The Evolution of a Belief System
Regarding Possession & Exorcism
By Ralph B. Allison, M.D. California
Read Dr. Allison's book: Minds In Many Pieces: Revealing the Spiritual Side of Multiple Personality Disorder
Abstract
Abstract: The question of whether or not spirit
possession exists, along with exorcism as its treatment, is explored.
The evolution of a psychiatrist's belief system that initially
rejected such concepts is followed over a 20-year period. He performed
his first exorcism on a patient who appeared to have Multiple
Personality Disorder. Subsequent patients manifested "lost souls,"
"evil demons" made by "emotional imagination," and Internalized
Imaginary Companions. Exorcism seemed to be effective in ridding some
of these patients with such products of emotional imagination.
Whether or not "spirit possession" exists is still being debated in
the American scientific community. One example is in the deliberation
of that group of anthropologists concerned with consciousness and
worldwide healing practices, including shamanism. "[Michael] Harner's
paper 'Shamanism, Science and Spirits' emphasized the fact that the
existence of spirits was not disproven and, thus, according to
Popper's definition of science it should not be ignored by science,
otherwise scientists would be basing their dismissal of spirits on
'faith.' He spoke in a very logical fashion, about the positive
conclusions regarding spirits, which he came to through his long term
research and participation in comparative experiential
shamanism."(Hriskos, 1999)
In a 1974 paper titled "Possession and
Exorcism: Fact or Fantasy?" which I presented to a meeting of the
Northern California Psychiatric Society (NCPS), I could only cite four
articles in the English language psychiatric literature on the
subject. Three dealt with citizens of foreign countries, Egypt
(Nelson, 1971), Celon (Obeysekere, 1970), and New Guinea (Salisbury,
1968). All authors viewed the phenomena as a culturally acceptable way
to resolve severe psychological conflicts within the person's belief
system. The one article about Americans (Ludwig, 1965) dealt with five
Spanish-Americans and one Caucasian. The Caucasian was a 37-year-old
college educated female with a Protestant upbringing. She had no
cultural basis for her belief that she was possessed by a fat, naked,
male demon who tempted her to become a prostitute and engage in
homosexual activities.
The most complete compendium of stories of possession was by
Oesterreich (1966), first published in 1921. This German professor of
philosophy concluded with a statement that, in his opinion, the basis
for all these cases of possession by demons from outside lay in the
minds of the afflicted individuals.
Any belief system which posits the possibility that spiritual
entities can inhabit the body of a living individual must provide a
remedy. In medicine, this is equivalent to learning how to extract
foreign objects which have entered the physical bodies of our
traumatized patients. Accurate diagnosis of where the projectile is
located is followed by a carefully calculated surgical extraction
designed to not harm the normal tissues of the patient.
In the case of "spirit possession," such surgery is called
"exorcism." Since the "foreign object" is of a nonphysical nature, it
must be removed by nonphysical forces. Therefore, the therapist, who
is physical in nature, must call upon helpful, positively oriented
nonphysical entities ("helper spirits") to remove the "harmful
spirit." This is usually done with words and behavior which symbolize
the desired spiritual result.
The Evolution of a Belief System
Before being trained as a medical doctor at the very scientific
UCLA School of Medicine and as a psychiatrist at Stanford Medical
Center, I was raised as the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, who was
also the son of a Presbyterian pastor. After both my father and mother
graduated from the San Anselmo Theological Seminary in Marin County,
California, they went as missionaries to the Philippines. I was their
second child, born in Quezon City near Manila in 1931. After we
returned to the United States in 1935, my father pastored in several
small towns in California, where I had to sit and listen to his
sermons every single Sunday morning. My father worked on his sermon
all week long, as preaching on Sunday was the high point of his week.
He was an intellectual type of preacher, giving lessons for living
based on Biblical stories. He never tried to indoctrinate anyone,
including me, with any particular theology. Never once do I remember
him preaching or talking about possession by spirits or exorcism.
When, as an adult, I first shared with him my experiences on this
subject, his answer was, "In the straight line churches, if we have
given serious thought, we have said, 'This may be all right for the
emotionally unstable, but as for us, .. . Well, I don't know.'"
During the 17 years before I left home for college, I heard my
father preach "The Word of God," most every Sunday morning. I was sure
what he preached from the pulpit was straight from God, because that
was the way it worked in churches. But I also lived with him at home
all week long. I was aware he was a flawed human being who tried his
best to cope with complex social situations but often in imperfect
ways. I also knew his office well, so I knew the books he read from
which he prepared his sermons. Never did I see supernatural agents
come to tell him what God wanted him to preach next Sunday.
