What is mental illness?

Get Complete Project Material File(s) Now! »

Psychological Theories of Spirit Possession

Chapter 3 describes the historic development of these psychological theories that are attributed for the phenomenon spirit possession. It exist a variation of attempts to explain this phenomenon out of the history from Freud and Jung to the current transpersonal psychology, conventional medical as well as recent attempts to explain as Weak Quantum Theory, the Model of Pragmatic Information and the parapsychological perspective.
Since the 19th century researchers have been trying to experimentally prove the existence of paranormal phenomena and as well as divination, bewitchment, psychic reading, there is spirit possession. Theories and models have been developed in order to draw our understanding as close as possible to these phenomena. What one has to bear in mind, is that the scientific approach to investigations of human behavior, has drawn us closer towards evidence that is observable and tangible. In fact, Freud’s theories, which created tensio n within the academic fraternity, for one cannot prove the unconscious in an empirical manner, and created a sense of dissonance between what can and cannot be investigated. Furthermore, the implication regarding the study of spirit possession is that it has come to be viewed in relation to that which is acceptable within academic traditions, meaning observability. In their book ‘Outside the Gates of Science’, Borderick (2007), Radin (2006) and Jahn and Dunne (2006) provide a detailed overview about the theoretical approaches on this subject, going beyond the confines that scientific endeavour, as it is primarily and readily accepted, provides. The first section of the book is a recap of some of the most often cited evidence for ESP (Extrasensory Perception) starting with the work of Joseph Banks Rhine and his card-guessing experiments at Duke University. Broderick draws a firm line between this and previous research carried out by spiritualists and psychical researchers noting that the key distinction was one of method and perhaps more importantly, cast of mind. He argues that whereas nineteenth century psychical researchers resembled historians or geographical explorers accumulating anecdotes and taking copious notes to construct narratives, Rhine’s 20th century laboratory based approach emphasised scientific standards of rigour and repeatability.
Meanwhile three models have evolved which are currently being discussed and which Belz (2008) presents. These theoretical approaches tread a different path to that of traditional parapsychology. The latter assumed that paranormal phenomena, such as telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis or likewise phenomena of spirit possession, come about through transfer processes of information and energy. Attempts were made to explain these phenomena by using the so-called ‘signal transfer theory’. Beltz (2008) finds that these notions remain very widespread and that they also play a central role in esoteric and New Age concepts. However, and this point she emphasises, no signal of this sort could be found up to now in experimental parapsychological research. Modern experimental parapsychological research has to a large extent said its farewells to these concepts and has developed newer models which are derived from quantum mechanics. Research in the area of quantum physics has revealed completely new ways of dealing scientifically with things which cannot be or are extremely difficult to explain. Beltz finds that these models are clearly more fitting for the typical features of paranormal phenomena. At the Freiburg Institute (IGPP) and at the counselling centre run by Walter von Lucadou the findings of quantum mechanics are taken into account when it comes to explaining paranormal phenomena, or when advising people who report about such cases. For this, as much information as possible is obtained from the person seeking advice and then this is compared, or matched, with findings from quantum mechanics (in particular from general quantum theory).
Beltz explains how the behaviour of the phenomena can be characterised in the laboratory as well as in the field of research as follows: “They appear:
• suddenly and unexpectedly (spontaneously)
• without an obvious cause (acausality)
• to be independent of time and space (non-locality)
• to be fleeting and not easily replicated (elusivity)
• to have a particular meaning (evidence)
• to be made up of reasonable coincidences (coincidence/synchronicity).16
This chapter will look at the spectrum of psychological theories and approaches concerning spirit possession. It will become clear that the schools of thought are spread over a wide spectrum as regards description as well as assessment and interpretations of spirit possession. Psychological theories have continued to develop throughout the course of history and it can be assumed that this process will also continue into the future. Different interventions will be arrived at according to the theory that is followed. A link should be made from the beginnings of mesmerism, from Freud and Jung across to the current theories concerning spirit possession. Before doing this, reference should be made to the thorough literature research of Dr. Pfeifer who in his paper ‘Demonic Attributions in Non-delusional Disorders’ (Pfeifer, 1999) points out that there are effectively two main lines of theory about spirit possession. This was covered in detail in the previous chapters, but will be referred to again here for the sake of completeness.
The first line is the anthropological approach, which basically conveys that the respective culture is closely linked to the understanding and to the theory about spirit possession. The second line is more a medical-pathological approach which is more widespread in the western world. The four main theories (Culture-bound phenomenon, Witchcraft explanations, Hysteria and dissociation, and Delusion) were already presented in Chapter 1. There follows below the development to the widespread pure psychological theories, or the larger main lines of these, which are partly still represented today. The psychological approaches to spirit possession which are dying out due to increasing research development will also be presented. In this way a general overview will be ensured.

