Are there demons

It is important to note that demonic possession is not the automatic explaination for unexplained behavior. Typically those viewed as "possessed" were merely afflicted by some mental condition unknown or untreated. In addition, exorcism is not the desired treatment.

If the victim is truly possessed by demons, determined by authorities of the Church, then, and only then, may an exorcism occur. In a letter to the New Oxford Review, a Catholic magazine, he defended Gallagher's belief in possession.

He also says there is a growing belief among health professionals that a patient's spiritual dimension should be accounted for in treatment, whether their provider agrees with those beliefs or not. Some psychiatrists have even talked of adding a "trance and possession disorder" diagnosis to the DSM, the premier diagnostic manual of disorders used by mental health professionals in the US.

There's still so much about the human mind that psychiatrists don't know, Albanese says. Doctors used to be widely skeptical of people who claimed to suffer from multiple personalities, but now it's a legitimate disorder dissociative identity disorder.

Many are still dumbfounded by the power of placebos, a harmless pill or medical procedure that produces healing in some cases. Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, arrived at a similar conclusion after he had an unnerving experience with a patient. Lieberman was asked to examine the videotape of an exorcism that he subsequently dismissed as unconvincing. Then he met a woman who, he said, "freaked me out.

Lieberman, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says he and a family therapist were asked to examine a young woman who some thought was possessed. He and his colleague tried to treat the woman for several months but gave up because they had no success.

The film "The Rite" is based on the life of the Rev. Gary Thomas, one of the leading exorcists in the US. Something happened during the treatment, though, that he still can't explain.

After sessions with the woman, he says, he'd go home in the evenings, and the lights in his house would go off by themselves, photographs and artwork would fall or slide off shelves, and he'd experience a piercing headache.

When he mentioned to this to his colleague one day, her response stunned him: She'd been having the exact same experiences. The tragic case of the real 'Emily Rose'. If you want to know why so many scientists and doctors like Lieberman are cautious about legitimizing demonic possession, consider one name: Anneliese Michel.

Michel was a victim in one of the most notorious cases of contemporary exorcism. If you have the stomach for it, go online and listen to audiotapes and watch videos of her exorcisms. The images and sounds will burn themselves into your brain. It sounds like somebody dropped a microphone into hell. Michel was a German Catholic woman who died of starvation in after 67 exorcisms over a period of nine months.

She was diagnosed with epilepsy but believed she was possessed. So did her devout Roman Catholic parents. She reportedly displayed some of the classic signs of possession: abnormal strength, aversion to sacred objects, speaking different languages. Learn about Anneliese Michel. But authorities later determined that it was Michel's parents and two priests who were responsible for her death. German authorities put them on trial for murder, and they were found guilty of negligent homicide.

One of the leading skeptics of exorcism -- and one of Gallagher's chief critics -- is Steven Novella, a neurologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine. He wrote a lengthy blog post dissecting Gallagher's experience with Julia, the satanic priestess. It could be read as a takedown of exorcisms everywhere. He says Julia probably performed a "cold reading" on Gallagher. It's an old trick of fortune tellers and mediums in which they use vague, probing statements to make canny guesses about someone.

Fortune teller: "I see a recent tragedy in your family. How did you know? Or take the case of a person speaking an unfamiliar language like Latin during a possession. Did they understand Latin spoken to them? Or did they just speak Latin? Learn why Novella thinks exorcisms are fake. Novella says it's noteworthy that no one has filmed any paranormal event such as levitation or sacred objects flying across the room during an exorcism.

He's seen exorcism tapes posted online and in documentaries and says they're not scary. The most you get is some really bad play-acting by the person who is being exorcised.

In an interview, Novella went further and criticized any therapist who believes his patient's delusions. Telling a patient who is struggling that maybe they're possessed by a demon is the worst thing you can do. It's only distracting them from addressing what the real problem is. Driscoll, the Catholic priest who wrote a book about possession, is not a skeptic like Novella. Still, he says, it's not unusual for people on drugs or during psychotic episodes to display abnormal strength.

Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa, Illinois. That doesn't mean he thinks possession isn't real. He says the New Testament is full of accounts of Jesus confronting demons. Yes, I do," he says. I don't know why it would be totally eradicated now. Gallagher agrees and has answers for skeptics like Novella. He says demons won't submit to lab studies or allow themselves to be easily recorded by video equipment. They want to sow doubt, not confirm their existence, he says.

Nor will the church compromise the privacy of a person suffering from possession just to provide film to skeptics. Gallagher says he sees his work with the possessed as an extension of his responsibilities as a doctor. In a passage from a book he is working on about demonic possession in America, he says that it is the duty of a physician to help people in great distress "without concern whether they have debatable or controversial conditions.

Gallagher isn't the first psychiatrist to feel such duty. Scott Peck, the late author of "The Road Less Traveled," conducted two exorcisms himself -- something Gallagher considers unwise and dangerous for any psychiatrist.

The referrals are almost invariably from priests. In one of his letters to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul argued that women could protect themselves from being raped by demons by wearing veils over their heads.

Christians also turned to ancient traditions of magic and magical objects, such as amulets , to help ward off spiritual dangers. In the wake of the Enlightenment, European Christians became deeply embroiled in debates about miracles, including those related to the existence and casting out of demons.

For many, the emergence of modern science called such beliefs into question. In the late 19th century, Christians who sought to retain belief in demons and miracles found refuge in two separate but interconnected developments. Dispensationalist theologians argued that the Bible was a book coded by God with a blueprint for human history, past, present and future. Miracles were assigned to earlier dispensations and would only return as signs of the end of the world.

For dispensationalists, the Bible prophesied that end of the world was near. They argued that end would occur through the work of demonic forces operating through human institutions. As a result, dispensationalists are often quite distrustful and prone to conspiratorial thinking. For example, many believe that the United Nations is part of a plot to create a one world government ruled by the coming Antichrist.

Such distrust helps explain why Christians like Immanuel might believe that reptilian creatures work in the U. Meanwhile the end of the 19th century also saw the emergence of the Pentecostal movement, the fastest growing segment of global Christianity. Pentecostalism featured a renewed interest in the work of the Holy Spirit and its manifestation in new signs and wonders, from miraculous healings to ecstatic speech.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Like many Pentecostals in the Global South, the Mountain of Fire Ministries believe spiritual forces can be the cause of many different afflictions, including divorce and poverty.