While in medical school, I boarded in the home of a woman, who was
a convert to Christian Science. During our late night discussions, she
tried to convince me that we each had a soul which would continue to
exist after death. I well remember my response. "The only thing that
will exist after we die will be the memory our friends had of us."
That was my belief system at the time, a product of my scientific
education. I had no room in my belief system for spirits of any kind.
The Development of a Psychiatrist-
Exorcist
In 1972, while in private practice in Santa Cruz, California, my
belief system was shattered when I was exposed to my first patient
with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). She was the subject of my
first paper (Allison, 1974) and chapter two of my book (Allison,
1999). She was the first patient to show me her Inner Self Helper
(ISH), a dissociated part of her mind who knew God and all about the
patient and her problems.
Soon after that, another lady showed what appeared to be a hostile
alter-personality, so now I thought I had two patients with MPD in my
practice, an unheard of coincidence at the time. Other than seeing the
movie, "The Three Faces of Eve," I had had no training or experience
in treatment of dissociated patients. But I had learned to use
hypnosis at Stanford, so I was comfortable working with patients in
trance.
This second patient, called Carrie in chapter three of my book, was
in and out of our psychiatric ward because her angry "alter-
personality," Wanda, cut up her arms every time she was rejected by a
boyfriend. Over time, she demonstrated 11 other psychic entities, and
I was getting nowhere in therapy. By Christmas of 1972, I had become
desperate and was looking for any way to stop her from making more
personalities and creating more self destructive crises.
A local specialist in internal medicine, Francis Jacks, M.D., then
put me in touch with Robert Leichtman, M.D. Dr. Leichtman had
practiced internal medicine in Ohio, then became a Unitarian minister.
He was now in California teaching "mind dynamics" courses. As
described in my book, Dr. Leichtman wrote me that he believed Carrie
to be possessed by Bonny, the spirit of a deceased drug addict from
New York.
My initial reaction was one of shock and disbelief. But, as I
thought about my predicament, I had to give the idea of possession as
a cause of some of her problems serious consideration. I had nothing
more to offer from my psychiatric arsenal. What harm could an exorcism
do to the lady? As far as I was concerned, it only meant saying some
religious words to her and seeing what happened.
Being of a scientific bent and knowing how suggestible she was,
especially under hypnosis, I chose to approach the situation as a
research project. I decided to do the exorcism "blind," meaning the
subject would not know what I planned to do. I swore Dr. Jacks to
secrecy. We told nothing of this idea to Carrie or the nursing staff.
Dr. Jacks and I arranged to meet with Carrie in her hospital room
privately, where I would do an exorcism while he witnessed and tape
recorded it.
Carrie had been baptized in a Lutheran church, but she was not a
church goer. I knew no clergyman in Santa Cruz who might be willing to
perform an exorcism. Bringing in an outsider would have contaminated
my experiment by allowing another uncontrolled variable. How could I
bring in a clergyman without tipping my hand as to what I thought was
wrong with her? Being licensed by the State of California to practice
medicine and surgery, I had the legal power of life and death over my
patients. I did not think I needed more credentials to say a few
harmless religious words over one of my suffering patients. I was
aware that I had not been ordained by any church, but I had known my
preacher-father for decades, and most of his closest friends were
clergymen. I couldn't see how a ceremony called ordination could
improve my talents, in the sight of God, more than had graduation from
medical school and passing the state licensing examination. I knew
from my genealogist-mother that I had descended from a long line of
clergymen. Maybe that heritage would count for something.
The ceremony was to be held in a Catholic hospital run by Dominican
nuns. Since my future professional reputation could be at stake, I
dared not tell any outsiders my plans. If nothing bad happened, I
could write an innocuous, vague note in the patient's chart. I had no
idea what I would do if something startling and beneficial happened.
Frankly, I didn't expect that result. But, for my patient's benefit, I
had to try.
I asked Carrie to come into her hospital room with me and Dr. Jacks
for a therapy session under hypnosis. She had shown me no entities or
personalities who claimed to be invading evil spirits. However, in her
chart were some strange complaints I could not explain. While visiting
Disneyland at age 13, she was struck with a weird feeling after going
to bed. Her face was down on the pillow, and she had the feeling she
was being choked to death. Since, earlier, she had almost choked to
death on a piece of hard candy, she panicked. She then had her first
hyperventilation attack.
