2 I have followed the Revised Version in this sentence only, as it is in accordance with the text used by the author. Moffat’s version, which I have otherwise used, reads: “There he could not do many miracles owing to their lack of faith” (TRANS.).
1 Lucian, The Lover of Lying (), 16. Complete works, ed. C. Jacobitz, Teubner series.
1 Flavius Philostratus, Works, iii, 38, ed. Westermann, Paris, 1849. There is a trans. by E. Berwick, 1809. Apollonius of Tyana was himself a companion of Jesus. Given the romantic character of the whole biography, it is much more proper to regard this narrative as a typical example of cases of possession seen by Flavius Philostratus than as an historical document.
2 Cyril, Catechisms, xvi, No. 15, Engl. Trans., The Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril, in Library of the Fathers (Oxford, 1839).
1 S. Zenones Episcopi Veronœ Sermones, Ed. Ballerini, 1739, i, 16, c. 3.
2 Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, book x (Migne’s Patrology, vol. lxxi).
3 Vita S. Galli, lib. ii, c. 24 (Pertz, Monumenta Germaniœ historiœ, vol. ii, p. 26).
4 Brother Thomas of Celano, Vita prima et secunda S. Francisci Assisiensis, Rome, 1880, cap. iii. De demoniacis (Rome edit., 1906, p. 142). There is a translation by A. G. Ferrers Howell, The Lives of St. Francis, London, 1908.
1 J. Kerner, Geschichten Besessener neuerer Zeit, Stuttgart, 1834, p. 122.
1 M. Hartmann, S. M. Andreä Hartmanns Hauspostill, 1745, quoted by J. Kerner, ibid., p. 107.
1 J. Kerner, Nachricht von dem Vorkommen des Besessenseins, Stuttgart, 1836, p. 27.
2 A. Harnack, Medizinisches aus der ältesten Kirchengeschichte in Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 3rd edit., Leipzig, 1915, vol. i, p. 137. W. Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien, Göttingen, 1901, p. 25.
CHAPTER I
SOURCES
AFTER these preliminary historical remarks we shall now pass to psychological considerations proper, casting a rapid preliminary glance over the materials on which a psychological study may be based.
Possession has been an extremely common phenomenon, cases of which abound in the history of religion. Only where a high degree of civilization prevails does it disappear or retreat into the shadows. The number of detailed accounts is by no means proportionate to this frequency; in the majority of cases, as in the Δαιμovιζóμєνοι of the New Testament, the narratives are so short that no psychological explanation can be founded upon them. Happily we possess a series of sufficiently complete accounts; during the last centuries, in proportion as we approach the present one, their number has become appreciable, and it is not uncommon to light upon matter of this kind when looking through theological and psychiatric literature. Just as states of possession have a general typical resemblance, the same may be said of the relevant documents. The bibliography scattered through this book forms an index to a great number of these, and I shall here confine myself to mentioning those few which constitute sources of the first importance; they are for the use of the reader who desires to consult original documents of a more detailed nature.
The facilities for an analysis of possession are much inferior to those enjoyed by the student of states of ecstasy. For these latter we possess a mass of sources, autobiographical in the widest sense of the word. Autodescriptions of possession are, on the contrary, extremely rare. No one, of course, can say what surprises may await us in the sheaves of manuscripts belonging to the Middle Ages and later centuries now buried in libraries; but judging by what has already been rediscovered we must abandon hope of seeing good accounts brought to light, even in very limited numbers. This poverty of autodescriptive narratives has a profound psychological reason which springs from the very nature of possession. We are to some extent dealing with states involving a more or less complete posterior amnesia, so that the majority of victims of possession are not in a condition to describe it. It is therefore necessary a priori to avoid confining ourselves to autodescriptive sources, and to regard this matter as one in which concessions must be made. Not only material coming from observers who have seen in possession purely and simply a morbid psychic state will be regarded as admissible; the most interesting and detailed accounts come precisely from authors who believed in the reality of possession, and when they combine exact observation with good description may very well be used in spite of the writers’ outlook.
