Possessed or obsessed by devils

Press, 30 August 1980, Page 17

Possessed or obsessed by devils

The Devil Within. By Marc Cramer. W. H. Allen, 1980. 300. $21.95.

(Reviewed by

Ralf Unger)

Demoniacal , possession in various forms has concerned Man probably right back to his life in caves. With the count e r-movement of suspiciousness of scientific tabulation of nature’s phenomena, and a dissatisfaction about where it has led, there has, over the last couple of decades, been a tremendous upsurge in interest in the unseen forces about us that may influence us for good or evil. Mr ■ Cramer is an American psychologist who has devoted his critical and logical faculties to looking at the phenomenon of possession in all pans of the world, from the Middle Ages to today. The book becomes a well-argued dissertation which draws conclusions upon a large-number of cases reported, points out their inconsistencies, and leaves a small group unexplained and opeii to a more' mystical interpretation. C. G. Jung, . the explorer of the unconscious, not only personal but collective or- transpersonal-, which is the repository of archaic images and motivational forces impervious to the dimensions of historical time and geographical space, figures large in the description of universal myths shared by men in different places and eras. Such a myth is Satan, however he is pictured: This Transcends the usual psychiatric diagnostic labels for a possessed person of neurosis,

psychosis, or hysteria. If we work in this latter framework only, then we cut down phenomena to fit into such a setting and lose their essential qualities. Nevertheless, most people who have claimed to be possessed are found to be either religious hysterics or severely deluded schizophrenics. There is, says Cramer, a devil within us all, mentally real and not directly related to other forms of presently understood psychopathology. The interest in mysticism came, he says, from an alienated, existentially frustrated subculture of seekers who gravitated to any solution providing it did not demand too much sustained persona! efforts and has led, in Britain alone, to 2000 professional fortune tellers with more than a million clients. In the United States, similarly, during the 1960 s newspapers read by 20 million people carried astrological columns and one in every six people believe in ghosts. In London there is an agency known as “Release” where anyone can “dial an exorcist.” He will then “clean” the psyche that has been opened by means of'“kinky sex. drugs, meditation and spiritualism.” The prostrate demoniac finally has to submit to the power of tse exorcist by naming and identifying himself in a similar way to the patient . in psychotherapy, specifically pinpointing , the problem from which he suffers and its source. On the Demon are projected all traits considered by a particular society at a particular time as being evil, 'and a shared cosmology by

numerous races see him as originally being a rebellious angel cast out from grace and subsequently encouraging unwanted human traits.There is a chapter on poltergeists, which is the movement — usually noisily — of heavy objects with no apparent material effort _ and their possible explanation, leaving a great deal of room still for doubt. Cramer also includes speculation on parapsychological phenomena such as telepathv. In conclusion the author states that in trying to focus upon and eradicate Evil, large groups of people themselves became entrapped by it and the tools of Satan in torturing and murdering thousands of men, women and children each century in the name of Christ and the Church. We should now have reached a stage of trying to understand this phenomenon coolly without the need for worldly fiery infernos. . ’ An individual’s exnerience of Evil, in Jung’s words, becomes identical with the collective shadow with the archetype of Evil . rather than individual badness. Those whose ego is relatively weak are most prone to this and in ages obsessed with piety, it was natural to become similarly obsessed with nonexistent forms of the Antichrist -that virtually had to be invented in order to express - tne conflicts of the collective psyche of the day. All in all, a very stimulating piece of work that is bound to develop new - ways of thinking about the subject in those willing- to grapple with it. .