Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Possession

Episode Date: October 28, 2018

This week on Sawbones, we detail all the real medical conditions that have been mistaken for demonic possession and the modern day psychiatrists that are pushing for possession to be taken more seriously. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you.

I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you.

I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you. for the mouth. Wow. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Saul Bones, a Marlotour of Miscite and Medicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy. And I'm Cindy McElroy. It's getting spooky out there. That's right, Justin. It's a very spooky time. It's a very spooky time of year.

And we've reflected that in all manner of ways. But I think this is the first without, sorry, investigations of, I believe the episode is called A Real Monsters. That Riley took one place on, and a few others, but this is the first time that I've seen you city backroig get a little bit spooked. That's right, Justin.

I definitely did. When I was doing research for this week's episode, I realized, and this will become apparent once we get into it, that this is the beginning of many a horror film. I am the science-based skeptical researcher looking into a supernatural topic with great skepticism, and I am concerned as to what's going to happen to me over the course of the next week until November and then Halloween to ever and I won't worry about these things. But we're going to talk about possession and exorcism. And I want to thank Grace and Megan and Sarah and Haley and first and Lisa and Courtney and Kathy and Maggie for suggesting this topic. So Justin you you've probably heard of the concept of possession.

I probably know what I'm talking about when I say possession. Yes, I do. It was a spirit or perhaps a ghost or maybe even a demon going into the body of another person and like taking the wheel. That's pretty much it. And this concept spans cultures and geography and time. I mean, you find this idea that these malevolent forces, spirits, demons, whatever your cultural or religious concept of them is. The idea that they can take us over, inhabit us, control us.

This is not unique to one religion at all, even though I think a lot of us, when we think about the word exorcism, immediately reflect on the exorcist and, you know, the kind of the Roman Catholic. Reposess, Stringlessly Nielsen. Is that what you think of? I think of the hit film, reposess,essed trying to listen to the Linda Blair. I always, and maybe this is what informs my, um, uh, trepidation as I, the more research I did, I'm sorry trepidation. Yes, uh, is that I have been raised in that, uh, religion. You're taught, I mean, that, you know, this stuff might happen. And so it's hard to take a science eye at it sometime. A science eye. A science eye. Bill Nye, the science eye. I know whatever

I say is going to be playing on some magical recording as the demon hunts me in the middle of the night later this week. I know that's going to happen. It's very worried about the opening narrative that she has established for herself by being a disbelieving, skeptic doctor with a background in Catholicism, disbelieving in the power of demons. Like, is she has set herself up for an act one? So we want to play you in the movie

after you're killed by demons, like me. Oh, because I won't be around. I was gonna say, well, me. no, Riley would be a good choice. She looks like they're coming for her next. The demons are definitely coming for her next. They're not going to start with you. No, she'll listen and learn and run. She'll save the day.

So did you know that this is a post to demonic obsession? I didn't know this word demonic obsession, which is when a demon is like, I mean, obsessed with you. Yeah. Evidence would, by the way, is what I would go with., I mean, obsessed with you. Yeah. Everglades. So, like, a creature would, by the way, is what I would go with. I had to think about it for a second. Wow.

Thanks. Yeah, well. Then that's just when like a demon messes with you all the time. But that's from the outside. Possession is like they took over. And there are many people, certainly who believe in the existence of these forces and demons that can take you over. And then there are many of us who don't necessarily believe in that.

And for those who don't believe in the concept of possession, it's natural to try to look for a scientific explanation. So as we look back through history and we see people who are demonstrating symptoms of what was called possession, what could that actually be? And some of those, and again, I'm saying symptoms as opposed to, I don't know, I guess if an exorcist were talking, they would say manifestations of the possessions. Deplacian presence, yeah.

