Well good luck getting insurance to pay for that "diagnosis". Hard enough when submitting claims for conditions that <i>are</i> in the diagnostic manuals. It's also risky from a regulatory standpoint. I know one doctor who was pursuing "occult" phenomena that a couple of his patients told him about. Someone complained and he was in trouble with his licensing board for a time for his "unprofessional conduct".<p>However there is a deeper issue implicit in the subject, regardless of its actual scientific merit. It provokes a question about what makes it necessary to try explaining things that have no explanation.<p>That's a common and universal human trait. With very few exceptions, humans insist on "explaining" things no matter what, ordinarily people won't tolerate indeterminacy. It's a rare person who accepts "I don't know". But of course not knowing <i>is</i> reality, look at anything close enough and it looks fuzzy. Examined at sufficient level of detail, everything is ambiguous.<p>When patients present with unusual (to the interviewer) ideas, perceptions or feelings, quite likely it will defy classification geared toward frequent, typical events. In that instance the response to "what is going on with me?" should be "I don't know" when one doesn't know. Resorting to "explanatory" mythologies, including psychoanalytic theory, or occultism, only obscures reality. Far better to skip "explaining" given the impossibility of avoiding unavoidable uncertainty.<p>We can and should say what we observe of phenomena and their related similarities and differences. That set of observations is the valuable basis of what we know and can act on. There are limits to knowledge, particularly that asking "why?" does not terminate. It takes courage to face that the only answer we'll ever get is that there is no answer.
I'm a religious person, but I don't think "demonic possession" has any place in any type of mental illness classification. Proving the existence of God is impossible. Proving the existence of demons and/or evil spirits is tantamount to proving the existence of God.
Is it possible that this Doctor has witnessed demonic possession? Yes. But more likely, the person just has severe mental problems. There is no evidence of it other than anecdotal evidence, and it is unscientific to just throw your arms up and say "dang, that's hard to explain, must be an evil spirit".
I could understand "checking under the bed" to calm the patient's nerves from a purely consequentialist standpoint, but legitimately saying "I don't know, could be demons" is A: saying nothing at all as it could be anything currently unexplainable and B: lending too much credence to a specific unverifiable "cause". As others have said, demons of the gaps. It's not an intelligent position and not particularly interesting.<p>I wish we could all just get to a point where we answer "I don't know" with "We'll find out" instead of "<Popular mythology>!"
As for speaking in tongues, glossolalia is a well documented (non-supernatural) phenomenon: <a href="http://skepdic.com/glossol.html" rel="nofollow">http://skepdic.com/glossol.html</a>, usually associated with mental illness.<p>As for the hidden knowledge claims, the author should have consulted James Randi, who during his career, always managed to boil such fantastic claims down to sometimes ingenious and sometimes hilariously simple techniques used by the "practitioner". AFAIK, he never lost his $1 million bet.
This article seems like click bait. There are no references to any case studies or patients. Also, despite psychiatry being grounded in the objective, there is still a subjective level of interpretation in the results. "Misunderstanding Psychiatry (and Philosophy) at the Highest Level" (<a href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/misunderstanding-ps..." rel="nofollow">http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/misunderstanding-ps...</a>) is a good article about this.
I'm very skeptical of this article. Has any of his patients been reviewed by other reputable psychiatrists? To actually verify his claims, experiments with statistical data would need to be completed, and the results would need to be peer-reviewed.
"Correctly guessed that my mother died of cancer"... Knew when someone had "unjust pride"...
Well, take WHO statistics, and use most probable case. Do it in the group, and as you tell people stuff, monitor others for face expressions or ques, because cases will repeat amongst audience. Learn to say a couple of latin sentences. The art of scamming is profound. Demonic posession is not.
To misquote another noted psychiatrist: "sometimes a goth is just a goth"<p>The public interest in "possession" seems to be rising linearly with the practitioners of exorcism. This doctor seems to condemn exorcists of different faiths though - the horrific re-birth deaths that are a throwback to "if she dies, then she wasn't a witch, so it's ok because her soul is good" - without producing any evidence that non-catholic exorcism has a greater success rate.<p>As an aside, there's is a whole slew of similar click bait medical articles on WaPo, which seems really out of character for an established news source...
Related somewhat to this, religious fanaticism, misdiagnosis of mental illness, and what can come out of it, I recommend this movie:<p>Beyond The Hills -- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258281/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258281/</a><p>It is inspired by a real life story of a young nun who ended up crucified and killed due to "excorcism" performed on her:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanacu_exorcism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanacu_exorcism</a>
I am always surprised at how much the daemons avoid cameras, physicists and others hard-rooted skeptics (the ones who will not go bonkers when there is a show going on). This is a very good strategy.
