“The Devil does a lot of commercials”
Exorcism, mysticism, and the power of some guy in a white coat compelling you!
What is or is not ~ demonic ~ is up to a great deal of debate, even between religious sects, churches, and people. Some people think that yoga is the work of the devil, whereas others think hitting the Sun Salutations is fine so long as you’re not also listening to secular music to fill your head with Satan’s hot bops.
But for a long time — before germ theory, before brain scans, and before the separation of church and medicine (though that’s still very much a problem) — pretty much all unusual behavior was chalked up to Lucifer and his dastardly plans.
Which means that a lot of mental health conditions were treated with spiritual treatments, rather than, you know, medicine. And, fun fact, they still are today.
A Very, Very Brief and Not at all Comprehensive History of Medicine and Mysticism
Well past the era of Enlightenment, pathologies to do with mental health were often ascribed to demonic possession than issues with the body or brain. This is, of course, because cultures around the globe have long blended the role of priest and physician. Someone experiencing the symptoms of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other conditions which manifest in physical, active behaviors, could expect to see someone in a long black robe, rather than a white coat.
In a paper published in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care in 2007, Lesley Smith details the centuries-old relationship between physical healing and psychic or faith-based care, noting that “priests were educated men; they could read the works of the Greek medical philosophers and put their works into practice. The bible is dotted with examples of Christ healing the sick and lame, so they were following in His footsteps.” She goes on to explain how:
By the end of the Tudor period, it was not possible to see a clear distinction between medicine and magic, alchemy and science or astronomy and astrology. All doctors would dabble a little in what we would today view as the occult. White, natural magic founded in an ancient past was mixed with contemporary Christian views. Black magic, including the calling of demons or even Satan, would not be touched by any doctor of good reputation.
Many integrated practices are now further exploring the brain/body connection in a modern way, but this is more of a revisiting than a totally revolutionary idea. Spiritual wellbeing and psychiatric health were almost inextricably linked in the collective consciousness for like, most of human history — and those tendrils still exist.
Getting the Devils Out
Very simply, exorcism is a Christian ceremony designed to cast out evil spirits believed to be causing a person physical pain and manifestations of mental illness. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops defines exorcism as “a specific form of prayer that the Church uses against the power of the devil.”
Exorcism has been used for centuries as a way to combat spiritual illness which, in the modern day, we might recognize as a mental health crisis. The presentation of many mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, were viewed as signs that a person had been taken over by evil spirits. After all, these same symptoms are described in the Bible; Matthew 17 describes a boy who “has seizures and he suffers terribly,” and Matthew 28 depicts two “demon-possessed” who charged onlookers “so fierce that no one could pass that way.”
The best way to cure them was not to give them medicine — no such medicine existed and anyway, this wasn’t a body problem, it was a soul problem — but instead, to flush the devil out.
You’re entering the paywall zone. There’s a lot more below this! Consider helping to support my work for like, not very much money AT ALL.
A paper published in the journal Early Scientific Medicine stated that “during the Middle Ages, demonic possession constituted an explanation for an erratic behavior in society.” They also went on to conclude that “exorcism was the treatment generally applied to demoniacs and seems to have caused some alleviation in the suffering of mentally distressed people.”
This conclusion is pretty common in scientific research on the subject of exorcism as a cure for mental health issues; many people who received exorcisms were reported to be healed afterward. There are a couple of reasons why this could be. The first is that if they were not viewed as healed, they might be subject to more physical or emotional violence. But also, there’s a possibility that some people were genuinely healed by ongoing spiritual counseling they received. It’s kind of hard to say, though without reliable records from these individuals.
There is, though, some recording of the exorcisms or similar “treatments” of well-known individuals, which means there are data points about the experience.
In a 2009 Lancet article entitled Placebo Controls, Exorcisms and the Devil, the authors describe how, in 1784, “Benjamin Franklin and Antioine Lavoiser [sic] used the first ever placebo-controlled medical experiments to debunk the healing practices of mesmerism.”
”Mesmerism,” which was the hypnosis and faith-healing system designed by F. A. Mesmer (and the root of the word “mesmerizing”). Mesmer developed the system “after investigating a notorious exorcist-priest and demonstrating that he could obtain similar results without appeals to Jesus.” And while Jesus may not have been invoked, much of Mesmer’s system was prettttttty similar to an exorcism, with the yelling and the charisma and the prompting subjects to shake, cry, and faint.
It was not that dissimilar from what you’d see in a tent revival 100 years later in the middle of the country somewhere. But at the time, skeptics like Ben Franklin were not amused. He and Lavoisier read up on some of the skeptical writings of the 1500s, when the Catholic Church in Europe was getting very into exorcism, and the way that “trick trials” were set up as placebos. They set up their own experiments. Here’s a description:
The commissioners conducted several tests to determine whether animal magnetism was real or imagined. In one experiment, they tricked a young woman into believing that Mesmer disciple Charles d’Elson was in an adjacent room, directing animal magnetism toward her through a closed door. The woman responded by falling into convulsions and biting her hand so hard she left a mark. Another young woman drank water she believed to have been magnetized, but wasn’t. She fainted, and was given a bowl of water to drink to revive her — water that, unbeknownst to her, had been “magnetized.” That bowl of water had no effect.