Could be things like cursing or yelling blasphemous things. You might injure yourself, create know create like scratches or bite yourself And then like in the movies you'll see like words appearing in skin, you know Which we usually would blame on the person like scratching a word into themself or something You've developed this aversion to things that have holy or cultural significance so crucifix is or holy water or you know Obviously this would vary depending on the religious background throwing up duty throwing up very hard right puking a lot and head spinning that's not that's actually not like the classic symptom of possession. Oh so the exorcist isn't a classic you heard me hear folks. No I don't mean the movie I just mean film buff city macro is spoken. That movie scared the crap out of me when I was a kid

I didn't get it. I didn't get why I was I didn't I sound too late. I sound like my mid 20s And I just was like looking around like what is scary about this? Yeah, you say that but see the exercise of my memory rose Which we're gonna talk about a little bit which I saw as an adult still scared the crap out of me. Yeah so some of the stuff that I think makes even medical professionals sometimes follow a be misled and go down the wrong diagnostic path, I would say, are things that people can't explain as well. Stuff that's moving around or the bed shaking, pictures flying off the walls,

stuff that people have said happened during these episodes of possession or exorcism. People knowing languages, they shouldn't know, you know, speaking in Latin when they've never learned Latin or facts about people that they shouldn't know otherwise. Like being able to, someone walks in the room and being able to, what I would call do, a cold read on them. It's, it's worth noting that these things are there's not like supernatural claims that we're we're not lending credence to supernatural

claims here. It's just not necessarily in line. I'm sure there are rational explanations for these things. Well, doing a cold read on somebody is I mean, that's something that a false clairvoyant will do in in order to trick you into thinking their clairvoyant will do in order to trick you into thinking they're clairvoyant. It's like a bit in a pee-wee's big adventure when she looks at wallet and picture of his bike in there. Exactly. There's picture of the Alamo and the build board of us. That kind of thing.

It's the same thing as like if you're going to do that stuff in like a live studio audience going around and checking license plates on cars and gathering info based on that kind of thing. You know, it's that same idea. Sexual behaviors, that's a common thing, especially in the presence of like a religious person or an artifact, something that would seem very inappropriate. You know, because that's associated with like demons, right? They're going to do the most outrageous thing. Historically, we've seen causes that aren't necessarily any kind of medical or any kind of cause other than some sort of like political or social motivation. So you can look at certain cases where like a whole group of people were supposedly possessed. Sometimes these were groups of nuns who were demonstrating these, you know, signs of possession and saying awful blasphemous things and acting out in sexual ways and all these things that nuns aren't supposed to do.

And it may have been as a reaction to the religious influences of the time and a way for the church to drive more people into the church or as reactions against overreach of the church, there are all kinds of like political reasons that some of these big things have happened. But what's more interesting to me is like the individual cases of possession that probably had medical reasons that were totally missed and misdiagnosed as possession because people didn't understand it. An obvious one is the plague. So during the plague years,

a lot of people chalked up the symptoms and manifestations of the plague to demons. There's a lot of magical thinking through the plague years. A lot of these are tied into that because I think people couldn't conceive of the horribleness. And it certainly, I think you're exactly right. It certainly seemed that way.

Like everyone was sick and not just sick, but sick and a really awful way that a death that would be horrible for the person who was sick, but then also for their family to experience and then everybody around them would get sick. And I mean, you know, you could see where you would begin to believe in the right cultural milieu and with no understanding of science that,

oh my gosh, this has gotta be evil. This has gotta be de-churns. In response to that, a lot of people actually started trying to perform exorcisms. Just like regular. Yeah. Low costs, budget, we come to your outdoor exorcisms. Like Etsy exorcisms.

That's what I was gonna say, like DIY exorcisms. Or like you could just do it, like put one on your Pinterest board so that you could do it at home. Yeah, you just thought. Is that what Pinterest is? Use fiber to paste my five bucks, come exercise your home.