After returning home to her sociopathic husband following a
separation in 1968, she had a marked increase in her feeling she was
going to die on New Year's Eve of 1972. She had been in the hospital
that night, and nothing happened. But, it was because of that
hospitalization that I had asked Dr. Leichtman for his opinion, and
Dr. Jacks and I met with her in January of 1973. She also had a
constant feeling of evil and doom around her, telling her to walk into
the waves. She found herself walking into the surf, fully clothes.
Once, at home, she somersaulted into the bathtub and landed with her
head under water. She felt she was held there by a force stronger than
herself. She became terrified that she would choke to death on food or
drink. While in nursing school, she stopped eating and was
hospitalized for intravenous feeding. She felt there was a spirit or
shadow always with her. Because of her certainty she would die young,
she felt compelled to crowd into life everything she could.
In her hospital room, I hypnotized her and asked her if a "Bonny"
was present. She repeatedly indicated "no" with finger signals. I then
asked her to "go deeper than hypnosis." She then indicated a Bonny was
present, and she wanted to be rid of her. How I exorcized Bonny is
described in my book.
The actual exorcism ceremony took only two and some half minutes.
It turned out to be the most important two and some half minutes of my
professional career, as doing so removed all the protection of my
"guild" and left me ostracized.
After the session, Carrie no longer had the feeling she was going
to die soon. She no longer had the feeling of the "spirit or vision, a
shadow of something always with me." She now had hope for the future.
I was able to discharge her from the hospital a week later, and she
lived another five years, most of it without being in therapy.
In later discussions, we were able to place the origin of the
feeling she was going to die at the episode at Disneyland at age 13,
with a magnification of the feeling when she returned to her husband
in 1968.
When a call for papers came for the NCPS meeting in Yosemite in
April of 1974, I decided to present this case and report on the
successful exorcism I had done. I believed that one duty of a
professional is to share newly discovered knowledge with others in his
professional guild. It was considered unprofessional to hide new and
beneficial discoveries from others, to keep secret remedies to
oneself. The right thing to do was to share knowledge I had with my
psychiatric brethren. That is what these meetings were meant to
accomplish.
In the paper, I reported on three cases where I had done exorcisms.
One was Carrie, another was a young lady with MPD, and the third was a
woman who saw the Devil around her only after participation in an
Assembly of God prayer session.
The presentation at Yosemite went uneventfully, and no one in the
audience said anything to me about my presentation. But back home, one
of the psychiatrists told the hospital Director of Medical Education
about my talk. He asked me to repeat it at a hospital medical staff
educational meeting. I agreed.
Whereas most of those at Yosemite were strangers to me, those in
the Santa Cruz meeting were my personal friends, doctors with whom I
worked every day. I had never told any of the nuns at the hospital
what I was doing. I was fully aware the Catholic church did not allow
exorcisms accept by specially designated priests after approval by a
bishop. Obviously, I had neither sought nor received such a sanction.
When I presented my paper to my peers, the first question was, "Do
you believe any of this really happened?"
My answer was, "When I am talking about it now to you, I am as
ambivalent as I know all of you are. But when I am with the patient
doing it, I am 100% convinced it's really happening."
To be successful, my belief system had to be the same as that of
the patient -- spirit possession existed and exorcism corrects the
problem. But afterwards, when I looked back and thought about what I
had done, I didn't know what to believe.
At the time, I was Chief of Psychiatry at the hospital. After five
years in that position, another psychiatrist replaced me. I had
welcomed him into the community and shared an office with him, but he
could not stand my patients with MPD. They came to detest him and he
them.
Wherever patients with MPD are, controversy is sure to follow. They
polarized the nurses and doctors on the psychiatric ward into
"skeptics" and "believers." Soon this new Chief's schizophrenic
inpatients were fighting with my patients with MPD. He then formed a
committee to find reasons to revoke my admitting privileges. A meeting
of all psychiatrists and psychologists on the hospital staff was
called to consider their recommendation that my admitting privileges
at the hospital are revoked because I had admitted too many patients
with MPD.
At the time, I had a number of flamboyant dissociated patients, the
likes of which none of us had ever seen before. They acted out
outrageously, both in the hospital and in the community. Some thought
they were possessed, such as "Christina Peters," (Peters & Schwarz,
1978) who wrote about the exorcism I did on her in her autobiography.
