As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness and help spot demonic possession

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/

by schneidmaster • 10 years ago

57 73 10 years ago

washingtonpost.com

ythl• 10 years ago

I'm a religious person, but I don't think "demonic possession" has any place in any type of mental illness classification. Proving the existence of God is impossible. Proving the existence of demons and/or evil spirits is tantamount to proving the existence of God. Is it possible that this Doctor has witnessed demonic possession? Yes. But more likely, the person just has severe mental problems. There is no evidence of it other than anecdotal evidence, and it is unscientific to just throw your arms up and say "dang, that's hard to explain, must be an evil spirit".

mbfg• 10 years ago

also known as the "God of the Gaps", or in this case, perhaps, the "Devil of the Gaps".

Fjolsvith• 10 years ago

Oh, another separation of church and state?

dubya• 10 years ago

I agree that it's not science, but exorcism could still be therapy. If someone has a condition that has the same symptoms described for demonic possession, an exorcism might just cure it. Though antidepressants might also work.

After reading "A new way to be mad" and a bit of Ian Hacking's other work, I had wondered if demonic possession might be similar to "mad travel" and multiple personality disorder, diagnosable psychological conditions that seem to have disappeared.

reddytowns2• 10 years ago

Trying stuff randomly in the hopes of curing someone with no scientific basis has as much potential to do harm as to do good.

Just because, after a bunch of other crap, you do this one thing, and the patient suddenly gets better does not mean you caused their improvement. It also does not mean what you did won't have long term effects, which you cannot predict.

Imagine someone thinks they are possessed but really aren't. Won't an exorcism strengthen the belief that they can be possessed? And couldn't that lead to a stronger imaginary possession in the future? You might have just traded some temporary peace for a more severe lifelong problem, but shortsightedly just looking at the immediate effects and assumed you discovered something novel.

Giving form and substance to the delusions of a mentally ill person just seems rather ill-concieved.

virmundi• 10 years ago

While I agree, I don't throw out the possibility of the unexplained. My mother worked for a Lester Sumerall for a brief period as a secretary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Sumrall). A small child (I don't recall the gender) was brought to him for an exorcism. The child threw itself against the walls. Screamed. Made other terrible noises. Generally violent. My mother told me she said aloud to no one in particular, "I think I'll get my lunch now" and left. She didn't watch the outcome. Could be a violent psychosis. Could be an actual demon. Either way, I agree: time to get a lunch.

DanBC7• 10 years ago

Not time to make sure that child is protected from harm?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-victoria-clim...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Victoria_Climbi%C3%A...

In his diary, Manning described Climbié as Satan, and said that no matter how hard he hit her, she did not cry or show signs that she was hurt.

[...]

From then on, Kouao kept Climbié away from hospitals, turning instead to churches. Kouao said to the pastors that she was the mother and that demons were inside Climbié. The pastor at the Mission Ensemble Pour Christ, Pascal Orome, offered prayers for Climbié to cast out the devil, and thought that her injuries were due to demonic possession.[4][51] On another occasion, Kouao took Climbié to a church run by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, where the pastor, Alvaro Lima, suspected she was being abused, although he took no action. He said in the inquiry that Climbié told him that Satan had told her to burn herself. The pastor did not believe her, but he still believed that a person could be possessed.[52]

benkuykendall3• 10 years ago

I agree diagnosing demonic possession would be unscientific.

However, the role and attitude of the author seems ultimately helpful to his patients. If he can screen the suffers of diagnosable and treatable mental illnesses from the hard to explain cases, he can get proper treatment for the former group. By not denying the existence of demonic possession, he remains in the good graces of religious leaders, who are likely to bring him patients who otherwise would receive no psychiatric evaluation.

However, leaving the later group in the hands of exorcists is questionably moral. But if honestly, as he claims, there are cases where "the symptoms in question have no conceivable medical cause" then I guess there is little else he can do.

Of course, writing a click-bait article about diagnosing demonic possession is unprofessional of both Gallagher and the Washington Post.

freditup2• 10 years ago

Why do you think it's unprofessional for the Washington Post to publish this article? I personally don't see anything particularly wrong with it so I'm curious as to what you find unprofessional about it.

rdtsc2• 10 years ago

he remains in the good graces of religious leaders, who are likely to bring him patients who otherwise would receive no psychiatric evaluation.

That is a an interesting point. Far fetched idea, I can see maybe the author understanding and using this tactic in a way to get to patients who otherwise might be harmed. He will publicly proclaim his belief in such things, in order to be sure to get referals and calls from the clergy.

