GHOSTWATCH
ALAN MURDIE attends a conference examining the ghostly dimensions of human illness
a sickness of spirit
For thousands of years different cultures around the world have believed in a psychic, and often specifically ghostly, dimension to human illness and suffering. The belief that sickness and misfortune are caused by discarnate entities – and the corresponding idea that symptoms can be relieved by spiritual means such as prayer, ritual or exorcism – are universal notions that can be traced back for millennia (see for example Magico-Medical Means of Treating GhostInduced Illnesses in Ancient Mesopotamia, 2012, by JoAnn Scurlock).
Equally, doubts concerning such beliefs have been ventilated for centuries. Whilst the Renaissance Italian poet Tasso (15441595) was convinced he spoke with spirits, baffling his friend Manso, others variously labelled Tasso as an insane genius, love-sick, a victim of oppression or simply one feigning madness (see Torquato Tasso: A Study of the Poet and of his Contribution to English Literature, 1965, by CP Brand).
Since the end of the 18th century, Western medicine has increasingly rejected any doctrine of spirits. Orthodox medicine and psychiatry operate from a presumption that both body and brain lack any spiritual or mental component relevant to either treating illness or its causation. To this purely materialist dogma early psychology, Freudian psychoanalysis and psychical research all mounted varying degrees of challenge and resistance.
This same materialist conceit was openly questioned at an interesting oneday conference “Spirit Influence on Mental Health: Is ‘spirit’ intrusion an important overlooked contribution in hallucinatory disorders?” on 4 February 2017. Held at Regent’s University, London, it attracted some 90 attendees, being organised by the Spirit Release Forum, which has the avowed aim of “helping individuals find spiritual, mental, emotional and physical well-being through an understanding of how spirit/soul consciousness operates through the body”. It brought together a range of speakers to consider ideas that are controversial – to put it mildly. As Guy Playfair wrote in the context of the Enfield Poltergeist: “Mention of spirits invariably polarises people into either fanatical believers or total sceptics” (in This House is Haunted, 1980 + 2013).
Attending this conference, I was particularly interested in the approach to evidence. Having worked professionally for many years as an advocate in cases before courts and tribunals where an assessment of the physical or mental health of individuals is an issue, I am aware of the many difficulties in achieving a correct diagnosis or verdict. From a psychical research perspective, when considering claims of the paranormal, I have long considered that the health of witnesses and their families can be very important when homes are reported as ‘haunted’.
The conference opened with a recognition of how commonplace reports of experiences of ghosts remain in developed societies, with the first session delivered by Dr Erlendur Haraldsson, a psychologist from Iceland and a veteran psychical researcher. He cited the European Human Values Study (19801983), which found that up to a third of the population in some Western countries believe they have been in touch with a deceased person, with a European average of 25 per cent. Comparing results with earlier surveys commencing from the Society for Psychical Research’s monumental collection Phantasms of the Living (1886) vols 1 & 2, patterns appear suggesting that individuals who make their post-mortem presence felt are statistically more likely to have suffered a violent or unexpected death (e.g. in murders, suicides and accidents). Dr Haraldsson also spoke on research findings into reincarnation in non-Western nations going back to the 1970s.
The next speaker, Dr David Furlong, diverged greatly from this straightforward presentation of parapsychological data, taking proceedings onto a wholly different level with an outline of his beliefs as a practising spiritual healer. A co-organiser of the conference, at the outset he pointed out he is not a medical doctor (he is actually an expert in town planning and architecture), but he speaks from direct experience as a spiritual healer, ridding patients of unwanted spirit attachments.
In summary, Dr Furlong’s position is that humans are spiritual beings, each possessing a spirit which has chosen to be incarnated, and enjoying an inner mental world every bit as vast as the outer one. As a result of trauma – which may occur in this life or in previous incarnations – part of the personal spirit can split and fragment into a multitude of sub-personalities (although a soul or higher self simultaneously remains). These damaged sub-personalities may attract negative attention from discarnate spirits or ‘dark energies’. The role of the spiritual healer is to re-integrate these fragments, through hypnosis, therapy and spiritual techniques. This may involve extensive courses of therapy, one extreme case requiring 200 sessions to remove spirit attachments.
Concerning the symptoms caused by external entities and affecting their chances of recovery, the patient retains a degree of choice. Dr Furlong also spoke of the added effects of the patients’ chakras and of angelic influences, incorporating ideas from Eastern and Western religious traditions.