To the principal sources belong old journals kept by two Swabian doctors of the school of Schelling: Kerner and Eschenmayer, who made therein careful notes of their cases in a manner so admirable as to give a clear picture of the states. Both these authors have a demonological point of view in harmony with the spirit of the last days of romanticism; they believe in the existence of demons, and their invasion of the soul and organism of human beings. Their three works are:
Justinus Kerner, Geschichten Besessener neuerer Zeit. Beobachtungen aus dem Gebiete kakodämonisch-magnetischer Erscheinungen, nebst Reflexionen von C. A. Eschenmayer über Besessensein und Zauber. Stuttgart, 1834.
The first part appeared under the title: Die Geschichte des Mädchens von Orlach, Stuttgart, 1834. Reprint “with a retrospective historical survey by the author, of some similar cases in antiquity, including those in the Holy Scriptures, a literary-historical supplement by Wilhelm German and two illustrations.” Schwäb. Hall, 1898.
Justinus Kerner, Nachricht von dem Vorkommen des Besessenseins eines dämonisch-magnetischen Leidens und seiner schon in Altertum bekannten Heilung durch magischmagnetisches Einwirken, in einem Handschreiben an den Obermedizinalrat Dr. Schelling in Stuttgart. Stuttgart and Augsburg, 1836.
C. A. Eschenmayer, Konflikt zwischen Himmel und Hölle, an dem Dämon eines besessenen Mädchens beobachtet. Nebst einem Wort an Dr. Strauss. Tübingen and Leipzig, 1837 (C. St. Case).
Franz von Baader, Fragment aus der Geschichte einer magnetischen Hellseherin. Complete works, part i, vol. iv, Leipzig, 1853, pp. 41–60.
Gottlob Müller, Gründliche Nachricht von einer begeisterten Weibsperson Anna Elisabeth Lohmannin, aus eigener Erfahrung und Untersuchung mitgeteilt, Wittenberg, 1759 (L. Case).
Of great importance is the case of the mystic Surin (sixteenth century). Details may be found in: Aubin, Cruels effets de la vengeance du Cardinal Richelieu ou Histoire des diables de Loudun, Amsterdam, 1716 (cf. particularly pp. 215 sq.)—Delacroix, Études d’histoire et de psychologie du mysticisme, Paris, 1908, pp. 328–344—Henry-Marie Boudon, La vie du R. P. Seurin ou l’homme de Dieu, Chartres and Paris, 1689.
In addition the Bibliothèque diabolique, published at Paris from 1882 onwards by the pupils of the great Parisian clinician Charcot, is of considerable value; it has rendered accessible a mass of old writings, partly printed and partly manuscript. We will cite:
Vols. i and ii: Jean Wier (Johann Wier or Weyer, a physician, the first adversary of belief in witchcraft, 1516–1558), Histoires, disputes et discours des illusions et impostures des diables, des magiciens infâmes, sorcières et empoisonneurs, des ensorcelez et démoniaques et de la guérison d’iceux, Paris, 1885 (Orig. edit.: De prœstigiis dœmonum et incantationibus ac veneficiis, Bâle, 1563).
Vol. iv (Anonymous): La possession de Jeanne Féry (1584), Paris, 1886.
Particularly interesting is book v: Sœur Jeanne des Anges, supérieure des Ursulines de Loudun (seventeenth century), Paris, 1886. In this work we have the autobiography of a case of possession which has acquired historic importance.
We must also quote the translation of the work De magorum Dœmonomania, of the famous state philosopher Bodinus (Hamburg, 1698), in which several detailed cases will be found.
The following works also contain interesting isolated cases:
F. Sebastian Michaelis, Histoire admirable de la possession et conversion d’une pénitente, Paris, 1613.
A. van Gennep, Un Cas de possession, “Archives de psychologie,” X, 1911, pp. 88–92.
Pfarrer Blumhardt, Krankheitsgeschichte der G. D. in Möttlingen (h
ysteria gravissima); printed in full by Theodor Heinrich Mandel, Der Sieg von Möttlingen im Lichte des Glaubens und der Wissenschaft, Leipzig, 1896, pp. 16–87.
This is the first complete impression of this remarkable “case-history” (it is untrustworthy as regards a number of points which are for us without importance), only previously known to us by fragments inserted in the biographical notice of Friedr. Zündel (2nd ed. Zürich-Heilbronn, 1881). Thomas Freimann has given, under the title Die Teufelaustreibung in Möttlingen, a reproduction which is incomplete and full of inconsistencies (taken, perhaps, from one of the numerous copies in circulation of the Blumhardt original, which was an official deposition).