Hypnotism, hysteria and subconscious ideas

The roots of dynamic psychotherapy go back to the use of magnetism by Franz Anton Mesmer in the 1700’s, where he proposed a new and different way of handling nervous disorders (Ellenberger, 1970), at the same time rejecting exorcism. In 1775 he made it his aim to show that he could produce the same curses in a person as the famous European exorcist, Johann Gassner. He believed that magnetic energy brought about nervous disorders that resembled spirit possession and he set out to physically alter this energy form. The disorders, he claimed, were caused by energy in the body, in fluid form, being unequally distributed. If equilibrium could be restored, by intervening and transporting the energy and depositing it elsewhere in the body, then the disorder could be cured. His attempts succeeded and led him to the belief that ‘demonic possession’ could be scientifically and rationally explained and that an alternate medical treatment, not involving exorcism, could now be provided. His methods consisted of making magnetic passes with his hands over a patient’s body thus inducing magnetic sleep. Later these methods became known as Mesmerism, but today this altered state of consciousness is now called a hypnotic trance. The characteristics of this trance are (Crabtree, 1985):
– Somnambulist state of sleepwalking
– Dual consciousness and memory
– Loss of identity
– Heightened long-term memory
– Sensory Blunting
– Extreme suggestibility
– Sensorial rapport
– Mental rapport
– Clairvoyance
– Transcendental awareness
A basis for understanding spirit possession in a psychological way was thus laid by Mesmer through his discovery of trance states and his implications that humans have dual consciousness. Jean-Martin Charcot (1838-1893), a prominent hypnotist and neurologist, also played a role in explaining spirit possession scientifically (Ellenberger, 1970). His argument was that possession was merely a form of hysteria and ‘proved’ this by generating and alleviating hysteria through the use of hypnosis. This idea was linked to psychopathology when he maintained that symptoms relate to the exclusion of ideas from personal consciousness: “The idea, like a virus, develops in a corner of the personality inaccessible to the subject, works subconsciously, and brings about all disorders of hysteria and mental disease” (Charcot cited in Ellenberger, 1970, p.149). The devil was a manifestation of these solitary ideas, encountered as an isolated being due to its separation from the central ego. Pierre Janet (1859-1947), a French psychologist and psychotherapist, detailed the curing of a person who was spirit possessed using hypnotism and went on to give a more precise psychogenic explanation for possession. His interpretations were a precursor to the definitions that Freud was to later write about the unconscious:
“Man, all too proud, figures that he is the master of his movements, his words, his ideas and himself. It is perhaps of ourselves that we have the least command. There are crowds of things which operate within ourselves without our will (Ellenberger, 1970, p.370).” Janet named these things “subconscious fixed ideas”, proposing that they were caused by experiences that had been distressing or terrifying which then entered the subconscious and from this followed a psychological illness.
Multiple personality disorders and/or hysteria had, by and large, taken the place of spirit possession by the 1800’s, although random cases of the latter were still recorded. An early discovery that came from hypnotism was dipsychism, i.e. that humans have a dual consciousness, the so-called ‘double ego’. However while carrying out hypnosis, the mesmerists observed that the person also displayed a third separate personality, as well as the waking and hypnotized personalities, which indicated that the mind was “rather like a matrix from which whole sets of subpersonalities could emerge and differentiate themselves” (Ellenberger, 1970). Consequently dipsychism was replaced by polypsychism, the concept that the personality is a “multiplicity in a unity” (Ellenberger, 1970, p.147), thus the ego is made up of numerous sub-egos with each ego having its own memory, awareness and consciousness. Spirit possession, seen as an ego-alien psychic manifestation, could now be understood in psychological terms.

The psychodynamic theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung Sigmund Freud