With success in doing exorcisms, as well as various hypnotic
techniques I devised working with patients in a trance, I came to feel
quite cocky about my healing talents. I developed a reputation of
being able to handle the most difficult patients in town. The other
psychiatrists steered these hard-to-handle patients to me, without my
knowing it at the time. The bigger the challenge, the better I liked
it. Pretty soon I was "too big for my britches."
When the new departmental chairman called for a meeting regarding
my privileges, I had to take stock of my own attitude. I was attending
a local Baptist church, but not for the religious activities. Sitting
in the balcony during the Sunday service, away from the pressures of
my professional and home life, gave me an hour a week to reflect on my
situation.
During the service the Sunday before the disciplinary meeting, I
was looking for answers as to how to cope with this serious dilemma.
While the pastor preached his sermon, in the air in front of me, I
could almost see the word "PRIDE" printed in bold letters. Then I knew
my most serious problem. I was so full of pride at all the great work
I was doing, I had alienated even those who were still my friends. I
had to "come down off my high horse" and join the human race again.
The new chief had never told me he wanted me off the hospital staff
because I was doing exorcisms. Nobody felt free to criticize me for
that. Undoubtedly the news had made the gossip circuit in that small
town. Only one doctor, a neurologist, took the appropriate step and
confronted me about my actions. He was concerned that I was only going
to bring harm upon myself by continuing in my present behavior.
At the departmental meeting, the hospital Medical Director attended
to protect the hospital's interest. No one had interviewed my patients
or the nurses to find out if anyone had complaints about my hospital
practice. All they could complain about was that I must be doing
something wrong because I had admitted so many patients with diagnoses
of MPD. Any other complaints remained unexpressed and therefore
unaddressed.
Finally, the Medical Director told them that curtailing my
admitting privileges would open the hospital up to a major law suit
from me. I recognized their need for a graceful exit and offered to
admit patients with MPD only in case of emergencies. Since I had never
admitted them except in emergencies, I lost nothing, but they felt
they gained some control over me.
That didn't stop the Chief of Psychiatry. Upon failing to convince
my peers I was unsuitable to continue practicing inpatient psychiatry,
he persuaded the president of the NCPS to start an investigation of
me. A Jungian analyst in San Francisco was assigned to investigate his
complaints regarding my behavior.
By then I had started collaborating with Ted Schwarz to write my
book, so I offered to send the analyst each chapter as it was written.
He agreed to that method of investigation, and I never heard anything
more from the NCPS.
According to patients of mine, this same Chief of Psychiatry told
potential referral sources that they should not send me new patients,
because, "You know, Dr. Allison is psychotic." I have no first-hand
knowledge of why he thought that of me. Possibly my belief that spirit
possession was real and exorcism had benefit was enough evidence of
mental illness for him. We do have a common phrase, "Anyone who
believes that must be crazy."
Even though it is a policy of the American Psychiatric Association
that psychiatrists are not to consider a patient's different belief
system evidence of mental illness, it is easy enough for humans to do.
All of us psychiatrists had been trained when Sigmund Freud's views
were considered "scientific," a word which is the Seal of Approval
even today. While critical books of Freud's theories have since been
published (Webster, 1996), in the view of many in my profession at
that time, Freud could do no wrong. I had rejected many of his views
as incorrect dogma unsupported by my own experience with Americans.
But to go so far as to act as if the beliefs held by unscientific,
backward foreigners that spirit possession and exorcism were real was
going too far.
What I failed to realize has recently been stated by Martin (1998).
"A scientific dissenter should first realize that science is a system
of power as well as knowledge, in which interest groups play a key
role and insiders have an extra advantage. Dissenters are likely to be
ignored or dismissed. If dissenters gain some recognition or outside
support, they may be attacked. In the face of such obstacles, several
strategies are available, which include mimicking science, aiming at
lower status outlets, enlisting patrons, seeking a different audience,
exposing suppression of dissent, and building a social movement."
The 1980 publication of "Minds In Many Pieces," which Ted Schwarz
and I wrote for the general public instead of for "scientific"
psychiatrists, moved this issue onto a larger stage. Now my views were
known outside of central California. An organization now called the
International Society for the Study of Dissociation (ISSD) was formed,
and therapists interested in working with patients with MPD now had a
place to share notes. Most were like myself, working quietly in small
towns, thinking we were all alone with our exotic patients.
Some of those who became leaders in ISSD had been trained in
Freudian psychoanalytic institutes. They had to believe the Freudian
way, or they would not graduate as certified analysts. Some of them
were not happy with my views on anything that had not been pronounced
"orthodox" by Freud, who had long since died. Spirit possession and
exorcism were not approved of in any of Freud's papers.