Anonymous, Wahre Geschichte der Befreiung eines vom Teufel Besessenen, translated from the review Der Missionar, edited by a learned Catholic society with headquarters at the Palazzo Moroni in Rome (Borgo Vecchio, 165), Aix-la-Chapelle, 1882, 2nd ed. 1887).
Anonymous, Am Ausgang des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Eine Teufelsaustreibung, geschehen zu Wemding in Bayern, anno 1891, Barmen, 1892. This work contains the story of a modern case of possession, told by the exorcising priests (the M. Case).
The work of Ludwig Staudenmaier (Chemistry master at the Lyzeum of Freising, near Munich): Die Magie als experimentelle Naturwissenschaft, Leipzig, 1912, is also of interest as containing a series of personal experiments. There is no doubt that the author, extremely susceptible to the phenomena of psychic control, would some centuries earlier have experienced the most terrible states of possession.
The authors and editors of these cases are almost always silent as to their personal opinions.
In the new French psychiatric, or rather psychological literature, the following works are of outstanding value and may be recommended for thorough study:
Paul Richer, Études cliniques sur la grande hystérie ou hystéro-épilepsie, 2nd edit. revised and considerably enlarged, Paris, 1885.
Pierre Janet, Un Cas de possession et d’exorcisme moderne, in Névroses et idées fixes, Paris, 1898, vol. i, pp. 375–406.
Aug. Lemaître, Fritz Algar, histoire et guérison d’un désordre cérébral précoce, “Archives de psychologie,” v, 1906, pp. 73–102.
As regards ancient literature, one of the best works for those who study these problems, although it is not, properly speaking, written from the psychological point of view, is L. F. Calmeil’s great book: De la folie considérée sous le point de vue pathologique, philosophique, historique et judiciaire, depuis la renaissance des sciences en Europe jusqu’au XIXe siècle, description des grandes épidémies de délire simple on compliqué qui ont atteint les populations d’autrefois et regné dans les monastères. Exposé des condamnations auxquelles la folie méconnue a souvent donné lieu. Paris, 1845, 2 vols. This is a very valuable collection of material. True it does not form a complete survey of the literature of the subject, overlooking as it sometimes does a number of important works. It nevertheless serves as a most useful guide, giving a mass of information direct from original sources. I have borrowed from it more than once.
A great quantity of material has also been utilized by the well-known disciple of Schelling, Joseph von Görres, in: Die christliche Mystik, vol. iv, part 1: Die Besessenheit, Regensburg, 1842, but this work, written under orthodox Catholic inspiration as a corollary to the ideas of Schelling, is lacking to an astonishing degree in criticism of any kind.
It is regrettable that the reproduction, even in abbreviated form, of the materials utilized is impossible by reason of their extent. I can only refer the reader desirous of acquiring first-hand knowledge to the original publications.1 I shall, in addition, make free use of quotations.
1 Here, as generally speaking on every occasion when early sources have to be consulted, the need for the publication of a documentary collection, Monumenta Psychologica, makes itself felt.
CHAPTER II
THE EXTERNAL SIGNS OF POSSESSION
REVIEWING the series of cases which have just been cited, their first and most striking characteristic is that the patient’s organism appears to be invaded by a new personality; it is governed by a strange soul. This is what has given to these states, from the earliest times when we can observe them up to the most recent, the name of “possession.” It is as if another soul had entered into the body and thenceforward subsisted there, in place of or side by side with the normal subject.
This possession is manifested in three ways:
In the first place the possessed takes on a new physiognomy. The features are changed.