It has to be first of all said that Sigmund Freud was very sceptical of religion, particularly of Christianity. For him religion was a “conceited rearguard battle” (Freud, S., GW 14, 431-432). Sigmund Freud developed the teaching of so-called demonical neurosis, about which he wrote, among other things, in the book “Eine Teufelsneurose im 17.Jh.” (“A Seventeenth Century Demonical Neurosis”). Even in his introduction Freud makes it clear that one should not be surprised when the neuroses in earlier times appeared in a demonic guise. He criticises Charcot und his claims of linking spirit possession and ecstasy to hysteria and points out that it would have been easy to assign these cases of illness to a more precise diagnosis, namely that of neurosis. For Freud it is clear that “the states of possession correspond to our neuroses, for the explanation of which we once more have recourse to psychical powers. In our eyes, the demons are bad and reprehensible wishes, derivatives of instinctual impulses that have been repudiated and repressed. We merely eliminate the projection of these mental entities into the external world which the middle ages carried out; instead, we regard them as having arisen in the patient’s internal life, where they have their abode.” (Freud, 1923 p.2). Even in his classics ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’, ‘The Occult Meaning of Dreams’ and ‘Dreams and Occultism’ it is clear that essentially Freud was closely connected with the classical scientific world view. Telepathy in dreams or precognition was for him not imaginable and he didn’t allow his renegade pupil Jung to persuade him otherwise. In 1932 he wrote in ‘Dreams and Occultism’:“perhaps there is also within me the secret inclination to that which is wonderful, which accommodates the creation of occult facts”. However it becomes clear that he analysed everything critically. In one thing he finally gave in and in a letter from 1932 it
can be read that he was prepared to believe that something new and important was concealed -62-
behind the so-called occult phenomena, namely the phenomenon of telepathy, i.e the transfer of psychic processes to another person.17 This side of Freud was actually hardly known about during his lifetime, as a protection against psychoanalysis being usurped by the sides of the occult sciences. The temptation to irrational belief in magic and the attempt to derive metaphysical theories had already played a part in his break with Jung who did not think so rationally as Freud about these matters. Academic circles had been deriding psychoanalysis for a long time by alleging it was close to occult practices, and in Austria a law had just been enacted that prohibited occult séances and the forming of spiritist sects. C.G. Jung, Freud’s former pupil, went considerably further.

Carl Gustav Jung

C.G. Jung and his analytical psychology felt obliged to the ‘dark things’ more than any other psychology movement. Whoever knows Jung’s biography will not be able to avoid conjecturing how long and intensively this man concerned himself with the ‘shadowy sides of the human soul’. In her biography of Jung ‘Memories – Dreams – Thoughts of C.G.Jung’ (Rascher, Zürich, 1962), Aniela Jaffé, Jung’s employee for many years, describes the analyst as a person who showed a life-long interest in occult and parapsychological matters. Even while he was studying, Jung read much spiritist literature and for many years visited mediums and sessions where contact was made with the dead. The fascination for everything supernatural was already evident with Jung’s mother, Emilie Jung (1849-1923). She bequeathed a diary in which she reported exclusively about ghostly phenomena, premonitions and other ‘oddities’ that she had experienced. Even Jung’s grandmother, Augusta Preiswerk (1805-1862), was a ‘ghost seer’.
After his separation from Freud in 1912, Jung developed his own approach which assumed that the psyche could transcend time and space. In 1920 Jung had a personal encounter with ghosts which he describes in more detail in the book ‚Spuk‘ by Fanny Moser (Moser.F, p.253-263). Together with colleagues (Schreck-Notzing und Eugen Bleuler), Jung carried out a series of experiments with the medium Rudi Schneider and was an eye-witness to materialisations, psychokinetic phenomena. In the 1930’s he repeated these experiments with another medium. In the preface to Stewart Edward White’s book from 1948 ‘The Unobstructed Universe’ Jung wrote: “I myself have not distinguished myself particularly in this area (of occultism) through original research, but I cannot wait so long to explain that I have observed enough of such phenomena to be fully convinced of their reality. They are inexplicable for me and so I cannot decide upon any of the usual explanations for them.”
In particular in the last ten years of his work Jung worked together with Wolfgang Pauli, a physicist from Zürich who created the so-called ‘synchronicity theory as a principle of acausal connections’. In 1952 this theory became widely circulated through the book ‘The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche’. Detailed definitions are also found in Jung’s papers about essential concepts which are tailor-made for this thesis and will be elaborated upon in more detail in the following sections. Information can be especially found on this in the C.G.-Institutes (Zürich/Switzerland and Stuttgart/Germany), well-known in Europe, and in their libraries.

Spirit Possession

For Jung, spirit possession means that the self is taken over or fully occupied (possessed) by a complex or by another archetypical content. Possession is always for him slavery, bondage, subjection. Through it a person is restricted in the freedom of his will and decision. Similarly to Freud, Jung claims that, for example in the case of hysteria, the human brain is ‘possessed’ -64- by this disorder. He also advocated Freud’s theory that the characteristics of a neurosis in a modern person are essentially none other than the medieval form of spirit possession. However he did not think much about the method of dream interpretation being used to examine the roots of this possession, something which Freud did. In the case of spirit possession, Jung orientated himself towards his so-called theological points of view, which implies that he had more an eye on the goals and intentions than on the causes of human suffering. From a personal discussion with Freud, it appears that Jung once brought up the question as to whether it did not lead to personal implications and possibly could make sense to fall prey to a neurotic possession.