Thus he presented a complex model of the personality as subject to physical-mentalspiritual interactions. In advancing such hypotheses, he is not alone; a handful of psychiatrists in the UK and USA such as Dr Alan Sanderson and psychologists such as Tom Zisner have publicly endorsed similar ideas and have written about them. (See Soul-Centred Healing, 2011, by Tom Zisner). But these ideas are certainly unsupported and contradict existing standard scientific models.
Complicating matters, an alternative spiritual model was presented by the next speaker, Mike Williams, a practising medium for 35 years. He specialises in clearing haunted houses and helping people hearing voices, work detailed in his book Schizophrenia or Spirit Possession (2014). He maintains that spirit attachment causing distress and illness is a reality and provides a better model than many conventional ones for explaining schizophrenia (or at least patients labelled as schizophrenic). However, he departs substantially from the model presented by Dr Furlong, advancing a rather traditional view of the spirit world, envisaging spirits of the deceased lingering in an afterlife dimension interconnecting with the material world, before translating to Heaven. The goal of mediums such as himself is to ensure transition of these spirits, whereupon the physical or mental symptoms afflicting the living person disappear. He rejects reincarnation.
My question to both speakers was to what
THE MATERIALIST CONCEIT WAS QUESTIONED AT THE CONFERENCE
extent they examined the medical history of clients prior to applying their techniques. Both stated that as a rule they do not explore the pre-existing medical history. This struck me as a diagnostic weakness for both proposed therapeutic approaches. Long-standing experience with haunted properties indicates that conventional medical or psychological explanations lay behind some manifestations rather than discarnate entities. Sometimes it can be as straightforward as a person hallucinating from excessive medication, the ghosts vanishing once a more moderate dosage is achieved. neurological disorders, imagination, neurosis and drug addiction may all be causes.
Moreover, whilst not subscribing to psychosocial theories that attempt to ascribe all cases of unusual illness or psychic phenomena to iatrogenic diseases (basically ailments caused by the doctor, therapist or healer themselves), I believe some alleged hauntings are triggered purely by suggestion. negligent and reckless pronouncements of psychics and mediums can result in what have been dubbed ‘ersatz poltergeists’ or ‘phoneygeists’.
Existing conditions may also be exacerbated where a patient actually experiences genuinely paranormal events, e.g. incidents of spontaneous telepathy, rapping sounds or object movements themselves possibly symptoms of underlying psychological distress or illness (see The Paranormal and the Recognition of Personal Distress, 1981, by James F McHarg, Journal of the SPR vol 51 200-209). However, their origins may lie in the unconscious mind of the individual rather than discarnate influence.
Following lunch, the conference received the testimony of an individual currently undergoing spirit release therapy, who framed personal experiences in terms of entities, dark energy and curses accumulated both in this life and in past incarnations, spread over nearly 1,500 years. Unfortunately, no independent proof of these past lives, curses or traumas was provided outside supposedly recovered serial reincarnation memories and a personal conviction of being subjected to numerous curses in this life. Inevitably, such a deficiency of evidence and corroboration engenders caution and precludes uncritical acceptance of such claims.
Looking back to the 1970s, past life regression through hypnosis promoted by Arnold Bloxham (see More Lives Than One? 1977, by Jeffrey Iverson) provides a further precedent for doubting such claims. Unfortunately, no corroboration for these often vividly recalled past lives was obtainable from historical records.
Furthermore, the generation of false memories by patients undergoing therapy is a problem dating back to the early days of psychoanalytic treatments pioneered by Freud in Vienna in the 1890s. Again, precedents may be found more recently with the serious problems and social panics that arose during the 1980s and 1990s with allegations of childhood sexual abuse founded upon questionable and spurious recovered memory techniques, often involving hypnosis. These techniques contributed to many unfounded allegations of organised ritual abuse and also fuelled then fashionable claims of alien abduction.
nonetheless, it became apparent during discussions that some members of the audience readily accepted the serial reincarnation model, both practising hypnotherapists and troubled individuals actually undergoing therapy for presumed spirit attachments. Listening to some of the latter, I felt that at the stage they had reached it would be prudent not to express any point of view at the conference. Discourse
veered on to the question of supposed pacts and contracts that might be formed with discarnate spirits and dark forces and how these could be nullified and voided in therapy. This had echoes of even earlier and historic social panics, including the pacts of sorcerers found in the fantasies of witch-finders in the 16th and 17th centuries and later inspiration for the mid-20th century black magic fiction of Dennis Wheatley. Today, ‘dark energy’ has substituted a personified Devil as the other party forming these alleged soul-threatening bargains.
