Some individuals, therefore, are much more open to demon possession according to these Christian crees because they are already corrupted in and of themselves. In other words, conditions such as narcissistic personality disorder, dissocial personality disorder, borderline, they would be considered as predispositions. They predispose the individual to be possessed by demons. They are kind of proclivities. They are bad inclinations, which open the individual wide open to satanic malevolent diabolical influences.

In Islam, there is quite a taxonomy of demons, there’s jinns, shayateen, alphavid, uf, and other types. Rolling over all of them is Iblis, the leader of evil spirits.

But Islam is much closer to charismatic and evangelical Christianity than it is to, for example, Catholicism.

Because in Islam, an evil spirit cannot tempt and seduce humans into sin unless these humans are already addicted totally to what Islam would call lower desires. These people are addicted to alcohol consumption, alcoholics. They’re addicted to sex, they’re sex addicts. They are unethical in their conduct or misconduct, and so on.

So Islam agrees with evangelical Christianity that first, the first condition, the first step into demonic territory is via unethical conduct. And very often this kind of impulsive, defined, unethical, antisocial conduct reflects a mental health condition is typical of a mental health condition, such as narcissism or psychopathy.

So this is the sequence, this is the chain. You’re mentally ill, you misbehave, you’re possessed by demons.

Islam also has exactly like Judaism, pretty benign spirits, jinns, for example. A jinn can try to possess an individual because the jinn fell in love with the individual, or because the jinn takes revenge for someone who hurt him, or for similar reasons. So it’s much more human like transaction, and the jinn is very human like.

By the way, there’s no trace of jinns in the Quran, or even the Qadith. Jinns are kind of folk religion or folk entity. And jinns are not evil. Some of them are, but the vast majority are not.

And therefore, possession by jinn is not at all like possession by devils or demons. And this is contrasted to the shayateen. Shayateen are always evil. The hadiths, the interpretative texts of the Quran, which were passed verbally from one generation of scholars to another.

So the hadiths suggest that demons or devils are distinguished from jinns in many ways.

And one of the most critical ways is what they call west-west. West-west are whispers, voice, internal voice, like very similar to introjects in psychology. In psychology, voices of important people, known as objects for some reason in psychology, so voices of primary objects, like mother and father, voices of role models, adult role models, when the child is growing up, teachers, or even influential peers, these voices are internalized. Internalized, they continue to operate within the human mind, and they are known as introjects.

And in Islam, the shayateen, the evil spirits, they are introjected. They are internalized within the human body, within the heart, usually, because the belief at that time was the seat of wisdom and thinking and so on.

Emotions definitely was the heart. No one considered the brain of any importance.

So the devils, these devils would inhabit the heart. They would establish residents near the heart, and they would talk from there. They would whisper devilish whisperings, very similar to introjects.

And this is actually the core possession in Islam. And in this sense, Islam is much closer to our modern perception of psychiatry, modern perception in psychiatry.

In psychiatry, today, we believe that the self is constellated in big part from these voices.

We believe that in the process of socialization and acculturation, separation and individuation, all these processes of personal growth and maturation, starting in very, very early childhood, these voices are very, very critical.

If they are sadistic, if they are unforgiving, if then we have an inner critic, which kind of reduces us to mental illness. If they’re benign and benevolent and loving, unconditionally loving and accepting, we grow up to be healthy individuals.

And these voices are integrated into our self concept and into various self states in cluster B personality disorders.

I mean, Islam is very similar.

These voices can be malevolent. This they can contain malice. And when they do, they drive the person to behave in ways which are counterproductive, self destructive, dysfunctional, very similar to mental illness in the modern conception in psychiatry.

In Buddhism, demons are confined to hell, where they’re actually suffering. But when they descend to earth, when they encountered, I’m sorry, when they encountered on earth, they’re not really in Buddhism, they’re a delusion. And so they’re called maras. And they their main role is temptation, and you’re supposed to overcome them.

And there are numerous forms of Mara, the four classes of Mara, and they embody emotions which are not processed, like greed and hate and delusion, defilement, and wholesome states, they embody death itself, they embody, they serve as kind of simile or metaphor for existence. So existence and death, they’re considered low, low level states.