My role in the development of the "MPD Movement" is clearly laid
out by Hacking (1995). He graciously writes, "The last thing that an
emergent science wants is intimations of Madame Blavatsky, so Allison
has been slightly marginalized." At the meetings, only a very few of
the leaders would even eat a meal with me, much less converse with me.
My requests for presenting workshops were ignored when the
"scientific" leaders were in charge of the schedule. I was allowed to
present a series of papers, but they were always scheduled for small
rooms where the attendance was modest. In recognition of the
sensitivities of the other therapists, I never mentioned possession or
exorcism in any of these papers or workshops. I talked about treatment
techniques which I had found useful, not mentioning that some of them
had evolved from my experiences doing exorcism.
I knew intuitively that any paper with my name on it would be
rejected out of hand by the Freudian trained editor of the society's
journal. I finally tested my intuition by submitting a traditionally
written paper on a legal case, from my prison experience, and he
rejected it as "unscientific." I submitted it unchanged to the editor
of a forensic psychiatry journal, where it was published in the next
edition. (Allison, 1996)
The final evidence of my status was apparent at a 1996 Budapest
meeting on hypnosis. A Freudian trained "expert" and I were on the
same panel. He presented his paper, and then I gave my talk.
Possession and exorcism had no place in either paper. But, when I
finished, he gave his commentary, "Read Dr. Allison's early papers for
his excellent description of the patients. But when you read his
theories, don't believe them!"
I believe that I committed the first sin, in the eyes of my
"scientific" critics, by doing an exorcism at all. I would have been a
proper psychiatrist if I had done nothing, which would have led to
Carrie's suicide five years earlier than it actually happened.
My second sin was announcing it to the guild I belonged to. I
didn't realize that I had sinned in the first place, and now I told my
peers about my actions and didn't even apologize.
My Reasons and Criteria for Doing Exorcisms
Why did I do exorcisms and what criteria did I use when I chose to
do them? The "why" is easy to answer. Sometimes one of these difficult
patients whom no other psychiatrist would treat presented me with an
entity who was talking and acting extremely dangerously, and who had
no apparent psychological roots in the patient's mind. They might
promise to kill the patient's body by a specific time, or threatened
and try to kill me.
Yes, I could call an ambulance and hospitalize them. But I would
still have to deal with them later. That would not solve the
underlying problem. When pure rage and "evil intent" are being
manifested, there is no time for quiet contemplation of therapeutic
options and an intellectual analysis of motives. I had to do
something, and, since I had broken the barrier by doing my first
exorcism and having a positive result, the procedure was in my mind as
a viable option, if all else failed.
My criteria evolved over time. Since I used hypnosis readily, I saw
numerous patients who manifested other entities only in trance. Each
case had to be evaluated as to the most likely origin of the entity
talking to me. In several cases, the entity claimed to be the spirit
of a relative who had invaded the mind of my patient and was
determined to do her harm. In such a case, exorcism was simply the
ordering of that "spirit" to go back to where it came from. This
resulted in an alleviation of the patient's symptoms, and we then went
on with traditional therapy.
Each patient with MPD, by my definition, (Allison, 1998) had a
dissociated Inner Self Helper (ISH) who knew who was what inside the
mind of the patient. Various entities might come out and operate the
body during a session. If one was particularly nasty, but not of a
protective nature, the ISH would tell me that it was "pure anger."
That would be my clue that it was not an alter-personality which
eventually was to become part of the entire personality. Something
that was "pure anger" could and should be removed from the patient,
just as pus is removed by a surgeon operating on a patient with an
abscess. The ISH expected me to perform an exorcism. If I were to
misunderstand its intentions, the ISH would come out and stop me
before I had harmed the patient. Both the ISH and I knew that no
alter-personality could be exorcized, no matter how nasty it might be.
Eventually it had to be integrated with the rest of the personalities.
Subsequent Teaching Cases: Elise
A lady with MPD called Elise in my book (Allison, 1999) was my most
flamboyant patient in Santa Cruz. She repeatedly manifested both
alter-personalities and various "spirits" while under my care. She was
highly psychic and Grade V hypnotizable, as well as a professional
artist with great creative imagination. These are the patients who
present the greatest diagnostic puzzles.
One evening Elise had been gone from her apartment for several
hours. She had called her landlady from the Santa Cruz harbor, several
miles from her home. She had no idea how or why she was at the harbor
among the fishing boats. The landlady was going to fetch Elise and
asked me to meet them when they returned home. I agreed and drove to
their apartment house.