More widely, it struck me that many of the critiques raised concerning conventional psychotherapy and its sometimes exotic variants (e.g. Arthur Janov’s still current primal scream therapy, where patients are encouraged ‘to scream their little heads off’ to cite the rather dismissive view of Robert A Baker Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within, 1996) were applicable here. The fact a patient undergoes a strange experience does not in itself validate the explanation or interpretation offered for it, whether by the patient or the therapist. What for the patient, the psychoanalyst or the shaman may be true on a symbolic mental level is not necessarily true in any objective sense. Psychical research initially reacted against the materialism that identified the body with the real person; but it is equally questionable to simply substitute words such as ‘soul’, ‘spirit’ and ‘energy’ and conclude that they provide a key to understanding complex and challenging psychological and psychiatric conditions.
The next speaker, Dr David McDonald, took an altogether more cautious and conventional approach. A consultant psychiatrist specialising in child mental health and a member of the Church of England Deliverance Study Group, he cited cases where an awareness of spiritual factors was an element in the successful resolution of mental disorders occurring in children and adolescents. These suggested a psychic element, including instances where someone had recklessly dabbled in occult practices or dallied with ouija boards and methods of channelling.
This fundamentally more cautious approach reflects the stance of the Church of England since the 1970s after an exorcism of a mentally ill man in Leeds in 1974 contributed to the brutal homicide of his wife in an insane frenzy (see FT313:36-38). Committed to a mental hospital for life, he was released after four years of conventional psychiatric treatment. The lesson learnt (or re-enforced) was that irresponsible exorcisms can inflict more harm and damage on patients than the condition they supposedly cure. (For a careful and sober discussion of issues, see Deliverance: Psychic Disturbance and Occult Involvement, 1996 + 2012, by Michael Perry).
The final session of the day was a talk by Dr Terence Palmer, who holds a degree in psychology from Canterbury Christ Church University and a master’s degree in the study of mysticism and religious experience from Kent University. A hypnotherapist for 20 years and a spirit release practitioner for 12 years, he was the first person to receive a doctorate for research into spirit release therapy for his thesis, A Revised Epistemology for an Understanding of Spirit Release Therapy in Accordance with the conceptual Framework of F.W.H. Myers. He outlined a model for practical spirit release therapy which he explained had recently been applied in the case of an ex-serviceman who had suffered hearing voices for over 20 years, whom conventional psychiatric techniques had failed to relieve. This technique had produced an almost instantaneous cure. Details have not yet been published but a film record has been made of the process. He announced that a research project to further test this approach had been initiated, aiming to put the subject and its reputation onto a firmer scientific footing. In essence, his argument is that the efficacy of spirit release should be judged from the results, which can be objectively assessed.
Whatever view one takes of these topics, more research in this field to increase knowledge is undoubtedly welcome. Firstly, it is clear that current orthodox psychiatric and medical techniques do not provide solutions to many mental health conditions and even struggle to adequately define many of them (see Introduction to Psychopathology, 2000, by Alexandra Lemma). This is reflected by the unfortunate failure of standard clinical approaches in achieving measurable improvements for a substantial number of patients with symptoms.
Secondly, regardless of the resolutely materialist and secular stance of modern medicine, supernatural beliefs remain an infectious social reality. Such beliefs are increasingly appearing in cases examined not only in the psychiatric ward or clinic but also in the courtroom. In the 10 days after the conference, the following were all reported: an imprisoned 50-year-old devil worshipper committing suicide after his conviction for strangling his policeman lover; a schizophrenic Muslim teenager who fatally stabbed one person and slashed five others who told a psychiatrist someone had “put spirits in him”; and police reporting a “sharp rise in witchcraft used against children” in abuse cases. ( D.Mail, 6+7 Feb; D.Telegraph, 13 Feb 2017). These are not isolated examples, and given such a context, it is hard to uphold simply dogmatic opposition to the prospect of a new line of therapeutic research (providing, of course that studies are conducted seriously, ethically and within recognised research parameters).
However, we should not imagine that paranormal experiences are a monopoly of the psychologically abnormal and those suffering mental illness. Any study should also recognise that the majority of psychic experiences are reported by people who are healthy, normal and balanced and often find them a positive feature in their lives. In this regard, positive experiences of psi effects in healthy humans and animals will also have much to tell us.