Professor and Clinical Psychiatrist Takes Demons Seriously

Are demons real? The Bible presents Jesus as casting out evil spirits, and quite often these passages are regarded with great skepticism. Science, we are told, disproves such fantastic stories. But not every psychiatrist trained at some of the country's most prestigious institutions shares that skepticism.

Richard Gallagher is a board-certified psychiatrist and a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College. His experiences with demonically afflicted individuals have convinced him they really do exist. In a widely discussed 2016 Washington Post op-ed, he laid out his experiences and conclusions in stages.

I’m a man of science and a lover of history; after studying the classics at Princeton, I trained in psychiatry at Yale and in psychoanalysis at Columbia... Is it possible to be a sophisticated psychiatrist and believe that evil spirits are, however seldom, assailing humans? Most of my scientific colleagues and friends say no, because of their frequent contact with patients who are deluded about demons, their general skepticism of the supernatural, and their commitment to employ only standard, peer-reviewed treatments that do not potentially mislead (a definite risk) or harm vulnerable patients. But careful observation of the evidence presented to me in my career has led me to believe that certain extremely uncommon cases can be explained no other way.

Though Gallagher's conclusions set him apart from many of his colleagues, careful observation — not credulity — is what led him there. So what exactly has he seen that convinced him "demonic possession" really occurs?

But I believe I’ve seen the real thing. Assaults upon individuals are classified either as “demonic possessions” or as the slightly more common but less intense attacks usually called “oppressions.” A possessed individual may suddenly, in a type of trance, voice statements of astonishing venom and contempt for religion, while understanding and speaking various foreign languages previously unknown to them. The subject might also exhibit enormous strength or even the extraordinarily rare phenomenon of levitation. (I have not witnessed a levitation myself, but half a dozen people I work with vow that they’ve seen it in the course of their exorcisms.) He or she might demonstrate “hidden knowledge” of all sorts of things — like how a stranger’s loved ones died, what secret sins she has committed, even where people are at a given moment. These are skills that cannot be explained except by special psychic or preternatural ability.

Gallagher does not treat every claim of demonic activity as credible — elsewhere in his writing he is careful to distinguish genuine cases from the far more common instances of mental illness or outright fraud. But he argues that it is irrational to reject the accounts that remain once those cases are set aside.

…As a psychoanalyst, a blanket rejection of the possibility of demonic attacks seems less logical, and often wishful in nature, than a careful appraisal of the facts. As I see it, the evidence for possession is like the evidence for George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware. In both cases, written historical accounts with numerous sound witnesses testify to their accuracy.

Whether or not the his Washington analogy fully holds, Gallagher's larger point stands: ruling out an explanation before examining the evidence is not scientific objectivity — it is an assumption dressed up as one.

Learn More

Short Blog: Intelligent People take Demonic Possession Seriously?

Reference

Richard Gallagher, “As a Psychiatrist, I Diagnose Mental Illness. Also, I Help Spot Demonic Possession.,” Washington Post, July 1, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/.