The Shadow

In 1945 C.G. Jung wrote in detail about his understanding of the shadow. The shadow is that which a person does not want to be and thus summarises what Freud had already taught. The shadow is the negative side of the personality, the sum of all unpleasant characteristics which one would like to conceal, the worthless and primitive side of human nature, one’s own second and negative self-personality, one’s own dark side: The evil in a person. Here the Freudian school of thought shows through clearly. Jung himself said that the Freudian method represents the most detailed and deepest analysis of the shadow that is possible to attain. He still however deemed Freud’s teaching about the shadow as limited and argued for a different approach. For him it was important to integrate the human shadow, to accept it. “The goal of analytical psychology in this area was thus to attain a confrontation with the shadow as part of the analysis with the acceptance of the shadow as the aim” (Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1989, p.192).

The Evil

Concerning the concept of evil, Jung was convinced that there were far too many philosophical thoughts about it and that he himself would like to pursue a more empirical way. People’s subjective judgment as to how they experienced good and evil was quite enough for him. Good and evil were for Jung principles of ethical judgments. He was often criticised by theologians since although he held on to the reality of evil, his conception of God was paradoxical in nature. Light and shadow, God and Satan, good and evil were for him a paradoxical unity. Jung discussed these topics in correspondence over a long period of time with a friend of his, the English priest Victor White, but finally they were not to see eye to eye concerning their views on the matter.

Transpersonal Psychology

Transpersonal psychology and transpersonal psychotherapy which builds upon this, try to expand classical psychology and psychotherapy approaches, according to their self-conception, with philosophical, religious and spiritual aspects. It developed from other psychological schools (psychoanalysis, behaviourism and humanistic psychology). Transpersonal psychology tries to describe spiritual experiences, including spirit possession, and to integrate them into existing modern psychology. There are many types of experiences that are observed and these include among other things mysticism, epiphany, altered states of consciousness, possession and trance. John Miller writes for the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that western psychology has the tendency to ignore the spiritual dimension of the human psyche (Miller, 1998). This is where transpersonal psychology begins. Transpersonal psychology however is not an independent concept, rather it is more a conglomerate of diverse psychological theories stretching from Jung (analytical psychology), across to Victor Frankl (logotherapy) and reaching Karlfried Graf Dürckheim (initiation therapy). Names like Abraham Maslow, Ken Wilber and, for about the last 20 years, Stanislav Grof also characterise transpersonal psychology. Much of that which transpersonal psychology conveys and teaches has been picked up and integrated by other psychological schools and therefore encounters increasing criticism from the advocates of pure science. Nevertheless this theory will be presented here since it has a concept that concerns spirit possession.
Because of the central meaning of consciousness expanding experiences (through meditation, breathing techniques, such as holotropic breathing, but also through the taking of psychedelic substances such as LSD), encounters with good and evil deities, spirits etc. are not only accepted, but are also reported about by many representatives of transpersonal psychology, as well as taught and confirmed by clients. “Precisely spiritual people who through various methods find their way into these states of consciousness are the ones who have contact with powers of good and evil. Particularly with the so-called born again and death experiences. Most of the deities which one can experience directly in an exceptional state of consciousness, fall into two clearly separate groups: into the benevolent and benign deities, which are connected with the power of light and goodness, and into the terrible and ominous deities which represent the powers of darkness and evil” (Grof, 2013, p.160-161).

Foreword
Abstract
1 Psychology and Spirit Possession
1.1 What is Psychology?
1.2 What is mental illness?
1.3 How do psychologists diagnose mental illness?
1.4 Cultural expressions of mental illness
1.5 Spirit possession from a psychological perspective
1.6 Interdisciplinary approach to spirit possession
2 Theology and Spirit Possession
2.1 What is Theology?
2.2 What is spirit possession?
2.3 Theological history of spirit possession
2.4 How do pastors diagnose spirit possession?
2.5 Religious and cultural expression of spirit possession
2.6 Spirit possession in a theological-biblical perspective
3 Psychological Theories of Spirit Possession
3.1 Hypnotism, hysteria and subconscious ideas
3.2 The psychodynamic theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung
3.3 Organic psychiatric interpretations
3.4 Weak Quantum Theory
3.5 Model of Pragmatic Information
3.6 Parapsychological theory
4 Theological Theories of Spirit Possession
4.1 Theological Theories
4.2 Theological Theories of Spirit Possession in the Protestant Churches in Germany
4.3 Theological Theories of Spirit Possession in the Catholic Churches in Germany
4.4 Theological Theories of Spirit Possession in Free Churches in Germany
5 Methodology
5.1 Research objective
5.2 Rationale
5.3 Design/Approach
5.4 Sampling
5.5 Participant demographics
5.6 Data collection using the semi-structured interviews
5.7 Thematic content analysis
6 Results and Discussion
6.1 Theme 1: Distinction between mental illness and spirit possession
6.2 Theme 2: If it is a mental illness, how do they proceed?
6.3 Theme 3: If it is demon possession how do they proceed?
6.4 Theme 4: Lack of integrated knowledge regarding mental illness and spirit possession
7 Conclusion 
REFERENCELIST
GET THE COMPLETE PROJECT