The features which, in their habitual state, express serenity and benevolence, change from the moment when the devil appears in this man, and his individuality vanishes in the most horrible of infernal grimaces.…
Of N., who believed herself possessed by the soul of a dead man, it is related:
As often as the demon took possession of her she assumed the same features which this man had had in his lifetime and which were very well marked, so that it was necessary at every attack to lead N. away from any persons who had known the deceased, because they recognized him at once in the features of the demoniac.1
Eschenmayer also gives as characteristics of the C. St. case:
The appearance of a completely strange individuality with features distorted and quite changed.2
… As soon as this demon made himself heard the features of the girl were transformed in a very striking manner, and each time she cast round her really demoniac glances. Some conception of these may be gathered from the picture in Klopstock’s Messiah where the devil offers Jesus a stone.3
Sometimes possession shows itself in an intermittent form but still with change of personal expression: “Thus persons and faces were metamorphosed with unheard-of rapidity.”1
The same thing is true of the principal victim of possession in the epidemic of Loudun. This is what a contemporary eye-witness says:
… that Asmodeus (a demon) was not long in manifesting his supreme rage, shaking the girl backwards and forwards a number of times and making her strike like a hammer with such great rapidity that her teeth rattled and sounds were forced out of her throat. That between these movements her face became completely unrecognizable, her glance furious, her tongue prodigiously large, long, and hanging down out of her mouth, livid and dry to such a point that the lack of humour made it appear quite furred, although it was not at all bitten by the teeth and the breathing was always regular. That Beherit, who is another demon, produced a second face which was laughing and pleasant, which was again variously changed by two other demons, Acaph and Achaos, who came forth one after the other: that Asmodeus having received the command to stay on and the others to retire, the first came back again.2 Monsieur (brother of Louis XIV who went to Loudun to see the possessed women) having desired to see all the devils which possessed this girl appear, the Exorcist made them come into her face one after another, all making it very hideous but each one causing a different distortion.3
This transformation of the physiognomy appears in all descriptions; since the investigations of Flournoy into the case of Hélène Smith there is no longer any reason to cast doubt upon such accounts. She too showed an alteration of the features, which assumed an immediate resemblance to the portrait of the person whom she professed at the moment to incarnate.
Hélène Smith presented a whole series of personalities, some very diverse. The two most important were the imitations of Marie Antoinette and of the celebrated late eighteenth-century magician Cagliostro, both examples of somnambulistic copies of historical personages. Flournoy thus describes the incarnation of Cagliostro:
It is only slowly and step by step that Leopold (Cagliostro) succeeds in incarnating himself. Hélène at first feels as if her arms were seized or did not exist; then she complains of disagreeable, formerly painful, sensations in the neck, at the base of the skull, in the head; her eyelids droop, the expression of her face changes and her throat swells into a sort of double chin which gives her a kind of family resemblance to th
e well-known picture of Cagliostro. Suddenly she rises, then turning slowly towards the person in the audience to whom Leopold is about to address himself, she draws herself up proudly, even bending slightly backwards, sometimes with her arms pompously folded across her chest, sometimes with one hanging down while the other points solemnly up to heaven, the fingers forming a sort of Masonic sign which is always the same. Soon, after a series of hiccups, sighs, and various sounds showing the difficulty which Leopold experiences in taking possession of the vocal organs, comes speech, grave, slow and powerful, a man’s strong bass voice, slightly thick, with a foreign pronunciation and a marked accent which is certainly rather Italian than anything else. Leopold is not always very easy to understand, especially when his thunderous voice swells and rolls at some indiscreet question or the disrespectful remarks of a sceptical onlooker. He stammers, lisps, pronounces all u sounds as ou, accentuates the final syllables, sprinkles his vocabulary with obsolete words or others unsuited to the occasion. He is pompous, unctuous, grandiloquent, sometimes severe and terrible, but also sentimental. He addresses everyone as “thou” and creates the impression that his listeners are dealing with the grand master of secret societies.… When she (Hélène) incarnates her guide, she really takes on a certain facial resemblance to him, and her whole bearing has something theatrical, sometimes really majestic, which is entirely consistent with what may be imagined of the real Cagliostro.1
The classic cases of double personality (dédoublement de personnalité) described by Azam2 and Bourru et Burot3 also attest a change of countenance.
Physiognomy, closely related to and consistent with which are bearing, gait, etc., is an expression of psychic constitution. As every affective phenomenon has its typical expression, so has the personality regarded as a whole. These phenomena, still imperfectly known and relatively constant, may be designated under the name of “expressive stereotypes” as opposed to expressive movements.4 They must of necessity participate in the great change which affects the whole personality during possession.
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