Chiral symmetry and edge states polarization

Sommers, in his History of Witchcraft and Demonology, reports that “the ancient

Egyptians. . . held that some diseases were due to the action of evil spirits or demons, who in exceptional circumstances had the power of entering human bodies and vexing them in proportion to the opportunities consciously or unconsciously given to their malign natures and influences.⁸ We see here a recognition by the Egyptians of at least some participation on the part of particular patients in the presumed possession process. In classical Greece, writes theologian Morton Kelsey, the verb daimonizomai meant

to be possessed by a demon or demons. . . . People possessed by demons, according to Thayer’s Lexicon, are those suffering from . . . especially severe diseases, either bodily or mental (such as paralysis, blindness, deafness, loss of speech, epilepsy, melancholy, insanity, etc.), whose bodies demons had entered, and so held possession of them as not only to afflict them with ills, but also to dethrone the reason and take its place themselves;

accordingly the possessed were wont to express the mind and consciousness of the demons dwelling in them; and their cure was thought to require the expulsion of the demon.⁹

Fig. 17. Expulsion of the demons (seventeenth century, anonymous). From Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation, vol. 5 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), plate 1a.

This was very much the methodology of Jesus in dealing with “demoniacs,” described in the New Testament as suffering from myriad mental and physical symptoms: “They brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils. . . . And he healed many that were sick of divers [sic] diseases, and cast out many devils” (Mark 1:32, 34).¹⁰ (See fig. 18.)

Such serious syndromes (when not demonstrably neurological in origin) are nowadays accorded sanctimonious, scientifically sanctioned diagnostic terms like “conversion disorder,”

“depression” or “psychosis”; specific subcategories and types of what we more generically call psychopathology. As C.G. Jung said in 1927:

Three hundred years ago a woman was said to be possessed of the devil, now we say she has a hysteria. Formerly a sufferer was said to be bewitched, now the trouble is called a neurotic dyspepsia. The facts are the same; only the previous explanation, psychologically speaking, is almost exact, whereas our rationalistic description of symptoms is really without content. For if I say that someone is possessed by an evil spirit, I imply that the possessed person is not legitimately ill but suffers from some invisible psychic influence which he is quite unable to control.¹¹

Fig. 18. Jesus casting out devils (after Schnorr von Carolsfeld). From Paul Carus, The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974), p. 158.

Let us consider some concrete clinical illustrations of contemporary “possession.” One of the most dramatic of these syndromes is Dissociative Identity Disorder,¹² formerly and more

commonly known as multiple personality disorder. There is a great deal of disagreement surrounding this remarkable psychiatric disorder, whether it truly exists, the appropriate

application of the diagnosis, and its causes. Though once believed to be rare, in recent years the reported incidence of MPD or DID in the United States is rising, presumably in conjunction with what one psychologist calls the generally “skyrocketing prevalence of dissociative disorders”¹³ witnessed in this country. Classic cases of DID have been dramatically depicted in popular books and films like The Three Faces of Eve, Sybil, and When Rabbit Howls.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, multiple personality disorder involves “the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states (each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to and thinking about the environment and self). At least two of these identities or personality states recurrently take control of the person’s behavior.” Or, to put it somewhat more graphically, these so-called “subpersonalities” (they can number from two to more than one hundred!) actually take possession of the afflicted person’s thoughts, feelings and actions. “The personality that presents itself for treatment often has little or no knowledge of the existence of the other personalities. . . . Studies have demonstrated that various personalities in the same person may have different physiologic characteristics and different responses to psychological tests. Different personalities may, for example, have different eyeglass

prescriptions, different responses to the same medication, and different I.Q’s.”¹⁴ What credible sense can we make of these incredible cases? Once having witnessed such strange symptoms, it is easily understood how this stunning syndrome might well be attributed to “demonic

possession.”