Wonder though how it gets ballanced by his colegues not accepting of what he does and basically end up ridiculed or ostracized by that community.

krapp2• 10 years ago

He admits he hasn't witnessed a levitation himself ...

    (I have not witnessed a levitation myself, but half a dozen people
    I work with vow that they’ve seen it in the course of 
    their exorcisms.)

... yet he presents the fact of levitation as "evidence" further on, because he simply accepts the word of people who say they've seen these supernatural events.

    As a man of reason, I’ve had to rationalize the seemingly irrational. 
    Questions about how a scientifically trained physician can believe 
    “such outdated and unscientific nonsense,” as I’ve been asked, 
    have a simple answer. I honestly weigh the evidence.

    I have been told simplistically that levitation defies the 
    laws of gravity, and, well, of course it does! We are not dealing 
    here with purely material reality, but with the spiritual realm.

He honestly weighs evidence he's never seen? "Levitation," along with the other parlor tricks the doctor describes, have been the mainstay of psychics, con-artists and magicians for centuries. Everything he describes is a trick that people can go to Las Vegas and pay to see, and everything else is speculation.

Physician, heal thyself.

NotSammyHagar• 10 years ago

He sounds reasonable enough at the start. Then I start to worry when he gets to what you mention ("others i trust said it, so it must be true"), but he completely looses any credibility when he refers to the "demons are too smart to be recorded". That's just laughable. And sad. Now someone will have to waste their time debunking this guy.

It would be the most incredible discovery ever if there was proof of spirits outside our world or life after death. But sadly, all attempts to this point have not turned out to be reputable.

krapp2• 10 years ago

It does seem unfortunate that a psychiatrist of all people would fall prey to the sort of self-delusion that he should recognize in conspiracy theorists and cult members.

Even more that he lends his word as a scientist and man of principle to a practice that has done incalculable harm to the mentally ill for centuries.

wtbob6• 10 years ago

He honestly weighs evidence he's never seen?

I don't think he is: rather, he's point out the failure of the debunkers to make a sound argument against something which he's not seen. I think that his position is, 'I have not seen levitation, but others say they have,' not 'levitation exists.'

relyks• 10 years ago

This article seems like click bait. There are no references to any case studies or patients. Also, despite psychiatry being grounded in the objective, there is still a subjective level of interpretation in the results. "Misunderstanding Psychiatry (and Philosophy) at the Highest Level" (http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/misunderstanding-ps...) is a good article about this. I'm very skeptical of this article. Has any of his patients been reviewed by other reputable psychiatrists? To actually verify his claims, experiments with statistical data would need to be completed, and the results would need to be peer-reviewed.

salgernon2• 10 years ago

To misquote another noted psychiatrist: "sometimes a goth is just a goth"

The public interest in "possession" seems to be rising linearly with the practitioners of exorcism. This doctor seems to condemn exorcists of different faiths though - the horrific re-birth deaths that are a throwback to "if she dies, then she wasn't a witch, so it's ok because her soul is good" - without producing any evidence that non-catholic exorcism has a greater success rate.

As an aside, there's is a whole slew of similar click bait medical articles on WaPo, which seems really out of character for an established news source...

hliyan2• 10 years ago

As for speaking in tongues, glossolalia is a well documented (non-supernatural) phenomenon: http://skepdic.com/glossol.html, usually associated with mental illness.

As for the hidden knowledge claims, the author should have consulted James Randi, who during his career, always managed to boil such fantastic claims down to sometimes ingenious and sometimes hilariously simple techniques used by the "practitioner". AFAIK, he never lost his $1 million bet.

knodi123• 10 years ago

AFAIK, he never lost his $1 million bet.

That is correct, he never lost- however, "These demons, being fallen angels, are sentient and are hardly likely to allow themselves to be recorded. That's how they sow so much confusion and doubt."

This is identical to the invisible dragon in my garage. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage

ryao2• 10 years ago

That sounds harder than recording the Equation Group in the act of developing malware without their consent. So far, the most that I have seen is videos of weird things than videos of the things doing them, like this one:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1243908/Spooky-m...

