Possession as a clinical phenomenon: a critique of the medical model

Possession by evil spirits should not be reduced to a medical diagnosis like psychosis or epilepsy. A broader understanding requires integrating the phenomenology of religion with clinical psychology. The structure of possession involves an interaction between cognitive-linguistic and emotional-affective levels. An individual's biochemically conditioned intense feelings must be related to how their subculture defines those feelings. Religious language offers a way to verbally handle the unstructured, terrifying aspects of developing psychosis, describing personal transformation as a dynamic between mythological representations of evil and intrapsychic anxiety.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The focus of this article is on the individual's specific experience of his personality being possessed, either partially or completely, momentarily or for an extended period of time, by evil spirits. It must be seen as necessary to supplement the narrow medical model for interpreting states of possession. The clinically interested psychologist of religion, in particular, needs consider aspects of the phenomenology of religion and clinical psychology in order to gain a broader understanding of this phenomenon. To declare that possession experiences are "nothing but psychosis, mania, epilepsy or schizophrenia, are examples of this type of over-simplification. The structure of possession can above all be understood as an interaction between a cognitive, linguistic level, and an emotional, affective level. Only if one unites these two levels can one attain a deeper understanding of the individual's possession experience. It is, in other words, important to remember that to increase understanding of the structure of possession, we must relate the individual's (bio-chemically conditioned) intensive feeling experience to the surrounding subculture's way of defining these intensive feelings. Religious language provides one way of dealing verbally with the unstructured and terrifying aspects of a developing psychosis. It is, for example, possible to describe the personal transformation as a dynamic relationship between the verbal representatives for evil or the Evil One in the world of mythological language, and the intrapsychic, anxiety-filled emotive state, regardless of whether this inner state is considered to be the result of neurosis, psycho-sis, or the consequence of intensive suggestion.