On arrival, I met with Elise, who had no memory of walking several
miles to the harbor. I hypnotized her to find out why she had taken
this long walk. Her body was then taken over by the "spirit" of a
woman who told me she had been looking for her husband and son at the
harbor. She said her husband had left her and taken their son with him
to the harbor at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on the Atlantic coast.
She had gone searching for them at the harbor, and, when she could not
find them, she drowned herself in the Atlantic Ocean. This had
happened several years ago.
She was still looking for her son and had borrowed Elise's body to
continue the search. I told her she had chosen the wrong coastline, so
her use of my patient's body was clearly pointless and inappropriate.
She reminded me of the stories told by Dr. Wickland (1924), whose wife
was a medium with many similar experiences. I decided to use his
method of persuading "lost souls" to go "home" where they belonged.
I advised the "lost spirit" to accept the fact that she was dead
and should no longer be among the living. I had her look to her left
and right, suggesting that she would see darkness to one side and
light to the other side. I then suggested that her relatives were
waiting for her "in the light" and that she should go there
permanently. She finally agreed and departed "for the light." When she
was gone, Elise was back to "normal," just a lady with MPD.
Elise presented me with a number of similar experiences, all of
which ended in similar successful conclusions. We both shared the same
belief system that these invading spirits existed and could move from
body to body. They had their reasons, which they often explained to
me. We also knew they were only temporary residents in her, as I knew
how to persuade them to move on, sometimes with a great dramatic
scene.
Marie in Yolo County
Upon leaving Santa Cruz for Yolo County, California, in 1978, I
soon was treating my next "teaching case" with MPD, a lady named
Marie. She had dissociated at age six months, when her mother tried to
kill her in her crib. After three years of therapy with me, she
integrated all her alter-personalities into her Original Personality,
which had returned to control of her body near the end of therapy, 30
years after abdicating control of it. After last living in human
society as a six-month-old infant, she now had returned to operate a
30-year-old body. As her therapist, I was the only adult human she
trusted. She expected me to teach her how to operate as a social being
in the Sacramento area.
Due to factors unrelated to her, I decided to quit my job at the
clinic where I was treating her and move to San Luis Obispo County.
When I told Marie of my decision, she panicked. She didn't know how
she would survive without my guidance.
In her dissociated state before treatment, she had been a devoted
and involved member of a Southern Baptist Church. She had even been
engaged to the assistant minister for a time. She believed everything
the pastor preached from the pulpit, including his belief that demons
and devils abound in the world and are responsible for most of the
world's ills.
Her body was taken over by a series of "evil demons" during our
therapy sessions. They said they were agents of Satan and Beelzebub,
who had ordered them to kill me. They attacked me physically and
clearly wanted to end my life.
I had spent the previous three years helping her angry but
protective alter-personalities give up their anger at her abusive
parents. But these entities were not like them. All the alter-
personalities had integrated to make the present Marie. These evil
demons were clearly not protective alter-personalities.
Being threatened with imminent bodily destruction, I decided to
exorcize them as soon as I could. They all cowed in fear when I spoke
the words "Jesus Christ." I said a simple exorcism speech and ordered
them to leave my patient's body. They disappeared, Marie calmed down,
and I left for San Luis Obispo on schedule.
Thirteen years later, after retirement, Marie agreed to write her
story with me. By then she had married and divorced her second
husband, had gotten off Social Security Disability, and was fully
employed in a State office in Sacramento.
She explained to me that, when I had told her I was leaving town,
she had panicked since she believed that she could not survive as a
newly arrived person. She used what she called "emotional imagination"
to create the devils and demons which took over her body. She had
hoped that this display would entice me to stay in town and continue
to treat her. At the time, she was the amalgam of all her alter-
personalities, one of whom believed the Baptist preacher's view that
demons are responsible for most of the world's miseries. She imagined
into existence exactly what he had described in his sermons.
Exorcisms in Prison
The exorcisms I did of Marie's "demons" in 1981 were the last ones
I ever performed. I came to San Luis Obispo to work as a staff
psychiatrist at the California Men's Colony State Prison (CMC). During
my orientation to the functions of the Board of Prison Terms (parole
board), I sat in on the hearing of an elderly murderer. The Board
members noted that he had no behavior problems the past year, but that
he had a long record of criminal misbehavior and was also an epileptic
and schizophrenic. They wondered why he had done so well this past
year.
