An author quoted by Bastian in 1875 relates the following of Greece:
A very common complaint amongst these people (of Ithaca in the Ionian Isles) is hysterics, which appear in an infinite variety of shapes, often producing such extravagant gestures as to make the ignorant believe the patient possessed of the devil. In these cases the priest is called to frighten the demons and to send them to their lurking-places.1
From the American continent information concerning possession has only reached me in extremely slight quantity. For the time being it is only possible to wonder whether this is mere chance or whether possession in its usual forms has really been rare in America. The substantial mass of documents on states analogous to possession in that country does not lead us to suppose that conditions have become so unfavourable to the genesis of true possession. The strongly positive trend of American Christianity must also be considered, and I should be inclined for this reason to think that possession was not rare in the early days of the settlers, and that if the sources of North American social history were carefully explored they would afford divers proofs of this. Such research would, however, only be fruitful if carried out on the spot, for early American literature is well known to be only very sporadically represented in the libraries of Europe. This is particularly true of anything bearing on the religious life, and Eduard Meyer, for example, could not have written in Europe his History of the Mormons.2 For the moment there is therefore a lacuna here.
A piece of evidence concerning early America which is not without interest is found in Scott’s above-mentioned Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft; it enables us to obtain a glimpse of a prevailing mental constitution favourable to possession.
The first case which I observe, was that of four children of a person called John Goodwin, a mason. The eldest, a girl, had quarrelled with the laundress of the family about some linen which was missing. The mother of the laundress, an ignorant, testy, and choleric old Irishwoman, scolded the accuser; and shortly after, the elder Goodwin, her sister, and two brothers were seized with such strange diseases, that all their neighbours concluded they were bewitched. They conducted themselves as those supposed to suffer under maladies created by such influence were accustomed to do. They stiffened their necks so hard at one time that the joints could not be moved, at another time their necks were so flexible and supple, that it seemed the bone was dissolved. They had violent convulsions, in which their jaws snapped with the force of a spring-trap set for vermin. Their limbs were curiously contorted, and to those who had a taste for the marvellous, seemed entirely dislocated and displaced. Amid these distortions, they cried out against the poor old woman, whose name was Glover, alleging that she was in presence with them, adding to their torments. The miserable Irishwoman, who hardly could speak the English language, repeated her Pater Noster and Ave Maria like a good Catholic; but there were some words which she had forgotten. She was therefore supposed to be unable to pronounce the whole consistently and correctly—and condemned and executed accordingly.
But the children of Goodwin found the trade they were engaged in to be too profitable to be laid aside, and the eldest, in particular, continued all the external signs of witchcraft and possession. Some of these were excellently calculated to flatter the self-opinion and prejudices of the Calvinist ministers, by whom she was attended, and accordingly bear in their very front the character of studied and voluntary imposture. The young woman, acting, as was supposed, under the influence of the Devil, read a Quaker treatise with ease and apparent satisfaction; but a book written against the poor inoffensive Friends, the Devil would not allow his victim to touch. She could look on a Church of England Prayer-Book and read the portions of Scripture which it contains, without difficulty or impediment; but the spirit which possessed her threw her into fits if she attempted to read the same Scriptures from the Bible, as if the awe which it is supposed the fiends entertain for Holy Writ, depended, not on the meaning of the words, but the arrangement of the page, and the type in which they were printed. This singular species of flattery was designed to captivate the clergyman through his professional opinions.1
It is clear that this story corresponds completely to European stories of possession. Whether Scott has any reason to recognize wilful fraud is the more difficult to discover as he does not give the source of this episode. But even if such were the case, there would obviously not be spontaneous invention on the part of the girl, but imitation of the phenomena of possession, well known even at that time, as the story shows, in America. Another story related by Scott2 demonstrates that similar phenomena also appeared there in epidemic form.
Yet one more note on an American case in the nineteenth century. It is taken from Bastian:
Dr. Gray (a homœopathic doctor in New York) relates in the New York Journal (1852) that a spirit which tormented a blacksmith had told him “that until three weeks previously it had lived in the body of a naughty boy, and that while awaiting its return to hell it desired to amuse itself with this young man.” But it promised not to molest him further and he thenceforward refused any further conversation.3
These are the only cases of typical possession which I have as yet encountered in American literature. It is the more probable that their real number is not negligible, since modern American spiritualist literature contains extremely numerous accounts of similar states.
(ii.) IN THE PRESENT
Let us now deal with the more recent past.1
In the modern civilization of Central Europe there are three spheres in which belief in spirits still survives, as founded on possession.
