Possession

Possession

TYPEClaimed paranormal/spiritual phenomenon

FIELDTheology, anthropology, anomalistic psychology, psychiatry

ALSO KNOWN ASSpirit possession; demonic possession

CHARACTERISTICSA claimed state in which a person's body, mind or behaviour is taken over by an external spirit, demon, deity, or other entity

NOTABLE CASE(S)Roland Doe (1949); Anneliese Michel (1976)

STATUSNot accepted by mainstream science as evidence of an external entity; addressed clinically as a culturally-shaped presentation of dissociative or other psychiatric symptoms

Possession is a claimed state in which a person's body, mind, or behaviour is said to have been taken over by an external spirit, demon, deity, or other entity, typically against their will. Reports of possession appear across a wide range of cultures and religious traditions worldwide, and the ritual response to claimed possession — see Exorcism for the full account of practices, traditions, and specific cases — is one of the most consistently documented religious practices across human history.

Cross-cultural patterns

A survey cited in the medical literature on possession found reports drawn from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas, with women outnumbering men reporting the experience by nearly two to one, and average onset around age twenty-five. The identity attributed to the possessing entity varies significantly by cultural and religious context: in the survey, roughly 43% of cases involved a claimed possession by a god, deity, angel or holy spirit, 29% by a dead relative, 18% by an evil spirit or demon, and the remainder by animals or the devil specifically. This pattern is a significant reason possession is generally treated across religious traditions and academic disciplines alike as a cross-cultural phenomenon with locally-specific theological interpretation, rather than a single fixed belief.

Different traditions frame the nature of the possessing entity very differently. In mainstream Christian and Islamic theology, the possessing entity is typically understood as an external, independently-existing demon or jinn. Jewish dybbuk tradition, by contrast, holds the possessing entity to be a specific category of human soul — one that failed to complete its own spiritual repair — rather than a demon at all; see Exorcism § Judaism for the fuller account of this distinction.

Medical and psychiatric perspective

Mainstream psychiatry does not recognise possession as a standalone clinical diagnosis. The DSM-5 and its text revision (DSM-5-TR) instead address claimed possession under the criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), describing "possession-form" presentations in which it appears, to the person experiencing it, as though a spirit, supernatural being, or outside person has taken control of their mental processes or actions. This framing treats possession less as a diagnosis in itself than as a culturally-shaped explanation — an etiology rather than a disorder — for an underlying presentation that may otherwise resemble dissociative disorder, psychotic illness, or, in at least one well-documented case, a neurological condition such as temporal lobe epilepsy.

The relationship between formal religion and psychiatry on this question is not uniformly adversarial. Some Catholic exorcists work directly alongside psychiatrists as part of the Church's required pre-exorcism evaluation process; Dr. Richard Gallagher, a psychiatrist who has evaluated possession claims on behalf of the Catholic Church for decades, has stated publicly that the great majority of cases referred to him turn out to involve conventional psychiatric or medical conditions rather than any inexplicable phenomenon. Some clinicians have separately explored exorcism-influenced ritual as a potential adjunct within psychotherapy for DID specifically, though this remains a minority and contested position within the field, distinct from endorsing possession as a literal phenomenon.

Historical cases sometimes retrospectively diagnosed in psychiatric terms include Christoph Haizmann, a 17th-century Austrian painter whose claimed possession and exorcism was the subject of a detailed 1922 case study by Sigmund Freud.

Notable documented cases

The best-documented modern possession claims are covered in full under Exorcism, including the 1949 case of Roland Doe (Ronald Hunkeler), which inspired The Exorcist, and the 1976 death of Anneliese Michel following an extended series of exorcism rites, later attributed by physicians to temporal lobe epilepsy and severe psychiatric illness.

VAULT ASSESSMENT

CLASSIFICATION

Cross-cultural claimed paranormal/spiritual phenomenon

EARLIEST REPORT

Antiquity; documented independently across numerous cultures

MODERN REPORTS

Ongoing; addressed clinically via DSM-5's "possession-form" Dissociative Identity Disorder criteria since 2013

EVIDENCE

Extensive witness testimony and case documentation across cultures; no case has been independently confirmed as involving a genuine external entity under conditions accepted by mainstream science; clinical assessment consistently identifies conventional psychiatric or neurological conditions in the substantial majority of evaluated cases

INVESTIGATIONS

Dr. Richard Gallagher; Sigmund Freud (historical case study); various anthropological and psychiatric researchers across the sources cited on this page and on Exorcism

ASSESSMENT

Possession is best understood as a genuinely cross-cultural pattern of human experience, given locally-specific theological shape by whichever tradition interprets it. Mainstream psychiatry treats it as a culturally-shaped presentation of dissociative or other psychiatric symptoms rather than literal evidence of an external entity, a view shared even by psychiatrists who work directly within religious evaluation processes.

STATUS

Unconfirmed

See also

• Exorcism
• Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis
• Poltergeist
• Anomalistic Psychology
• Hallucination

External links

• Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine — See no evil, hear no evil? The role of psychiatry in exorcism
• Mental Health, Religion & Culture — Demon Possession, Theology, and Mental Health