Of course, Franklin’s debunking work couldn’t hold a Virgin Mary prayer candle to the iron-clad grasp that the church had over the people. Plus, at a time when people didn’t actually have real cures for the things that were wrong with their brains, God was kind of the only guy to turn to. If you couldn’t cast the demon out, you’d just have to live with it.
Exorcism is still considered a valid treatment in many settings, though the Catholic Church has tried to keep it relatively limited because of its potential for abuse. Plus, I think they realize the ways in which modern medicine and psychiatry have changed the landscape with regard to diagnosing and treating people. Psychiatric drugs, brain scans, and better understandings of the way the brain and body interact have reduced the number of unexplained phenomenon.
And yet, exorcism still looms large, in no small part because of the enduring cultural images surrounding it. As always, I like to look at recent and recent-ish texts, like literature and film, to see how the public was exposed to and reacted to ideas surrounding mental health. And if we’re talking about faith healing and the role of the clergy in mental healthcare, we have to look at the crown jewel: The Exorcist.
“That was the ‘old’ Church. This is the new?”
When most of us think of The Exorcist, we think of a child actress gouging herself with a crucifix and vomiting some kind of horrendous green shit. The movie is a horror film, meant to terrify the audience with both spiritual creepiness and jump scares and also some gross effects. But Pete Blatty’s The Exorcist, the book published in 1971, was, according to the author, wasn’t designed to terrify the reader (much). Instead, he wrote later, his purpose was to instill hope. He called the book’s central theme “the mystery of goodness.”
Writing about the book in America magazine, a Jesuit publication, Blatty tried to correct the idea that the Exorcism is just about, well, an exorcism. Instead, he wrote, it was designed to be a meditation on good and evil in people — and how we help each other in times of great spiritual need.
…the fact of the matter is that the film deals precisely with Satan’s most potent attack on the race: the inducement of despair. It is aimed at those around the little girl, the observers of the possession…Faith has more to do with love than with levitating beds.
I think that this is really interesting in the context of exorcism writ large. Often in mental health settings, like state hospitals and church-run asylums, exorcisms were used in a punitive manner; the person just would not get better, thus, they needed to be whacked with fists and doused with holy water and yelled at.
Instead, says Blatty — a Jesuit himself — the exorcism in the book (and the film, to a lesser extent) is conducted out of love. It’s conducted both to save the child and to instill faith in the people around her.
Church Counseling: Still Not a Substitute for Science
This is hardly bygone quackery, though. Using the power of Christ to compel a person toward sanity is still pretty popular. There’s a lot of horseshit “counseling” offered in fundamentalist circles that is, ah, not good.
True exorcism — like the kind performed by a priest — is also still very much a thing. However, as one paper published in 1987 claimed, “generally it appears that the range of disorders attributed to demonic possession has gradually narrowed.”
An article in The Atlantic from a couple of years ago reported that one exorcism professional in Indianapolis receives close to 2,000 requests per year. That’s in part because a lot of priests and members of the Catholic Church don’t mess with Satan like that, so the demands end up funneling to just a handful of people.
From the article:
Catholic priests use a process called discernment to determine whether they’re dealing with a genuine case of possession. In a crucial step, the person requesting an exorcism must undergo a psychiatric evaluation with a mental-health professional. The vast majority of cases end there, as many of the individuals claiming possession are found to be suffering from psychiatric issues such as schizophrenia or a dissociative disorder, or to have recently gone off psychotropic medication.
This Atlantic article also brings up a good point — not on purpose, but it made me think — about the reason that people might seek spiritual guidance/yelling, which is that Western medicine is expensive and also suuuuuucks.
The prevalence of exorcisms — or likelihood that you’d be the subject of an exorcism — has varied widely in the United States. Charismatic churches have historically been more likely to practice exorcisms because it’s already in the vein of what they expect from church, from God, and from one another. I suspect that those raised in these kinds of churches — the ones where people spoke in tongues and often saw examples of faith healing — were more likely to view themselves are cured or at least improved if they were the subject of an exorcist because confirmation bias is a very strong drug.
In this way, exorcism kind of reminds me of people taking horse dewormer instead of getting a very normal inoculation. When trust in institutions like, you know, science and medicine, wane, people tend to turn toward alternatives, like essential oils. And yes, having holy water flung on them.
One former psychiatrist who had taken part in many exorcisms even told the LA Times way back in 1985 that “there are a lot of psychiatric disorders far more serious and difficult to treat than possession.”
So I can’t fully disregard the desire for exorcisms — it’s hard to even get an appointment with a shrink. At the time of this writing, I haven’t been able to get my ADHD for about a week and it makes me feel like my entire head is exploding. If I could call a guy in a long black dress to wave a stick in my face and heal me?
Yeah, I might give it a go.