tremendously as a result. A classic example is the famous case of Anneliese Michel (whose story was made into two different films, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Requiem), a young German Catholic woman who died of severe malnutrition and dehydration after undergoing 67 exorcism rituals in 1976. Though she had earlier in her life been diagnosed with Grand Mal epilepsy and may have also (it is now thought) been suffering from schizophrenia, Anneliese’s deeply religious parents eventually gave up on finding a medical answer for their daughter’s increasingly disturbed behavior and instead proceeded with the exorcisms that ended up resulting in her untimely death at the age of 23.

Anneliese Michel is certainly the most famous victim of an exorcism gone wrong, though she’s far from the only one – hundreds of recorded cases exist in which people thought to be possessed died after undergoing the ritual (though most were “unofficial” and not authorized by the Catholic Church or any other large-scale religious institution). In 1995, a Korean immigrant in San Francisco named Kyung-A Ha was beaten to death by members of her Pentecostal church during an intense six-hour-long exorcism. In 1993, a schizophrenic woman named Joan Vollmer in Horsham, Australia, died after undergoing an exorcism performed by her husband and several other amateur exorcists. Last July, a 4-year-old Russian boy named Dmitry Kazachuk died after being suffocated during an impromptu exorcism by shamanistic healers in his small village who believed he’d been possessed by the Devil.

Cases of exorcism fraud have also become increasingly rampant. Controversial radio and television evangelist Bob Larson, president of Bob Larson Ministries, bills himself as “the world’s foremost expert on cults, the occult, and supernatural phenomena.” However, he has been charged from many corners with defrauding thousands of people by performing paid group and individual exorcisms (he charges $500/hour for “personal deliverance” sessions), wooing them through the use of alleged hired actors who fake possession for the T.V. cameras in order to “prove” Larson’s ability to cast out demons. In 2008, senior Catholic priest Francesco Saverio Bazzoffi of Florence, Italy was accused of fraud when it was found he’d been soliciting donations from audience members at his church after performing “stage shows” in which several of his associates would pose as ordinary people suffering from possession. Police found that Fr. Bazzoffi had amassed a nearly $6 million personal fortune from these alleged fake exorcisms.

Despite a rise in hoaxes like these, the belief in demonic possession continues to persist all around the world, and in fact seems to be on the uptick. In the U.S., one in ten Catholics polled in a 2008 survey said they had either witnessed or been involved in at least one exorcism during their lifetime. There are also more exorcists operating in Italy than ever before – over 300, up from a mere 20 or so ten years ago. In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI ordered his bishops to set up “exorcism squads” to counter what he saw as a rise in Satanism. In 2005, the Vatican-linked university, Pontifical Academy Regina Apostolorum, added a new course on exorcism for both priests and theology students entitled “Exorcism and the Prayer of Liberation”.

Interestingly, even some in the mental health community count themselves as believers. In 2008, Dr. Richard E. Gallagher, a board-certified psychiatrist and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the New York Medical College (and also, it should be noted, a religious man), documented the case of a young woman living in the United States who had requested an exorcism from her local clergy. The woman, referred to as Julia, was an ex-Catholic who had previously been involved with several satanic groups and subsequently came to believe she was possessed.

Dr. Gallagher sat in on the exorcism rituals, witnessing and documenting strange phenomena that finally convinced him the woman was suffering from an affliction that fell outside any earthly explanation. These phenomena included speaking in foreign languages unknown to her previously; acts of psychokinesis (the movement of objects without the use of physical force); and a levitation in which Gallagher witnessed the young woman hovering six inches off the ground. His account was published in the New Oxford Review, an orthodox Catholic publication.

Despite outliers like Dr. Gallagher, however, the mental health community as a whole remains skeptical – if not outright critical – of the belief in demonic possession and the exorcism rituals performed to address it. They face an uphill battle, however, as even in the 21st century the exorcism phenomenon continues unabated.