That's exactly, so people start doing their own home exorcisms and the Catholic church said, well, listen, we don't know. We don't money, that's our money, my name is. That's our profit center. Yeah. But we don't want just anybody doing an exorcism because you're, you know, and this is not, this is one based on like their domination, but two based on the idea that these are forces they don't understand. Sure. And you don't want people messing around

with them. You need to make the demon anger. Sure. And you don't want people messing around with them. You need to make the demon anger. Exactly. So, Pope Paul V published the right of exorcism in 1614, and this is what a lot of people think of when they think of exorcisms like in popular culture today, like in the exorcist. That's what's being referenced, the Roman Catholic right of exorcism. And this was not just a way for removing demons, because that's what you do when you exercise a demon, right?

You just cast it out. This was not just a way to do that, like the actual order of steps and things you say, but a way to diagnose it. And what's interesting to me is they specifically mentioned that if the patient seems to be demonstrating melancholy, which would have been just a term for kind of for kind of

any kind of mental illness of the time before we knew how to diagnose mental illness. But if you think it's that, don't do an exorcism, send them to a doctor. So that was said, even back in the 1600s, that this is- No, no, that being said, of course, is 1600s, so the doctor is not going to be much more used, perhaps even worse than a priest. Go to the doctor so that he can bleed you. Bleed you and give you something that will make you puke. Go to dookie.

Whatever. Perhaps slap a poultus on you. Definitely not help you, but tie a chicken to your arm. Tie a chicken to your arm and let it die. And then you'll, I don't know. Lance the bibos. Go back to the priest, because you'd prefer the extraism at this point.

But what are some of the other reasons that people may have displayed symptoms that were confused with this idea of possession? Some we've talked about. One obvious example is epilepsy. Somebody moving without control of their body, you know, who doesn't remember the episode, who can't tell you why they did or what they did. Outside of the context of a neurological disorder could look very much like they were being controlled by an outside force.

And since nobody wants to have a seizure, you would assume it was an evil force, right? So epilepsy was often confused. You can see where like Tourette's would have been interpreted that way. Someone just saying things, I don't know where that they don't mean to say and they can't control. Again, it's a lack of control is a big thing because if the person is not in control, the concept that your brain could control you in a sense,

which I mean, it always does. It's like part of you. So weird thing to tease out. But the idea of mental illness, that it's not something that you can just talk away or will away, that concept would not have been well understood, obviously, right? So, so anything in the psychiatric realm is certainly going to be confused with possession. So dissociative disorders or what used to be called multiple personality disorders,

you know, and people would say, I impossess. There is a demon in me. And the reason they would say that, and that would often be taken at face value, but, and you think like, well, why would somebody say that? Well, because you hear voices or you see things that you know aren't actually physically present. And whatever you have a cultural sort of structure around, that is going to be the way it manifests for you. Precisely. So whether that's the voice of God or the voice of the devil, it kind of just depends on what they're saying in your head, right? And so if you have

persecutory hallucinations, ones that tell you you're bad or tell you to hurt people, you may believe that you're possessed. And you tell people that and they take you at face value. So anybody with psychosis or schizophrenia, especially people who have these kinds of mental illness, sometimes can neglect personal hygiene. And that kind of thing, and that would have made someone seem other, seem

removed from what you expect human behavior to be like and you wouldn't understand why mania, again, because it can manifest psychotic symptoms and sleep paralysis. Would all have been things that may have easily been confused. And if you look at these symptoms of, quote, unquote, possession, you can see where a lot of these things overlap. I mean, I have spoken personally with patients who have psychotic disorders that have these, you know, that believe they're talking to demons or angels. Now, they don't necessarily tell me they're possessed, but you could see where you might think that. Yeah.

One that we referenced, the patient on the, that the movie, the exorcism of Emily Rose, was, was based on a very fictionalized version. By the way, Annaly Smishell actually had been diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. And she probably, there were doctors who said she also did likely have schizophrenia. So some combination of this neurological disorder and psychiatric illness. But even with that, her family still was wanting it to be something else. Well, they had, it was already, they were very devout people. And so they already had this religious grounding. She began to believe that she was possessed by demon because she couldn't control herself.