Psychiatrist Henri Ellenberger explains that throughout human history, there have been “two different types of possession, the somnambulic and the lucid. The individual in somnambulic possession suddenly loses consciousness of his self and speaks with the “I” of the supposed intruder; after regaining consciousness, he remembers nothing of what ‘the other one’ has said or done.” This precisely portrays the rapid transition from one personality to another typifying MPD, as well as the patient’s inability to recall what the so-called “alter” said or did during its period of domination. “In cases of lucid possession [my italics],” continues Ellenberger, “the individual remains constantly aware of himself, but feels ‘a spirit within his own spirit,’ struggles against it, but cannot prevent it from speaking at times. In both forms possession is experienced as a kind of

intrapsychic parasitism: just as a tapeworm can live in the body, so can a parasitic spirit live in the soul.”¹⁵

From the perspective of C.G. Jung’s Analytical Psychology, MPD or DID may be the most convincing demonstration of Jung’s controversial (see chapter four) notion of the comparative

“autonomy” of the unconscious “complexes.” Elaborating on the early discoveries of Freud and Breuer, Jung postulated that complexes “are psychic fragments which have split off owing to traumatic influences or certain incompatible tendencies.”¹⁶ Jung often spoke of the complexes (like the shadow, which is itself a complex) behaving as “secondary or partial personalities possessing a mental life of their own.”¹⁷ When chronically repressed or dissociated, these

“splinter personalities” can become sufficiently powerful to usurp the entire personality, causing a temporary state of acute possession. Hence, it is not unusual for DID patients to insist that they are possessed by another person, a spirit or some other sort of intrusive foreign entity.

In MPD or DID, the personality is compartmentalized into walled-off subpersonalities (complexes), each containing encapsulated unconscious contents too traumatic, painful or morally unacceptable for the person to consciously acknowledge. Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an archetypal tale of possession by an unconscious “alter ego” or repressed complex. The mild-mannered, civilized, sophisticated yet instinctually inhibited physician, Dr. Henry Jekyll, discovers and drinks a potion—that is,

psychologically speaking, a method or mechanism of dis-inhibition, like drugs, alcohol or self-induced trance—by which his dissociated alter ego, his shadow, the daimonic, is brought to light and allowed to be lived out. This process could be correctly equated to so-called “artificial” or

“voluntary possession,” a perilous practice about which we shall be saying more shortly. Edward Hyde, the ugly, hateful, brutish and evil opposite of Jekyll’s kind, refined and gentle public

persona, having had a taste of freedom, gradually grows stronger, to the point of being able to emerge and take over at will—but now, against the conscious wishes of the good Dr. Jekyll. The consequences, of course, are catastrophic: mayhem, murder and suicide ensue.¹⁸

The International Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders contains yet another diagnostic category called “Trance and Possession Disorders.” These include those relatively rare cases where “the individual acts as if taken over by another personality, spirit, deity, or

‘force.’”¹⁹ One extreme example of such a “possession disorder” is the Malayan amok syndrome, in which the person is suddenly and irresistably possessed by a blinding, homicidal rage. This

“running amok,” as it is traditionally known, in which the possessed person more or less

indiscriminately attacks and kills others (after which he or she typically has no memory of what transpired and sometimes commits suicide), sounds remarkably similar to some of the lethally violent outbursts increasingly occurring in American culture. Presumably, the affected individual, due to cultural, moral or religious prohibitions, has repressed his or her aggression, anger and rage to such a deleterious degree as to become violently predisposed to destructive possession by the long-dissociated fury. Frequently, the precipitating trigger for these fatal outbreaks of

formerly repressed rage is some stress-induced state of abaissement du niveau mental (reduction of consciousness), in which the dissociative ego defense mechanisms seem to suddenly dissolve or break down. Regrettably, we are seeing such horrific homicidal rampages happening more frequently here in America, contributing to our notoriously high rates of violent crime noted in chapter one. We are rapidly becoming a nation of emotional “time-bombs,” poised to violently explode at the slightest provocation.

In striving to comprehend various syndromes once understood as “possession,”

daemonomania, or “demonism,”²⁰ modern psychiatry and psychology have sought to provide a scientific alternative to traditional demonology. The ubiquitous belief that invasive, invisible entities (demons) are to blame for bizarre human cognitions, affects and behaviors prevailed well beyond the post-Cartesian age of Enlightenment. Depth psychology has endeavored valiantly to provide new paradigms for such phenomena, as discussed in the preceding chapter. Most recently, instead of invisible devils or the “unconscious,” medical science (especially psychiatry) has substituted a belief in the influence of biochemical entities (neurotransmitters), microscopic

“demons” deemed responsible today for most mental disorders. Yet, amid all the latest dogmatic

medical explanations, one thing remains constant: We still seek to detect and identify the concealed sources of evil.

