The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West Hardcover – April 23, 2013

His concept of the people involved playing expected roles is very useful for understanding not only the subject of the book, but can be used for other areas of life.

Very good if you are interested in European possessions more than Americans.

Devils really exist, and they really can possess people; that is, these are truths if you believe the stories in the Bible to be true. Jesus himself cast out devils from people, and he empowered his disciples to do the same, so the case is closed, it would seem. But even believers have been trying to work this out, I think because possession and exorcism insist that there is an acute impingement of the supernatural physically acting within our world. Exorcisms against possessions are far from over, but they had their heyday in 16th and 17th-century Europe, the main subject of _The Devil Within: Possession & Exorcism in the Christian West_ (Yale University Press) by Brian P. Levack, a professor who has written before about witch hunting. The strange and entertaining stories here illustrate Levack's main thesis, that the peculiar behavior of possessed people is not necessarily because they are mentally or physically ill, nor because they are faking (two non-supernatural explanations favored these days, and even examined by some during the centuries under consideration). Levack posits that those possessed by demons may have been simply acting out roles that they learned from others, performing in a religious drama for which there was an audience handy.The performances, if that is what they were, must have been enjoyed by societies that had a high interest in sensation and a high tolerance for disgusting acts as long as they were for religious ends. One young woman's tongue swelled out of her mouth and she vomited two hundred pins. Another vomited long nails, brass needles, and lumps of hair and meat. The symptoms were products of their times and culture, Levack shows. There was fraud, to be sure, and although retrospective diagnosing is guesswork, plenty of the "demoniacs" (which seems to be the preferred term for those possessed) might have been suffering from Tourette's, or epilepsy, or simple hysteria. "A more comprehensive understanding," Levack writes, "can be gained by viewing demoniacs as well as all those who participated in the effort to cure them as performers in religious dramas. Whether unconsciously or not, they were playing roles and following scripts that were encoded in their respective religious cultures." Catholic demoniacs, for instance, responded to applications of the crucifix or holy water, but Protestant demoniacs didn't, responding more to readings from the Bible. Protestant demoniacs also seldom had sexuality as a main aspect of their complaints, but Catholics often did; Levack says this is because Catholics were intensely interested in sexual misbehavior, but for Protestants, it was just another sin. Not only do the case histories here show that demoniacs and exorcists were playing roles assigned to them by their religious peers, but it is curious that there should have been fashions for, say, vomiting pins and needles. It is as if once someone demonstrated this symptom, then the symptom was reported and other people started showing it, too. It is easier to believe that potential demoniacs were keeping abreast of the latest fad to manifest possession than that the demons themselves were hearing about the latest craze and imitating it upon their victims. Similarly, it seems peculiar that Protestant demons and Catholic demons would have so well known how to inflict their troubles but were careful to follow the roles their particular community assigned to them. There is some better explanation of this than a supernatural one.An interesting aspect of possessions that might explain why there has been an increase in them (yes, an increase) in the past couple of decades is that now, just as centuries ago, they are considered to be signs of the Last Days, when the Devil is supposed to have unprecedented power. In the period covered in Levack's entertaining and thought-provoking work, the battle between the exorcist and the Devil was a re-enactment (theater, again) of "the conflict that had taken place in biblical times and would be rehearsed once again at Armageddon." More exorcists are now being trained by the Catholic Church, while charismatic protestant churches are performing more "deliverance ministries," which seem to be exorcisms in all but name, the name being avoided because of a connection to Catholicism. That we aren't going to have an end to exorcism anytime soon is one of the lessons of this book (and another is that we aren't going to have End Times nearly as soon as those predicting them say they are coming). Perhaps, though, in the current times, we can expect that such symptoms and ceremonies be seriously documented by some attendant's videocam. It couldn't hurt the cause of the exorcists, if such documentation proved genuine (let's ask James Randi to officiate), especially if we got to see someone vomiting hundreds of pins.

The index of this scholarly book did not indicate that it discussed the Earling exorcism case (which occurred in my home town about the time I was born) but I decided to read the book anyway and when I came to page 241 lo and behold the Earling case was related, occupying almost a page. (Not a good reflection on the index!) This made me glad I decided to read the book, even though some of the discussion of possessions and exorcisms were not of huge interest, jumping around in time and locale a lot. The book suggests that those who hold diabolical possession to be non-existent cannot explain some of the cases, though that there may be mistaken diagnoses is of course possible. While witchcraft is now recognized as a delusion and the excesses in regard to witches are universally deplored, possession has not fallen to the same level of disbelief. Anyone interested in the question owes it to himself or herself to read this book..

Probably the best historical book on the topic. Well overdue. This is university level stuff - research, compilation of data, analysis and presentation. If you are into the existential dualism that influenced the Jewish tradition in the 4th century BC and pervaded Christian thinking with neo-platonists like St. Augustin then this book is not for you.Book presents the topic with historical critical method and well researched multi cultural perspectives. Yes, "possessions" were different for different ethnic groups and worldviews - just a customer service the devil would do if it existed.Fantastic book - I would give it 6 stars if it were possible.

This book is well worth the read. Levack is a master historian, and his brilliant and lively analysis of the differences between the "possessed" and "bewitched", and how they were dealt with by Calvinist vs. Catholics, should fascinate and inform anyone interested in the human condition as it intersects with social dynamics and religious institutions.

悪魔憑き現象に興味があり、読んでみました。この現象を成立させていた歴史的文化的背景を理解するのにとても良い本です。巻末の文献リストも詳しくてよいです。