He explained, "Last year I was walking in front of the Protestant
Chapel when I had a seizure. The fellows pulled me inside and
exorcized my demon of criminality, my demon of epilepsy and my demon
of schizophrenia. Since then I haven't had to take any medicine, and I
haven't gotten into any trouble."
I sat there amazed, wondering what kind of a prison I had come to
work in. I also realized that, with someone else doing the exorcisms
locally, I never had to do them again. The current inmate Protestant
pastor was the Rev. Charles "Tex" Watson (Watson, 1978), the murderer
of actress Sharon Tate and the second in command of the Manson Family
gang. Watson later told me that he believed he was possessed by an
evil demon when he knifed to death the pregnant Ms. Tate.
Fred, the Cabbie Killer
After my retirement from CMC, I was asked by a defense attorney in
Fresno, California, to evaluate "Fred," a 24-year-old black member of
a local CRIPS gang. He had killed a cab driver after he and his
brother had robbed him. His brother had tried to dissuade Fred from
shooting the driver, but Fred shot him to death with several bullets,
while his brother was getting money out of an Autoteller machine with
the driver's card. There was no logical reason for the killing.
A psychologist had diagnosed Fred as having MPD, and he was found
incompetent to stand trial. On arrival at Atascadero State Hospital
(ASH), he was locked up for assaulting staff members. They found him
competent to stand trial and diagnosed him as malingering MPD. Back in
the Fresno County Jail, he kept assaulting correctional officers and
was always in chains when out of his cell.
During his preliminary hearing, his sister had testified that their
divorced father had shot their mother in front of all the children
when Fred was seven years old. The mother was rendered a paraplegic
due to multiple gunshot wounds. After the shooting, Fred manifested
two imaginary companions operating his body. One was "Mr. Mann," who
had to be perfect in every way. The other was "Chuck," who was a
bully.
She also testified that she, herself, had created an imaginary
companion who was more assertive than she was. She had this companion
in her until she became pregnant. She also testified that her sister
also made several imaginary companions at the same time.
I interviewed the inmate in an office at the jail while he was
wearing wrist and ankle chains. He was hostile, yelling, and swearing,
clearly acting as Chuck. When I quizzed him about the duties of the
officers of the court, he claimed ignorance. I calmly challenged his
claims of ignorance, since he had known such information when
evaluated at ASH. He arose from his chair and moved to choke me with
his wrist chains. I immediately declared the interview over unless I
had a guard in the room to protect me.
The guard moved him to a bail bondsman's interview room, where I
could interview him by phone behind plexiglass. His attorney ordered
him to behave himself and cooperate with me.
For the next 90 minutes, I had on the phone a calm, cooperative
young man who went by the name of Fred. From his records I had
compiled a list of 19 names reported to be his "alter-personalities,"
including Mr. Mann and Chuck. Fred told me that Chuck considered
himself to be white. He also told me that several of his "friends"
were in the room with him in different locations, talking to him, but
none were particularly helpful. None took over his body during the
interview.
It seemed clear that he did not have MPD, but he had created a
group of Internalized Imaginary Companions (IIC), starting with the
shooting incident when he was seven. Most likely, he felt guilty at
not being able to protect his mother from his father. He created, with
"emotional imagination," all the entities to manage his conflictual
feelings and desires. Mr. Mann had to be perfect to keep him alive in
that family. Chuck was created by "identification with the aggressor,"
his father, and fueled with his anger at that man. Chuck was a carbon
copy of his father. After the shooting, his bitter mother often told
him, "You're going to grow up just like your father." He did. This
mental mechanism is based on the idea, "If I am the aggressor, the
aggressor can't kill me."
Chuck was as much an "evil demon" as any exorcist could ever
imagine meeting. It hated everyone, even those who might help Fred.
Here was another "teaching case" in which a man controlled by a
"demonic spirit" moved it out of his body and placed it on the wall of
his cell.
With one exception, (Bach, 1971) no one writing in the psychiatric
literature has ever suggested that a person could move their imaginary
companion back and forth from inside to outside their body. When I
asked Marie about her ability to do just that, she told me that, since
she made her demons, she could place them anywhere she wanted to.
Conclusions
These teaching cases came to my attention over a span of more than
20 years. I did not start with a personal belief system which included
spirit possession. This was first introduced to me by Dr. Leichtman,
my first teacher in this field. He believed in the concept, as did
Carrie, the patient in question. Whatever the cause of her symptoms,
they were relieved by my short exorcism. To be therapeutic, I adopted
their belief system while I was in that hospital room. Elise, my next
teaching case, was a demonstrator of multiple paranormal experiences
for me. She taught me what a psychic, superhypnotizable, creative
human mind can do. She presented me with several benign "lost spirits"
who needed to find their way "home."