He admits he hasn't witnessed a levitation himself ...<p><pre><code> (I have not witnessed a levitation myself, but half a dozen people
I work with vow that they’ve seen it in the course of
their exorcisms.)
</code></pre>
... yet he presents the <i>fact</i> of levitation as "evidence" further on, because he simply accepts the word of people who say they've seen these supernatural events.<p><pre><code> As a man of reason, I’ve had to rationalize the seemingly irrational.
Questions about how a scientifically trained physician can believe
“such outdated and unscientific nonsense,” as I’ve been asked,
have a simple answer. I honestly weigh the evidence.
I have been told simplistically that levitation defies the
laws of gravity, and, well, of course it does! We are not dealing
here with purely material reality, but with the spiritual realm.
</code></pre>
He honestly weighs evidence he's never seen? "Levitation," along with the other parlor tricks the doctor describes, have been the mainstay of psychics, con-artists and magicians for centuries. Everything he describes is a trick that people can go to Las Vegas and pay to see, and everything else is speculation.<p>Physician, heal thyself.
Terrifying that he has some power to detain people against their will; or to force people to take medication against their will.<p>> I’m a man of science and a lover of history; after studying the classics at Princeton, I trained in psychiatry at Yale and in psychoanalysis at Columbia.<p>Physicists at CERN talk about the lengths they go to to prevent cognitive bias. It'd be great of other people stopped thinking "I'm a person of science, thus less open to these biases than other people."<p>> That background is why a Catholic priest had asked my professional opinion, which I offered pro bono, about whether this woman was suffering from a mental disorder.<p>Why is he talking about someone's medical status to other people? In England he's committed an offence.<p>> So I was inclined to skepticism. But my subject’s behavior exceeded what I could explain with my training.<p>> This was not psychosis;<p>This bit is fine. "I'm a doctor who specialises in mental illness. This doesn't match any mental illness I've seen before, and isn't in my diagnostic manual".<p>> it was what I can only describe as paranormal ability. I concluded that she was possessed.<p>This bit? FFS.
I've witnessed particularly strange bugs in code that's outside my diagnostic abilities and training. My Catholic priest also finds the code to be violently unmanageable at times.<p>After reading this article, I'm contemplating authoring a book on demonic code. Because, if I can't fix it, I could at least get rich writing.<p>PS: This message is approved by the deamon possessing the code.
I'm not religious now, but grew up in an extremely religious (southern baptist) household. When I was young, my mother, family, and friends told me stories of demons and demonic possession -- and I was terrified. I sometimes prayed myself to sleep. As I grew older (into my teens), this fear was replaced with an unencouraged, autonomic disinterest in Christianity.<p>In short, my experiences have taught me that some people are not wired for religion. Perhaps some of those disinterested folk find it more advantageous to say "possessed by demons" than "not otherwise specified."
I am willing to at least consider the possibility that non-physical beings might exist, and that they might be both able and willing to influence a human's actions in ways that appear malevolent.<p>Going from that to asserting that said beings are literal demons sent by Satan to corrupt mankind seems like a stretch, and makes me question this guy's objectivity (even) more than I might otherwise. Even assuming all his accounts are literally true, the existence of people with paranormal abilities and psychotic symptoms shows only that paranormal abilities exist and may be correlated with psychosis.<p>If nothing else, the stereotypical "possessed" behavior is <i>exactly the opposite</i> of what you'd expect a literal hell-demon to do. If the Devil was real and wanted to tear down God and religion, he'd make the possessed act like reasonable, well-spoken atheists, not this mumbo-jumbo routine that seems calculated to scare people into going to church.
My prior probability of the existence of demonic possession is very close to 0, so until I see better evidence than a few dubious anecdotes (that always have explanations for why we can't capture supposed paranormal activity on camera), my posterior probability will remain very close to zero.
The world has gone bonkers. This guy should have his doctor's license revoked, to avoid cases like this: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anneliese_Michel" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anneliese_Michel</a><p>And any engineer talking about possibility of "demonic posession" seriously must have his diploma cancelled as well.
The full title (for me at least) reads "As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. Also, I help spot demonic possession."<p>The HN title reads "As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. And sometimes, demonic possession." This suggests (via linguistic ellipsis) that the psychiatrist diagnoses demonic possession. However, he explicitly does not.<p>> I technically do not make my own “diagnosis” of possession but inform the clergy that the symptoms in question have no conceivable medical cause.<p>This is an interesting distinction. Of course it would be ridiculous, backwards, and unscientific for a medical professional to 'diagnose' someone with demonic possession. But to admit that the symptoms are outside the scope of modern psychiatry seems a more reasonable reaction.