And the medications that she was being placed on weren't working right away. And so instead of trying new medicines or assuming it was just the wrong medicine or dose or whatever, they pursued exorcism. She was exercised 67 times over the course of nine months and eventually fatally, you know, perished from these exercises, from one, not from the exercise, but from the amount of nutrition. She refused to eat towards the end, refused to eat or drink anything. And her, it's actually, if you see the movie, what happens is a little different than what

the actual case was, the parents and the priests who were involved were put on trial for this, for murdering her essentially, for negligent homicide. And they were asking for a fairly light sentence for the priest, and then I think essentially, there's like a, it was actually in Germany, there's like a clause in German law that says if the parents have suffered enough,

you don't send them to jail anymore, like basically what has happened to you is already the worst thing that ever could happen. So you're guilty, but we're done. They actually sent them all to jail. Wow, really. Yeah, more than that was being asked for because they felt they were so complicit in what happened to her. There were other similar cases that we could describe today in 1638. There was a woman Dorothy Talby who almost certainly had postpartum psychosis based on modern interpretations of what happened, but nobody would have diagnosed that at the time.

There was a case earlier in the 1900s, actually, where a Romanian nun was taken to a hospital. She was at the convent. She began to have psychotic symptoms. They took her to the hospital. They diagnosed her with schizophrenia, but the other nuns in the priests said, no, we think this is a religious thing and brought her back and exercised her. Instead, she actually also perished secondary to these, to the largely malnutrition again, just because they were yeah, not feeding her because she was psychotic and she believed possessed and they believed possessed and so on and so forth. So these tragic stories underline how missing that and missing these diagnoses, even when we know

they're there, how terribly that can go. So I want to tell you about some more, all this seems very ancient, right? All this seems like it probably died out forever ago. Well, there is this big resurgence of exorcisms in the 60s and 70s and this renewed interest. And I want to talk about why that happened. Before we do that, let's go to the billing department. Let's go. So sitting you were about to delight us all with the resurgence, the revenge of exorcisms. So it's yes, it's really strange to me that you look at this period in the in the 60s and 70s where all of a sudden, I mean, along with like films and things and books and all that, people started doing

exorcisms again. And part of that is that it kind of expanded beyond the Catholic church and like a lot of other Christian denominations. And in addition to other faiths still are performing exorcisms, but just this particular resurgence, other Christian faiths began performing exorcisms, not using the necessarily Roman Catholic right just their own. First time I'm gonna get a lot of heat, I gotta get in on that. I gotta get a little bit of publicity.

Well, it's easy to follow that if you think that God, if you believe in God as a force of good that can manifest itself in humans, then you believe in the devil, maybe as a force of evil that can manifest itself in humans. It's easy to see where we lead you down that road if you are a religious minded person. You could also see why a religion, an organized religion would want to pounce on what could very well appear to be a supernatural occurrence. Sure. In a time where we those are not obviously common place as they were apparently a few thousand years ago, but like why since this is a super supernatural curse, you cannot disprove. A through traditional means then maybe that that would be something that they will

help on. And what's strange to me is that concurrently with spiritual leaders re-examining exorcism and possession, you see this interest in medical professionals. So, one I wanna focus on is M. Scott Peck. He was an American psychiatrist who practiced in the middle eight 1900s, and he believed in possession in addition to psychiatric illness.

So, smart guy, educated at Harvard, went to med school at Case Western, practice psychiatry, but his own kind of journey in faith led him to become very devout. And he began to question whether or not our dismissal of possession wasn't a mistake. And that while most of his patients certainly had psychiatric diagnoses, some of them might actually be influenced by demons. And we are not going to ever be able to take care of them until we acknowledge it.

He used the example of a fellow psychiatrist who was telling him that one of his patients who at the time had what they called multiple personality disorder had like 46 different personalities. And he said he believed that that was impossible. And that this was probably a demonic possession, maybe Judas, because he was a trickster demon. And so, sure. So like there seems like this that seemed unlikely, he began to blame on demons. And his mentor, who was a Jesuit priest, father Malachi Martin, it's a good name, but he's a controversial guy. Dang it. I gotta stop compiling people their names before I know anything about them. I always get to run into that deal.