And they are somehow allied with these demons who are actually delusional. So existence and death are delusional.

And the sensuous realm, the realm of touch, and senses and smell, and they are also associated with demons, because to be truly liberated, and to experience the cycle of rebirth, you need to go through a process of enlightenment, which is a release from the physical world, and from its sensuous manifestations.

And so the physical world and sensuous realm are demonic, in effect, they are desire and temptation.

It’s another very interesting view.

And there is even a process in Buddhism where you appease the demon, and then he goes away. And unless, of course, he’s still in lockdown, we have to check.

But demons who are appeased, they depart, and they go to a different room where they cannot touch you anymore. I don’t know how many of you know, but in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, edition five, 2013, the latest edition, there is a category for people who believe in demonic possession. It’s called possessive trance disorder.

And the literature, this literature in psychiatry, there were many studies of demonic position in psychiatry, because the affinity between demonic position and certain types of mental health, illness or disorders, diseases, the affinity is very clear, very evident, explicit.

So for example, we know that that possession symptoms of certain disorders were ascribed to possession, with a hysteria to psychosis syndrome, epilepsy, schizophrenia, conversion disorder, and of course, dissociative identities.

So in the DSM five, the text that deals with dissociative identity disorder say it says openly, I’m quoting from the DSM, possession for identities in dissociative identity disorder typically manifest as behaviors that appear as if a spirit, supernatural being or outside person has taken control, such that the individual begins speaking or acting in a distinctly different manner. So even demon possession, spirit, supernatural beings make an appearance in a classical V of the profession in the DSM five. Not as real entities, but as ways to describe certain manifestations of a disorder, dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

Why am I mentioning this? I’m mentioning this because I’ve spent the last 25 years trying to convince colleagues and laymen that narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, post-traumatic conditions that are essentially variants of dissociative identity disorder. And we try to convince people that narcissists and borderlines suffer from limited versions, private cases of multiple personality disorder.

And so the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual edition five, it says that the personality states of dissociative identity disorder, or self-states in borderline, they may be interpreted as position in some cultures. Spirit possession, spirit possession in many cultures are very often associated with traumatic experiences. We have numerous stories where someone goes through a traumatic experience, and then he’s overtaken by a spirit or by a demon or by an alien entity and so on and so forth. Possession experiences very often in literature in the middle ages, and again, up to the 18th century, possession experiences are associated with stress, distress, trauma, painful experiences, hurt, injury, narcissistic injury, narcissistic mortification, and so on.

And there is a question here, because in these cultures, most dominantly in Asia, in Africa, people would automatically say, oh, he’s possessed by the demon. And then, you know, nothing to do about it, except perhaps some witch doctor or some exorcist from the Vatican or something, but they wouldn’t bother. They wouldn’t bother to rule out mental illness by referring the person to a psychiatrist.

In some countries in Africa, there’s one psychiatrist for the entire population. And in other countries, supposedly Western and advanced, such as Spain, Italy, United States, there are more people who believe in spirit possession and demon possession, believe it or not, than in the miracles and wiles of psychiatry itself. So more people would tend, first of all, to go to a clergyman, to a priest, to the church, to their community.

And the psychiatrist or psychological therapist would be a third or fourth or fifth choice.

And that is bad. That is bad because in many of these cases, we are actually dealing with psychotic disorders. Even in the case of narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, definitely. In some cases of psychopathy, we deal with people who already have psychotic macro episodes, people whose dissociation is so extreme that the personality is totally fragmented.

In narcissism, there are two personalities, the false self and the true, dilapidated, true self. So the false self and the true self.

The same in borderline personality disorder, the false self and true self. In psychopathy, the transitions are so abrupt and so impulsive that many people compare it to switching in multiple personality disorder. There’s something there. There’s some common core of dissociation, some common core of self-states which are distinguishable from each other, which resemble very much demon possession.

If people are not educated, they wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t know. And they wouldn’t go. They wouldn’t revert or resort to mental health practitioners who can help.