That said, all videos could be fake, so it does not matter if we actually got one of something real. Who would believe it aside from the guy who took the video?

ktRolster• 10 years ago

As for speaking in tongues, glossolalia is a well documented (non-supernatural)

But it never involves speaking fluently in a real human language unknown to the speaker, which is what this guy is claiming.

hliyan2• 10 years ago

Occam's Razor would suggest that either the speaker's language proficiency was unknown to the observer, or the observer mistook superficial similarities to a real language because he himself was not a speaker.

outlace2• 10 years ago

My prior probability of the existence of demonic possession is very close to 0, so until I see better evidence than a few dubious anecdotes (that always have explanations for why we can't capture supposed paranormal activity on camera), my posterior probability will remain very close to zero.

ryao2• 10 years ago

Catching something extraordinary on camera has never been proof. In the past, people could claim dark room effects. In the present, people can claim photoshop. It is silly to ask that such things be caught on camera when real images would be indistinguishable from fake images. You need to see such things firsthand like that psychiatrist claims to have and if you do, almost no one in this age will believe you. It would something like this, except without any fun before the last pane:

https://xkcd.com/693/

That psychiatrist ought to know that feeling. Here is to hoping that none of us ever do.

reddytowns2• 10 years ago

It would stand to reason, then, out of the thousands of badly faked photographs and videos, the mysterious blobs that could be caused by malfunctioning cameras, and the out of focus, blurry, easy mistakable everday objects declared as "ghosts" there would be a few clear, in focus photos or videos, which couldn't be easily placed in the aforementioned categories.

https://xkcd.com/1235/

Mods: wtf

titanomachy3• 10 years ago

His explanation... demons, as fallen angels, are more crafty than us and can thus reliably avoid detection. I like that, it makes for a good story. It is also a falsifiable hypothesis. Does setting up hidden recording equipment in his office cause his patients to stop displaying evidence of demonic possession? If so, there are explanations more likely than demonic omniscience -- ideally this trial would be double-blind to prevent him from influencing the subject -- but it would be an interesting result nonetheless. Alternatively, he records a sophisticated conversation in Church Latin with a 20-year-old uneducated construction labourer, which would lend at least some credibility to his claims.

benkuykendall3• 10 years ago

The full title (for me at least) reads "As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. Also, I help spot demonic possession."

The HN title reads "As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. And sometimes, demonic possession." This suggests (via linguistic ellipsis) that the psychiatrist diagnoses demonic possession. However, he explicitly does not.

I technically do not make my own “diagnosis” of possession but inform the clergy that the symptoms in question have no conceivable medical cause.

This is an interesting distinction. Of course it would be ridiculous, backwards, and unscientific for a medical professional to 'diagnose' someone with demonic possession. But to admit that the symptoms are outside the scope of modern psychiatry seems a more reasonable reaction.

titanomachy3• 10 years ago

...to admit that the symptoms are outside the scope of modern society seems a more reasonable reaction.

I agree, although his decision to then turn those people over to the care of a Catholic cleric seems rather arbitrary.

dang2• 10 years ago

We changed the title to reflect the article. (It's possible that WaPo itself changed it.) Still a bit baity, but with a topic like that...

schneidmaster• 10 years ago

FWIW, WaPo itself also changed it. My original title was the original WaPo title (check the URL) and then they changed it, and then y'all changed the HN side to something a little different :)

DanBC7• 10 years ago

Terrifying that he has some power to detain people against their will; or to force people to take medication against their will.

I’m a man of science and a lover of history; after studying the classics at Princeton, I trained in psychiatry at Yale and in psychoanalysis at Columbia.

Physicists at CERN talk about the lengths they go to to prevent cognitive bias. It'd be great of other people stopped thinking "I'm a person of science, thus less open to these biases than other people."

That background is why a Catholic priest had asked my professional opinion, which I offered pro bono, about whether this woman was suffering from a mental disorder.

Why is he talking about someone's medical status to other people? In England he's committed an offence.

So I was inclined to skepticism. But my subject’s behavior exceeded what I could explain with my training.
This was not psychosis;

This bit is fine. "I'm a doctor who specialises in mental illness. This doesn't match any mental illness I've seen before, and isn't in my diagnostic manual".

it was what I can only describe as paranormal ability. I concluded that she was possessed.

This bit? FFS.

wtbob6• 10 years ago

Terrifying that he has some power to detain people against their will; or to force people to take medication against their will.

Why's it any more terrifying that a religious dualist person has that power than an atheist materialist? Atheist psychiatrists in the Soviet Union were responsible for quite a few involuntary committals of folks whose 'madness' was wanting freedom.

Why is he talking about someone's medical status to other people? In England he's committed an offence.

A cleric cannot consult with a psychiatrist in England?

> This was not psychosis;
This bit is fine. "I'm a doctor who specialises in mental illness. This doesn't match any mental illness I've seen before, and isn't in my diagnostic manual".
> it was what I can only describe as paranormal ability. I concluded that she was possessed.
This bit? FFS.

'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' He definitely needs to make sure that he takes appropriate precautions against cold readers (who are quite talented at winkling out details without one realising). As he notes, ' I technically do not make my own "diagnosis" of possession but inform the clergy that the symptoms in question have no conceivable medical cause.'

