Possession as a clinical phenomenon: a critique of the medical model
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis January 16, 2019 Owe Wikström 4 citations
Possession by evil spirits should not be reduced to a medical diagnosis like psychosis or epilepsy. A broader understanding requires integrating the phenomenology of religion with clinical psychology. The structure of possession involves an interaction between cognitive-linguistic and emotional-affective levels. An individual's biochemically conditioned intense feelings must be related to how their subculture defines those feelings. Religious language offers a way to verbally handle the unstructured, terrifying aspects of developing psychosis, describing personal transformation as a dynamic between mythological representations of evil and intrapsychic anxiety.