Psychoanalyst D. J. Henderson provides a more psychological perspective on the past and present state of affairs:

Popular concepts of mental disorder have come full circle. Medieval beliefs in possession by devils and demons gave way to the nineteenth century medical model of mental disorder. The “illness” model was followed by Freud’s psychoanalytic schema in which he conceptualized the various forms of psychopathology as derivatives of repudiated, repressed instinctual impulses. . . . However, many therapists became dissatisfied with the classical psychoanalytic schemata and tried to create new systems based on culture or religion or interpersonal process rather than on instinct and the personal unconscious.

Although undoubtedly good therapeutic work was performed on the basis of these “new schools,” there was the general feeling that the culturalists, interpersonalists, and perhaps even the Jungians were not getting down to bedrock. . . . From the work of object-relations psychologists has come an emerging synthesis founded on the firm footing of classical tradition, but incorporating concepts of “possessing forces.” The new possessing forces are not, of course, the demons and witches of medieval times, but rather the good and bad objects of inner psychic reality.²¹

Much like the above-mentioned biologically-biased focus on neurotransmitters, for many students of “object relations,” these internal representations and images have become prime suspects in producing pathological states of mind. But just what are these “good and bad objects of inner psychic reality”? Modern ego psychology, an outgrowth of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, observes that we create and maintain symbolic, inner representations of outer objects and our relationship to them, starting with that most significant “object” for every infant: the mother. As we mature, we “introject” and unconsciously carry around these frequently confused, polarized or distorted “objects,” which, when projected onto the present environment, can negatively affect our interpersonal relationships. When, for example, in adulthood, the inner object representing mother remains polarized or “split” into a “good mother” and a “bad mother,” mental disorder may result.

As Henderson states, “what is needed to link [demonology] to the psychodynamic viewpoint is an awareness that the persecuting forces are not the evil supernatural forces of medieval times but rather the internalized persecuting bad objects of Klein (1932) and Fairbairn (1943).”²² We shall delve no further here into the sometimes impenetrably intricate and desiccated mechanistic theory of “object relations.”²³ However, some readers may have already recognized the resemblance between these “possessing forces of inner psychic reality,” and Jung’s much earlier theory of unconscious “complexes” and “archetypes,” both of which he believed to contain “a specific energy which causes or compels definite modes of behavior or impulses; that is, they may under certain circumstances have a possessive or obsessive force (numinosity!). The conception of them as daimonia is therefore quite in accord with their nature.”²⁴ Whatever terminology clinicians today choose to describe the phenomenon once so widely known as “demonic possession,” it seems self-evident to some, like May, that “in discarding the false ‘demonology,’ we accepted, against our intention, a banality and shallowness in our whole approach to mental disease.”²⁵ We have reduced mental disorders to the most materialist and mechanistic terms possible. And in so doing, stripped them of any spiritual significance or existential meaning.

For instance, if you were to witness or experience what we would today term an “acute psychotic episode,” you would be perfectly correct in calling it “possession.” For in this highly intensified state, the profoundly psychotic person is likely to exhibit several of the following florid features: She or he may hear voices when there is no other person present; see visions of various sorts invisible to others; exhibit religious or sexual preoccupation, bizarre or violent behavior,

“super-human” strength, spitting or projectile vomiting (particularly when physically restrained). In addition, identification of oneself or others as the devil, demons or God; the subjective sense of being externally controlled or influenced by satanic forces; severe agitation, confusion,

disorientation and, frequently, post-episodic amnesia are all commonly occurring symptoms of acute psychosis, more colloquially called “madness.”

Now compare the preceding brief clinical sketch of full-blown psychosis to the following

description of demoniacal possession: “Demoniacal possession presents a bizarre and repulsive set of symptoms that may be marked by subsequent amnesia. Once the so-called entities take control of the demoniac, the central characteristic of the syndrome is its malignancy and the fact that the possessed appears to lose control and awareness of his ego and superego functions: he is ‘taken over’ as if by an outside force capable of powers far beyond his own.”²⁶ T. K. Oesterreich notes that, in addition to these startling objective symptoms, the possessed person typically

manifests markedly different facial features as well as altered speech patterns, in which the “new”

voice speaks for the possessing entity: “[The] first and most striking characteristic is that the patient’s organism appears to be invaded by a new personality; it is governed by a strange soul.

This is what has given to these states, from the earliest times. . . up to the most recent, the name of ‘possession.’”²⁷