Demonic possession by Jean Lhermitte.
E Drouin, T Péréon, Y Péréon
L'Encephale April 21, 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.encep.2017.03.001 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Humans Personality Religion and psychology Child abuse, sexual History, 20th century Catholicism France Spirit possession Demonopathy Démonopathie Handwritten notes Notes manuscrites |
| Key points | Lhermitte's unpublished 1950s notes argue that cases of demonic possession are psychiatric in nature, strongly influenced by social background, and that most possessed individuals had experienced sexual trauma with scruples, often religiously linked. He attributed the substantial decline in such cases to the development of modern psychiatry. |
Abstract
The name of the French neurologist and psychiatrist Jean Lhermitte (1877-1959) is most often associated with the sign he described back in 1927 in three patients with multiple sclerosis. We are reporting unpublished handwritten notes by Jean Lhermitte about 'demonic possession', which date from the 1950s. Drawing from his experiences in neuropsychiatry, Lhermitte gathered notable case reviews as well as individual case histories. For him, cases of demonic possession are of a psychiatric nature with social background exerting a strong influence. Like Freud did earlier, Lhermitte believes that the majority of those possessed people have been subjected to sexual trauma with scruples, often linked to religion. Demonic possession cases were not so rare in the 1950s but their number has nowadays declined substantially with the development of modern psychiatry.