Because we do have help, very effective help for psychosis. And alleged demon possessions, when we analyze reports of demon possessions, the vast majority of which are rejected by the Catholic Church, by the way, have nothing. These reports have nothing to do with demon oppositions.

So when we started these reports, we discovered that actually we are dealing with post-traumatic states or psychosis. And in specific cultures, we have numerous conditions that mimic demon possession. And some of them are even in the diagnostic and statistical manuals of these countries.

For example, in China, the Chinese diagnostic Chinese classification of diseases contains quite a few of these conditions. I’ll mention only two. Amok. Amok is a male specific culture-bound syndrome. It’s an alternating pattern of dissociation, brooding, intrusive thoughts and violence directed at objects and people. It’s provoked by real or imagined criticism or slight.

So there’s a lot of hypervigilance there. And it is accompanied by the secretary ideation, amnesia, automatism and extreme fatigue. Sometimes Amok occurs with a psychotic episode.

This is very reminiscent of narcissistic injury or narcissistic mortification followed by narcissistic rage in a process of hypervigilance or paranoid ideation. Amok is common in Malaysia, where it was discovered, in Laos, in the Philippines, in Polynesia, where it’s called kafald or kafald, in Papua New Guinea, in Puerto Rico, where it’s called multipleia and among the Navajo Native Americans, where it’s called the icha. I hope I pronounce it remotely correctly.

Another condition is the shimbung. Shimbung is another culture-bound syndrome, typical to a specific culture. And it’s in Korea, where I worked for a few years. Shimbung is very common there. It’s an illness that progresses from general unease, anxiety, somatic complaints like weakness, dizziness, fear, parorexia. Parorexia means eating disorders, insomnia and gastrointestinal problems. So it starts like this and then progresses to dissociation.

And when dissociation sets in, these people report possession by ancestral spirits.

So 25 years ago, I suggested a methodological framework. I compared the narcissist to a person suffering from dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

I’m going to quote myself, of course. So I’m going to quote myself an article I had written in 1997.

A debate is starting to steer. That was 1997. Today is much more evolved.

A debate is starting to steer. Is the false self an alter? In other words, is the false self, is the true self of a narcissist, the equivalent of a host personality in dissociative identity disorder? And is the false self one of the fragmented personalities, also known as alters?

Actually, today, my view is, is the obverse is exactly the opposite. I think the false self is the host personality and the true self is one of the authors.

I’m continuing to quote sight from the article, 1997. My personal opinion is that the false self is a mental construct, not a self in the full sense. It is the locus of the fantasies of grandiosity, the feelings of entitlement, omnipotence, magical thinking, omniscience, and magical immunity of the narcissists. It lacks so many elements that it can hardly be called a self.

Jungians would say that it’s not a constellated self.

Moreover, I continue in the article, the false self has not cut off date. Dissociative identity disorder alters alternative personalities. These personalities have a date of inception when they started. They are reactions to a specific trauma, moment of abuse.

The false self is a process, not an entity. It is a reactive pattern and a reactive formation. All taken into account, the choice of words had been poor.

The false self is not a self, nor is it false. It is very real to the narcissist, more real to the narcissist than its own true self. A better choice would have been abuse reactive self or something like this.

I’m continuing in the article, 1997.

This is the core of my work. I’m saying that narcissists have vanished and have been replaced by a false self.

Again, it’s a bad term, not my fault, right to Winnicott or Kernberg. There is no true self in the narcissist. It’s gone.

The narcissist is a whole of mirrors, but the whole of mirrors itself is an optical illusion created by the mirrors.

It’s a little like Asher paintings. Malignant personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder is more common than believed today.

By the way, this was written in 1997 when everyone thought it’s very rare, but I already felt after two years of work in the field that it’s very common. Today, we know that about 3% of people have dissociative, severe dissociation. Many of them have dissociative identity disorder.

A multiple personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder is more common than believed. The emotions are the ones to get segregated.

The notion of unique separate multiple whole personalities is primitive and untrue. Dissociative identity disorder is a continuum.