The first is the strict Catholicism which takes its stand chiefly upon the past but also admits modern cases. “Why,” asks Taczak, “must the Catholic firmly believe that possession is still possible to-day?” And he replies: “Because the New Testament accounts of the words and acts of Jesus and His disciples establish as an indubitable fact that possession has existed in a numerous succession of cases and because that is the Church’s conviction.”2
Current Catholic views on possession have recently been the subject of a systematic general review in a large volume by Johann Smit: De dœmoniacis in historia evangelica.3
At bottom the demonological theory of primitive Christian times is immutably perpetuated by the Catholic Church. The change is only in the effective influence exercised by this conception, which has diminished. Affections which would formerly have been considered as demoniacal are now regarded as “natural,” and there is a general weakening in the conviction that there exist demons and spirits of the dead who may be a source of danger to the living. Writings on practical theology show a unanimous tendency to warn the reader that possession should not be too readily admitted.
A case of possession is always a matter for the higher ecclesiastical authorities; it is, in a word, an event which has become very rare.
“When a state of possession declares itself as probable,” says a modern Catholic pastoral theology, “the whole case should be reported to the bishop and it should be left to his judgment whether the grand exorcism should be applied. Every priest has the right to use the simple exorcisms ordained in baptism and the other ecclesiastical benedictions without authorization by his superiors. But for major exorcism when it is to be accomplished publicly and solemnly, as well as for Exorcismus in satanam et angelos apostaticos, recommended by Pope Leo XIII (d.d. 18 Maii, 1890) episcopal authorization is always indispensable.”1
“It is not,” says Krieg, “unbelieving doctors who put us on our guard against credulity, but grave and pious men. And in recommending extreme prudence they do no more than repeat what theologians and eminent Churchmen like Bona have said. The prescriptions of the Church recommend it no less.”2
And the Austrian Schubert expresses himself similarly:
It cannot be contested that possession was often admitted when the state in question had an entirely natural cause.3
The best general survey from the modern Catholic point of v
iew in all its aspects is found in the widely used Handbuch der Pastoralmedizin of Stöhr, in which we read:
The possibility of maladies caused by demoniacal influences must be accepted by every Catholic believer as a fact beyond doubt. At the time of Christ it was a revealed truth: later the greatest doctors of the Church and her legitimate organs unanimously declared that this conception must be considered as an article of faith. So far as the present is concerned I believe, without being a professional dogmatist, that from the point of view of Catholic orthodoxy no one can advocate the contrary view. There are also demoniacal maladies radically different in their etiology from the pathological manifestations due to natural influences, and these human maladies are due, under God’s will, to supernatural forces and the might of evil spirits. If we add yet a second thesis to this definition, namely, that the remedies of the Catholic church, sacraments and particularly exorcism, should be regarded as the most fruitful and the best authorized (although not infallible), we shall have exhausted in this difficult question the strict truths of the established faith, that is to say, what are for us the indubitable facts. As for the solution of many enigmas which the subject still presents, those curious for knowledge will have to seek it in the vast field of conjecture. Are demoniacal maladies frequent in our own time? In the first centuries when the etiological knowledge of doctors was even slighter, if possible, than their therapeutic science, whole categories of slightly obscure maladies of a strange and at that time surprising character were summarily attributed to the influence of a supersensual power.4
These lines give an excellent résumé of the whole modern Catholic doctrine. No essential point is lacking. The reality of possession is not brought into doubt, at least as regards the past when it seems, given the inspired character of the Gospels, to be established by the cases related therein. So far as the present and even the more recent past are concerned, an effort is made to approximate to the non-Catholic point of view while still recognizing for dogmatic reasons the possibility of possession by evil spirits; belief therein is even required, but concrete individual cases are generally regarded with scepticism. It is obvious that such an attitude is one of compromise.
Stöhr himself has, as he relates, during twenty years of practice in hospitals and amongst private patients, had only two opportunities of forming an opinion at the request of a director of conscience on supposed possession. In both instances he reached in his medical capacity the conviction that there was no possession but a nervous condition. One of the two cases—it is related by him in fairly full detail—is so closely analogous to the ancient cases of possession that it may safely be said that in earlier times it would immediately have been taken for one.1
On what authority does Stöhr arrive at a different judgement? Simply the fact that the possessed, on approaching any object which he considers as sacred, reacts by an access of rage, whereas according to the doctrine of the Church he ought only so to react to a genuinely consecrated object. In the truly demoniacal state the possessed, or rather the demon who is within him, ought to be capable of distinguishing hidden or completely invisible objects. It is only to authentic sacred things that the real demon responds by an outburst of fury. Now it may be said that if this criterion had been applied with full rigour in earlier times the Church would never have established a case of true possession.
It is the more surprising that Stöhr for his own part emphasizes that a devil may be capable of imitating all sorts of maladies; there would therefore, in a general way, be no medical criterion to distinguish natural maladies from those attributable to the demon. If, however, when it comes to the point he refuses in spite of this to recognize concrete suspected cases, such an attitude evidently arises from his sceptical turn of mind and would not have been condoned in him by any previous ecclesiastical writer.1
But the survival, at least in principle, of belief in possession means that the ground remains to some extent always prepared for the manifestation of such states. As a matter of fact they have become very rare in the Catholic world, for demonological ideas are no longer in the forefront of consciousness there and even retain no more than a theoretical value, having lost any particular importance in concreto.