Marie introduced me to the process of "emotional imagination,"
which she used to create her "evil demons." She acknowledges now that
she was totally convinced of her pastor's view of such demons as being
ubiquitous and the cause of most of mankind's misfortunes.
Fred continued my education by showing me how he could move his
demons from inside his body to outside, on the command of his
attorney. If he could do it, then so could anyone else who used their
emotional imagination to make an IIC, whether demonic or benign.
In the process of treating patients with both alter-personalities
and IIC, I learned how to do effective hypnotherapy for alter-
personalities. I reserved exorcisms for the IIC. Just what happens
inside the mind during an exorcism is included in the unpublished
story Marie and I wrote about her life as a multiple.
The orthodox practitioners of psychotherapy have unfortunately
repeatedly considered IIC to be alter-personalities. They also
consider exorcism inappropriate since it cannot remove alter-
personalities. That is true, as it can only remove IIC, some of which
have been made by the patient in the form of "evil demons."
In patients with MPD by my definition, the therapist must learn the
difference between an IIC made by emotional imagination and an alter-
personality made by dissociation (Allison, 1998b). The best approach
to each psychic entity can be made with guidance from the patient's
ISH.
Addendum
The following is the ISSD policy statement on treatment of patients
with MPD, (Barach, 1997) under "The Patient's Spiritual and
Philosophical Issues." "Although patients may experience certain
personalities as demons and as not-self, therapists should approach
exorcism rituals with extreme caution. Exorcism rituals have not been
shown to be an effective treatment for DID [Dissociative Identity
Disorder, the official replacement for MPD], have not been shown to be
effective in 'removing' alternate personalities, and have been found
to have deleterious effects in two samples of DID patients that
experienced exorcisms outside of psychotherapy.
Exorcism rituals may provide a way for some patients to rearrange
images of their personality systems in a cultural syntonic manner.
Education and coordination between therapist and clergy can be helpful
in ensuring that patients' religious and spiritual needs are
addressed."
References
Allison, R. B. (1974). A new treatment approach for multiple
personalities. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 17,15-32.
Allison, R. B. (1996). Simple dissociators in a complex prison.
American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 17, 37-64.
Allison, R. B. (1998). Multiple personality disorder, dissociative
identity disorder and internalized imaginary companions. Hypnos, 25,
125-133.
Allison, R. B. (1998b). Differentiating internalized imaginary
companions from alter-personalities. Paper presented at the ISSD
meeting, Seattle, WA.
Allison, R. B., & Schwarz, T. (1999). Minds in many pieces, 2nd Ed.
Los Osos, CA: CIE Publishing.
Bach, S. (1971). Notes on some imaginary companions. Psychoanalytic
Study of the Child, 26, 159-171.
Barach, P. (1997). Guidelines for treating dissociative identity
disorder (multiple personality disorder) in adults (1997). Glenview,
IL: ISSD
Hacking, I. (1995). Rewriting the soul. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press
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Ludwig, A. M. (1965). Witchcraft today. Diseases of the Nervous
System, 26, 288-291.
Martin, B. (1998). Strategies for dissenting scientists. Journal of
Scientific Exploration 12, 605-616.
Nelson, C. (1971). Self, spirit possession and world view: an
illustration from Egypt. International Journal of Social Psychiatry
17, 194-209.
Obeysekere, G. (1970). The idiom of demonic possession: a case
study. Social Science & Medicine, 4, 97-111.
Oesterreich, T. K. (1966). Possession, demoniacal & other. New Hyde
Park, New York: University Books.
Peters, C., & Schwarz, T. (1978). Tell me who I am before I die.
New York, Rawson Associates.
Salisbury, R. F. (1968). Possession in the New Guinea highlands.
International Journal of Social Psychiatry 14, 85-94
Watson, T., & Hoekstra, R. (1978). Will you die for me?. Old
Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell.
Webster, R. (1996). Why Freud was wrong: Sin, science and
psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books.
Wickland, C. A. (1924). Thirty years among the dead. Amherst, WI:
Amherst Press.
The Evolution of a Belief System
The Development of a Psychiatrist-Exorcist
My Reasons and Criteria for Doing Exorcisms
Marie in Yolo County
Exorcisms in Prison
Fred, the Cabbie Killer
Conclusions
Addendum
References
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