In the trendy world, belief in Satan or evil spirits is frequently ridiculed or completely ignored. Scientists often assume such ideas are delusions – symptoms of a psychiatric illness or psychosis. Some Christians even dismiss the concept, though they feature prominently within the gospel accounts of Jesus’s life.
So when a distinguished expert in mental illness, Dr Richard Gallagher, wrote a book describing his own personal encounters with people who find themselves possessed, it received quite a lot of media attention, with TV appearances, newspaper interviews and appearances on many podcasts.
Demonic Foes: my 25 years as a psychiatrist investigating possessions, diabolic attacks, and the paranormal was published by Harper Collins in 2020 and the doctor has been within the media ever since. In the book, Dr Gallagher writes of “unmistakable cases of demonic possession and other diabolical attacks that I directly encountered over the past twenty five years.”
He describes his work as a mainstream psychiatrist who was at first reluctant to get entangled with demonic possession, but got here to be recurrently consulted by the International Association of Exorcists and other trained clergy. His role was to rule out standard psychiatric problems and offer advice to the priests involved, sometimes attending the exorcisms themselves.
His sober and objective descriptions of those eery events – including levitations, paranormal knowledge and speaking in unknown languages – make his account all of the more convincing.
He details quite a few these cases within the book. A very disturbing incident took place with ‘Julia’ (all names were modified and permission to publish sought by the publishers) who went to a Catholic priest for help after experiencing blackouts where she would speak in other languages, and she or he believed that she was possessed by evil spirits. However, she was a member of a satanic cult which she didn’t want to go away – so she didn’t receive relief despite repeated exorcism rituals.
During consultations with Dr Gallagher, Julia revealed knowledge that he is definite she had no way of knowing, comparable to what a priest was wearing a whole lot of miles away – which was confirmed right away by phone. These form of uncanny incidents convinced him that it was a supernatural problem and never a psychiatric condition. “I at all times consider that skepticism should start governing all these investigations,” he writes within the book. “But it’s difficult and silly to carry on to disbelief within the face of such overwhelming evidence.”
In contrast to ‘Julia’, a lot of the cases he mentions are individuals who repented of occult activity or dabbling with serious evil of their past.
For example, he worked with a former gang member he called ‘Juan’ who had turned to “Santa Muerte”, a hispanic occult practice, to hunt the devil’s assist in his criminal and violent activities. However when finally imprisoned for drug offences, Juan found that he couldn’t escape these dark spiritual activities, and he found himself stepping into frightening trances and displaying superhuman strength when a jail chaplain attempted to perform a deliverance.
Back on the surface and married, Juan tried to show to God, but he found himself being prevented against his will from entering churches. Dr Gallagher assisted in additional exorcisms for Juan, and he began to search out relief from his symptoms as he worked on growing his spiritual life.
As on this case, for freedom from possession, Dr Gallagher prescribes a real spiritual path. “You must work at it,” he told the Daily Mail. “You must surrender your evil ways or your involvement with something nefarious just like the occult, and you might have to need to reform your life… you might have to need to turn to God mainly.”
Dr Gallagher isn’t any quack. He remains to be listed as a professor at New York Medical College, and lecturer at Columbia University. He was trained at Yale. His book contains a foreword from a former president of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr Joseph T English, who describes his colleague as “superbly credentialed” and commends the book as “serious scholarly study”. It reads: “Dr Gallagher brings his trained intellect and unimpeachable integrity to bear on the investigation of such ‘states of possession'”.
Dr Gallagher says that many other medics support his claims privately. “Readers could also be surprised to learn that many physician colleagues of mine – world wide – agree with my findings, though they could be reluctant to talk out so openly,” his book’s introductory chapter reads.
As he says, it is just not unusual for individuals who have psychiatric illnesses to explain strange spiritual phenomena. He doesn’t consider this to be supernatural in origin, but simply the consequences of a medical condition.
Current scientific explanations for such hallucinations and phenomena vary, but are biological reasonably than spiritual. Dr Gallagher is critical of those that attribute demonic activity to each human problem and mental illness, and warns against working with untrained individuals who claim to practise exorcism or deliverance.
In fact, despite his Catholic upbringing, at first he was sceptical of the truth of possession. However when a priest first got here to him for help, he step by step observed enough evidence to persuade him. But still he concludes possession only after he has ruled out standard organic, psychiatric causes.
He admitted to Esquire magazine that he was reluctant to ‘go public’ with these conclusions. “I wasn’t sure that it was a terrific idea, professionally speaking, to publicise a belief that’s unacceptable to quite a lot of people in my field,” he told the publication. He persevered, he said, because he felt he could “enlighten” people.
Some of his insights are reassuring. For example, he believes real possession is rare. “The individuals who turn into possessed are almost invariably—and I’m selecting my words fastidiously here, because there are a couple of exceptional cases—individuals who have turned in a serious approach to something evil,” he told Esquire. This includes explicit worship of Satan or extreme violence and criminal activity.
“I especially make sure that the patient is not affected by an odd seizure disorder or other undiscovered brain damage,” he told the Daily Mail. “I rely on a full narrative assessment and symptom survey that I at all times conduct. I also generally interview friends and families to verify all details reported by the patient.
“Make no mistake, these attacks shouldn’t be haphazardly diagnosed; they require no less discernment as those made in medical practices.”