DanBC7• 10 years ago

A cleric cannot consult with a psychiatrist in England?

About themselves; about generalities; but most certainly not about a third person. Are you saying that US doctors share medical details of people with their clerics?

jrapdx3• 10 years ago

Well good luck getting insurance to pay for that "diagnosis". Hard enough when submitting claims for conditions that are in the diagnostic manuals. It's also risky from a regulatory standpoint. I know one doctor who was pursuing "occult" phenomena that a couple of his patients told him about. Someone complained and he was in trouble with his licensing board for a time for his "unprofessional conduct".

However there is a deeper issue implicit in the subject, regardless of its actual scientific merit. It provokes a question about what makes it necessary to try explaining things that have no explanation.

That's a common and universal human trait. With very few exceptions, humans insist on "explaining" things no matter what, ordinarily people won't tolerate indeterminacy. It's a rare person who accepts "I don't know". But of course not knowing is reality, look at anything close enough and it looks fuzzy. Examined at sufficient level of detail, everything is ambiguous.

When patients present with unusual (to the interviewer) ideas, perceptions or feelings, quite likely it will defy classification geared toward frequent, typical events. In that instance the response to "what is going on with me?" should be "I don't know" when one doesn't know. Resorting to "explanatory" mythologies, including psychoanalytic theory, or occultism, only obscures reality. Far better to skip "explaining" given the impossibility of avoiding unavoidable uncertainty.

We can and should say what we observe of phenomena and their related similarities and differences. That set of observations is the valuable basis of what we know and can act on. There are limits to knowledge, particularly that asking "why?" does not terminate. It takes courage to face that the only answer we'll ever get is that there is no answer.

chmike9• 10 years ago

I couldn't have said it as well. I would add that referring to it as demonic posession is using one possible interpretation among others of the reported facts to identify the phenomenon. This might exacerbate skepticism.

Uptrenda• 10 years ago

Does this guy speak fluent Latin? How does he know what "perfect Latin" sounds like when its an esoteric, dead language?

pmiller2• 10 years ago

He likely does. The article makes mention of his studying classics. I would not be surprised if he also speaks Greek.

superuser2• 10 years ago

The academic Latin community does have a standard for correct pronounciation, it's just not necessarily the same as what it would have been historically.

zephyrfalcon• 10 years ago

Latin has no native speakers anymore, but that does not mean nobody speaks or writes it. It is still often used within the Catholic Church.

rdtsc2• 10 years ago

Related somewhat to this, religious fanaticism, misdiagnosis of mental illness, and what can come out of it, I recommend this movie:

Beyond The Hills -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258281/

It is inspired by a real life story of a young nun who ended up crucified and killed due to "excorcism" performed on her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanacu_exorcism

PhasmaFelis2• 10 years ago

I am willing to at least consider the possibility that non-physical beings might exist, and that they might be both able and willing to influence a human's actions in ways that appear malevolent.

Going from that to asserting that said beings are literal demons sent by Satan to corrupt mankind seems like a stretch, and makes me question this guy's objectivity (even) more than I might otherwise. Even assuming all his accounts are literally true, the existence of people with paranormal abilities and psychotic symptoms shows only that paranormal abilities exist and may be correlated with psychosis.

If nothing else, the stereotypical "possessed" behavior is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect a literal hell-demon to do. If the Devil was real and wanted to tear down God and religion, he'd make the possessed act like reasonable, well-spoken atheists, not this mumbo-jumbo routine that seems calculated to scare people into going to church.

wtbob6• 10 years ago

If nothing else, the stereotypical "possessed" behavior is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect a literal hell-demon to do. If the Devil was real and wanted to tear down God and religion, he'd make the possessed act like reasonable, well-spoken atheists, not this mumbo-jumbo routine that seems calculated to scare people into going to church.

What makes you think that Sam Harris & Richard Dawkins aren't possessed? Maybe the symptoms of possession are really symptoms of a trapped soul trying to break free of its gaoler: in the case of folks like Harris & Dawkins, they don't want to break free, while in the case of some poor sap he does.

I don't know that it's actually the case, but it's an explanation. Another, of course, is that folks who want attention seek it out in the language they are familiar with: demonic possession for Christians, running amok for Malays, school shootings for suburban American teenagers.

PhasmaFelis2• 10 years ago

What makes you think that Sam Harris & Richard Dawkins aren't possessed?

I cannot disprove the possibility, but I also can't see any plausible evidence for it, so by Occam's razor it seems unlikely.