So Malachi Martin was largely disliked by the Catholic Church because he he believed very strongly in possession and performing exorcisms and he began to suspect that perhaps the hierarchy of the Catholic Church were all under the influence of demons I can't imagine he was an unpopular Dude, although you know said sometimes I think my bosses are possessed right Sometimes I think my bosses are possessed by Tina. TGIF. Walk a walk. TGIF.

Well, that's your, you're your own boss. TGIF. So based on his work with Father Malachai Martin and his own experiences in faith, he began to believe that some people are evil. Evil, just evil. And that if some people are evil, there has to, you know, and some people are good. Good people, he believed, derived that goodness from their faith

and their following the teachings of God, bad people must be influenced by something else too. The devil demons, whatever you want to call it. And he believed that once you were completely taken over by a demon and you were just an evil person, then you were probably something more like someone with anti-social personality disorder, essentially just devoid of conscience, right? Yeah. But possessed people were like vulnerable.

They were still struggling. Possessed people were still fighting for their souls. So he believed that possession was a place where he could intervene. Mm hmm. Um, then this, this had to do with his, it's important you understand. He believed there were four stages of possession. Okay. First is temptation. We're like, you just want to do bad things, but you're not second. What you're thinking about it. But you're thinking about it.

Second is demonic attack when the demon is trying to get inside you. And so like you're hearing voices or seeing things or whatever, like spooky stuff's happening, but it's not inside you yet. Right. Third is oppression when the demon, the way he described it is, the demon has taken control of the suburbs, but like the city center is still intact. Okay. And then the final stages possession

when the demon is pretty much in control, but there are still pockets of resistance that are trying to fight back. So like Buffy season three, the demons, the mayor, the demons, the mayor, right. But Buffy's still there. Right. If the demon was the, if the demon was the mayor and Buffy was wiped out, then you're just evil. And so then it, then the battle is lost. And so then the battle is lost, and there is no point in trying to help that person in a sense. But so he asked Malachi Martin for a couple cases of people who were possessed, because he wanted to try to exercise them and record it, and then eventually he went on to write a book about it. The two cases were two women, Jersey and Becca, both, I mean,

exhibiting clear signs of mental illness. Both had kind of tragic stories of abuse. Jersey was a young wife and mother. She had a history of abuse when she was younger. And basically, she just had lost interest in the roles she was playing in her life. She had no interest in being a mom, no interest in being a wife, just no interest in anything. She believed that she was under the possession of some sort of demonic spirit, some sort of evil force that prevented her from being happy

and being who she was and being a good mom. And so she went to a priest, the priest actually referred her to Peck, who remember is a psychiatrist, a doctor. And he got together a team of clergy and mental health professionals and did an exorcism. Okay. Which is a strange, try,

like she went to the priest, he sent her a doctor and then she got an exorcism. Yeah, oh, no, yeah, the priest, did you hear it? Yeah, he's right. It is, in my opinion, you got the devil. It's good to remember to stain your lane, guys. So they began an exorcism.

The process of the exorcism, and you can read excerpts from this. You can buy his books if you're really interested in this, like just from a sociological perspective, what did this guy do? The exorcisms are interesting because a lot of it is like psychotherapy They would start with praying and everything just like a religious Extrasystem what all religious people are no there are doctors there too and social workers And then there's also just some random people sometimes like one there's just like a a guy So there's rabbi Witcher and then there's doctor Phillips and I'm Doug and I'm here Honestly, I'm here to have somebody

for the demon to leap into. I'm really glad that person. That is why I'm here. I'm part of it. I'm part of it. I money's tight and I can't donate plasma again. So I'm basically here to let the demon jump in. This guy offered me 20 bucks.

To let the demon jump in. So for like 30 to 40 hours total over the course of three or four days, they did these exorcisms on these two different women. And they would take breaks, by the way, and I thought it was really interesting, like the possessed people would take breaks too. And like have coffee and joke for a few minutes and be like, okay, I got to get back to the... Here he comes again. Demonic. Well, and it really was like that. Like, then they would start talking and he'd go, okay, I want to talk to a demon now.