The second spiritual territory where belief in possession is cherished is the right wing of Protestantism. As Schleiermacher was not successful in winning a sweeping victory, the same was true as regards negation of belief in the devil and consequently in possession. Even in 1894 a conference on the treatment of the insane gave rise to a lively debate between several ecclesiastics and psychiatrists on non-organic diseases of the mind in general and their interpretation in the sense of demonological ideas, and this was subsequently followed up in writing.2 We might pursue the study of conservative Protestantism further, but should always meet with the same conceptions.
Finally the third domain where, at least in certain instances, this belief is maintained, is spiritualism, constituting as it does in the great civilized countries the sphere in which states of possession are still freely manifested. These states are frankly cultivated by spiritualism. As they are chiefly provoked and voluntary we shall study them in the following chapter.
Cases of possession of recent date are reported in France by Poulain who asseverates that he has personally assisted in the exorcism of the possessed.3 The reader is moreover referred to several cases related above.4
As regards Germany I know no recent cases except in the south, in Würtemberg, well known in the romantic period for prevalence of possession, and in Catholic Bavaria. In 1911 two fresh cases were notified to me from Würtemberg by a student, but unhappily it was not possible to go and study them.
To Bavaria, at the end of the nineteenth century, belongs a case already cited more than once (pp. 15 and 23 sq.), the M. case.
Schilder has described in some detail a case of possession observed in 1911 at a neurological clinic in Halle1 in which the patient conversed in a striking manner with the spirit possessing her. The case had no religious character. Schilder quite rightly does not consider it as hysteria, but as “approximating to schizophrenia.”2 Treatment by hypnotism in Janet’s manner was clearly not tried, neither was exorcism. Nevertheless it is impossible to relinquish the attempt to cure such patients by suggestion, however practised. What would have become of Janet’s patients if he had not treated them by modernized exorcism?
From Italy we have already cited a case.
In Europe possession is still encountered to-day in Russia, that is to say in the country where enlightened ideas have penetrated less than anywhere else into the lower strata of society. States of civilization are found there which in western Europe have long since receded into the past.
First, here is an account of possession from the north of Russia, amongst the Samoyedes. It comes from a learned Italian of the name of Cerletti. Unhappily I have not been able to lay hands on the original, but a detailed report exists in the Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, from which I have borrowed the following particulars:
In the most northerly part of European Russia, particularly in the government of Archangel on the banks of the Lower Pechora, live Samoyedes; the men are almost entirely engaged in reindeer-breeding, hunting and fishing; the women perform the agricultural work neglected by the men. Education, very limited and derived entirely from pictures in the holy books, favours the development of somewhat singular superstitious beliefs. Nevertheless the men are intelligent and active, showing, as do also their wives, a vivacious and expansive character in contrast to the brooding and fatalistic melancholy of the rest of the Russian population. The sanitary conditions are satisfactory, but for a long time past there has been observed in this population a special form of morbidity, particularly characterized by polymorphous convulsive fits, and known by the name of Ikóta or Wistian—i.e., sobbing.
Ikóta attacks, almost exclusively, the majority of married women; it is only found very exceptionally amongst men, children, old men and girls. As
a general rule the girl of the Lower Pechora has shown no neuropathic disturbance up to the time of her marriage, when shortly afterwards, or usually on her wedding day, she is seized with a violent attack of convulsions.
The determining causes of these fits are very various. The spectacle of another woman in the throes of convulsions, the mere sight of a person or a given thing, the sound of a certain word, the inhaling of the smoke of a cigarette. Generally the fit is preceded by various symptoms: a feeling of giddiness, a feeling of constriction in the throat, oppression in the upper part of the chest or in the diaphragm, torpor in all the limbs. Some subjects declare that they have the sensation of a rat running all over the body and inflicting on the limbs innumerable and very painful bites.
Then comes the fit: a shrill cry, a fall, general convulsions, violent contortions of the limbs and trunk; the eyes roll in all directions, the teeth are ground, the hands are spasmodically contorted, tear the hair and rend the clothing. In other cases the subject flings herself upon the bystanders as if to attack them, upsets everything she can lay hands on, breaks the furniture and utters devilish cries. Sometimes during the fit she cannot speak a word; she emits a low, inarticulate bellow or a strident cry; in other cases she utters the most atrocious abuse, making use of obscene expressions. In less grave forms the patient can speak but does not answer questions, or else weeps and gives vent to frenzied laughter. In certain cases the fit is reduced to the emission of violent and entirely characteristic sobs. Sometimes the woman falls into an ecstasy or begins to predict the future, speaking in the name of the demon who has taken possession of her.
After the fit, which is of variable duration, there is a return to the normal state; nothing survives except at most a slight heaviness of the head, and no memory remains of what has occurred during the attack.
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