I agree that it does make a good Just So Story, if one is seeking ways to explain the observable world in terms of Catholic theology.

abpavel• 10 years ago

"Correctly guessed that my mother died of cancer"... Knew when someone had "unjust pride"... Well, take WHO statistics, and use most probable case. Do it in the group, and as you tell people stuff, monitor others for face expressions or ques, because cases will repeat amongst audience. Learn to say a couple of latin sentences. The art of scamming is profound. Demonic posession is not.

cmarciniak• 10 years ago

A finer charlatan the world has never known.

Indolat4• 10 years ago

The world has gone bonkers. This guy should have his doctor's license revoked, to avoid cases like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anneliese_Michel

And any engineer talking about possibility of "demonic posession" seriously must have his diploma cancelled as well.

chmike9• 10 years ago

This is a very irrational and stupid stand point. This psychiatrist may have studied and described a new type of mental illness. Why would you want to censor such study and prevent this scientist to do any psychiatrist work ?

For what reason ? Because the phenomenon is referred to as demonic posession and you don't BELIEVE in that ? First there is no way to prove that demonic posession doesn't exist, so your judgment is based on a pure belief. Second we must make a clear separation between the facts and their interpretation. Your reaction is obviously motivated by the reject of the interpretation. There are a priori many other possible interpretations of the facts. No one could have tested the validity of the interpretation because the existence and properties of demons is still UNKNOWN and this means there is no way we can test if anything could be a daemon manifestation or is not a daemon manifestation.

What you request is censoring and by that you prone obscurantism. That is anti-scientific and it would be a regression.

In face of such report or data, the only valid attitude should be to first verify as much as possible the reality of facts. we should leave on the side the interpretation of the facts in this step to avoid falling in a confirmation bias.

My feeling is that referring to these facts as demonic posession was a strategic mistake of the author. But that, in itself, can't justify to ban this person of any psychiatric activity.

To conclude I would say that scientific rationality and objectivity is apparently is a poor state.

DanBC7• 10 years ago

This is a very irrational and stupid stand point. This psychiatrist may have studied and described a new type of mental illness. Why would you want to censor such study and prevent this scientist to do any psychiatrist work ?

There are established processes in place to create a new psychiatric diagnosis. This doctor is ignoring those processes.

And he is specifically excluding demonic possession from mental illness; that's the point of his article.

Indolat4• 10 years ago

We have an extensive scientific picture of the world we live in, and it's verified and validated by a huge number of experiments. This picture doesn't have any place for anything supernatural. You can't fit demons into physics and biology, as you can't fit a bull into a china shop. If you want to think that demons can exist, you have to abandon science. You can't sit on two chairs.

It's not about censorship, it's about ability to pass a simplest reality check. I don't want to have any doctors or engineers around me who don't pass this check.

BrandoElFollito• 10 years ago

I am always surprised at how much the daemons avoid cameras, physicists and others hard-rooted skeptics (the ones who will not go bonkers when there is a show going on). This is a very good strategy.

titanomachy3• 10 years ago

Let's assume that demons exist, capable of taking over human minds, and that they also have superhuman perceptive and reasoning abilities. With sufficient abilities, they could reliably avoid detection if they wanted to... but why would they? Why is it so important to them that they not fall under scientific scrutiny?

jalami• 10 years ago

I could understand "checking under the bed" to calm the patient's nerves from a purely consequentialist standpoint, but legitimately saying "I don't know, could be demons" is A: saying nothing at all as it could be anything currently unexplainable and B: lending too much credence to a specific unverifiable "cause". As others have said, demons of the gaps. It's not an intelligent position and not particularly interesting.

I wish we could all just get to a point where we answer "I don't know" with "We'll find out" instead of "<Popular mythology>!"

mankash666• 10 years ago

I've witnessed particularly strange bugs in code that's outside my diagnostic abilities and training. My Catholic priest also finds the code to be violently unmanageable at times.

After reading this article, I'm contemplating authoring a book on demonic code. Because, if I can't fix it, I could at least get rich writing.

PS: This message is approved by the deamon possessing the code.

chmike9• 10 years ago

Has this hacker news post been flagged ? I can't see it on the first pages anymore.

dacompton• 10 years ago

I'm not religious now, but grew up in an extremely religious (southern baptist) household. When I was young, my mother, family, and friends told me stories of demons and demonic possession -- and I was terrified. I sometimes prayed myself to sleep. As I grew older (into my teens), this fear was replaced with an unencouraged, autonomic disinterest in Christianity.

In short, my experiences have taught me that some people are not wired for religion. Perhaps some of those disinterested folk find it more advantageous to say "possessed by demons" than "not otherwise specified."

As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness and help spot demonic possession

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