And then they would manifest one of their demons. So the... And then he would talk to... Kind of talk him out. Like, listen, this demon is lying. Let me talk to him for a while and I'll tell you why they're lying. And anyway, through this, Jersey was freed of her demons. Becca, the other patient who had a history of an abuse

of husband and depression and some addiction issues, she, while she felt the possession ended by the end of the exorcism, she stayed under what pet called demonic attack. So she's still continuing to hear voices and such. Even though she felt like the majority of her symptoms had eased, they did do some of the like restraining and things like tying them to the bed and stuff. But it was largely just talking. He declared this a success and published his book and began to urge psychiatrists that we need to include demonic possession as a psychiatric

diagnosis. No, thank you. I think that that's a very bad precedent and I would like to say thank you no, thank you, thank you, please. And what's what's really strange. I'm not sure to put the Mondays in the DSM. I'd rather not. Well, and that's that was what was really strange to me is that I saw this and I thought, well, I mean, this is kind of like that new age time, like a lot of people suggested a lot of weird stuff. Yeah, that's fair. Like, you know, we can move past that. But what was strange to me is that I found psychiatrists not many. This is not the view of psychiatrists or the American Psychiatric Association as a whole by any stretch. But there are practicing doctors who believe that there is mental illness and there is possession and sometimes there's both and that you cannot cure these patients without performing

an exorcism. And they are still doing that. Doctors who are helping perform exorcisms with the appropriate religious officials in the US today. For people who, I mean, let's look, they probably have psychiatric illness that's just as very difficult to control and has manifested itself in some like religiously fixated symptoms. I saw another argument that was pretty persuasive that you could use some of the tools of an exorcism to help a patient who felt they were possessed. And this was not an argument that they might be possessed. It was they're clearly not possessed.

They have psychiatric illness, but there are tools within the process of an exorcism that help you to lay. They're basically working within the framework of the delusion. Exactly. To, to, instead of trying to integrate that into your personality to cast out the part that is so damaging to you. So they provided a framework for that, which I found compelling from a psychiatric perspective,

but still isn't like the accepted theory on what to do with delusions. And I mean, you're supposed to always refute delusions. Like there is not, there is no, I would say accepted method for joining your patient in their delusion. So do you, Dr. McRoy as a, someone who grew up in the Catholic church and is now in position? Do you, where do you stand on the, on all this? Well, I researching this episode, I certainly got creeped out, as I said.

And so I can see. It's creepy when science people, real science people start to link creepings to stuff like this. Yes. I, that is what, that's what shocked me the most was I, because all of it, I was just doing my usual stuff like I can't believe people used to believe this. This is wild. And then I got to the point where modern physicians are buying into this now and using it

as part of their medical practice. And that, I found very disturbing, because it's important that we recognize that psychiatric illness is the medical condition and not, and certainly not a manifestation of evil. That label being applied to patients with illness, we didn't understand whether psychiatric or neurological or otherwise,

throughout the centuries has been damaging, has been stigmatizing, has resulted in deaths as we've discussed, has resulted in the complete marginalization of people. And at the end of the day, doesn't help you. If you, I certainly see a role for, I know I have patients who receive therapy from psychologists or social workers

or therapists or counselors who share their faith background and they discuss that in their therapy. And so I can see we're for some people that can be very effective in healing. But beyond that, it has no role in medicine. Because it's not a thing, these people are ill and they need help through medical methods. through medical methods, not things that you can provide in any sort of religious institution. Folks, thank you so much for listening to the episode this week. We have a book out bit.ly fortslash the solbona's book. You can buy it on Amazon. If you would leave us a review on Amazon, if you liked it, that would assure me a lot to us. Thanks to taxpayers for the use of their song,

Medicines is the intro and outro of our program. And thanks to you for listening. We sure appreciate it. Yeah, thanks. That is gonna do it for us for this week. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head.

Music All right. Yeah. Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listener Supported