Within the depth-psychology corpus, exorcism occupies a liminal position between clinical psychology and the history of religions, functioning simultaneously as a cultural-historical datum, a diagnostic category in disguise, and an interpretive lens for understanding possession phenomena. Herman traces the concept’s genealogy through Charcot’s secular project of reinterpreting demonic possession, exorcism, and religious ecstasy as hysteria, thereby establishing the field’s founding tension between sacred and scientific explanatory frameworks. Jung and his school treat exorcism as the precursor to—and occasionally the functional equivalent of—psychological intervention in cases of autonomous complex possession, with Jung explicitly equating demonism with the displacement of ego-consciousness by psychic contents. Dodds and Rohde situate exorcism within Greek kathartic religion, connecting it to purification rites, pollution beliefs, and soul-conjuration practices that illuminate archaic psychic organization. Jaynes integrates the phenomenon into his bicameral hypothesis, reading exorcistic discourse as a response to the intrusive ‘voices’ of a disintegrating divine authority structure. Schoen extends the analysis into addiction studies, reporting first-hand encounters with exorcism as evidence for transpersonal evil, while the Daoist material in Kohn details exorcism as an institutionalized ritual technology within organized soteriological systems. Across all positions, exorcism marks the threshold where psychology, religion, and politics of the body converge.
Charcot’s formulations of hysteria offered a scientific explanation for phenomena such as demonic possession states, witchcraft, exorcism, and religious ecstasy.
Herman argues that Charcot’s scientific project reframed exorcism and possession as hysteria, establishing the foundational opposition between secular psychology and religious explanatory frameworks.
, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992thesis
after witnessing two spirit possessions and participating in two exorcisms, he now does believe they are actual and real phenomena.
Schoen cites Scott Peck’s testimony to argue that exorcism, grounded in direct encounter with transpersonal evil, demands serious consideration within depth-psychological frameworks of addiction and archetypal possession.
, The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics Anonymous and Archetypal Evil, 2020thesis
Demonism (synonymous with daemonomania = possession) denotes a peculiar state of mind characterized by the fact that certain psychic contents, the so-called complexes, take over the control of the total personality in place of the ego.
Jung redefines the theological substrate of exorcism in psychological terms, equating demonism with complex-possession and thereby providing the conceptual basis for therapeutic rather than ritual displacement of invasive psychic forces.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976thesis
a doctor in California who practiced a strange kind of psychotherapy. These were partly psychotic cases, all of which he thought were possessed. His wife was a medium, and he brought the patient and his wife together, put the latter into trance, and she was then taken over by the spirit in the patient.
Jung documents a contemporary exorcistic psychotherapy in which spirit possession is treated through mediumistic extraction, illustrating the functional continuity between ritual exorcism and clinical intervention.
, Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, 2014supporting
As agents of the Department of Exorcism, all initiates in the ritual system are heirs to t
Kohn documents Daoist exorcism as a formally institutionalized ritual office within the Tianxin zhengfa tradition, with dedicated ceremonial hierarchies and textual codification.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting
techniques of talismans and exorcism, typically found in thunder rites popular under the Song, and especially in the school of the Divine Empyrean
Kohn situates exorcistic technique within the broader Daoist ritual complex of talismans and thunder rites, demonstrating its integration into cosmological and soteriological praxis.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting
exorcism 99 (103)
Dodds indexes exorcism alongside epilepsy and possession in his account of Greek irrational experience, situating it within the broader field of kathartic and daimonic phenomena.
, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951supporting
exorcism, conjuration of, see Souls and Ghosts.
Rohde cross-references exorcism with soul-conjuration practices, establishing its etymology and function within the Greek cult of souls and the management of polluting supernatural contact.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting
he uses the clang of bronze instruments whose well-known property it is to drive away ghosts. Where human blood has been shed and requires ‘purification’ the Kathartic priest accomplishes this ‘by driving out murder with murder’
Rohde analyzes Greek kathartic ritual as proto-exorcistic, showing how sound and blood sacrifice function to expel daimonic pollution from persons and communities.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting
evil spirits might have been invoked instead of true gods, or other intrusive spirits might have occupied the medium. Iamblichus himself claims to have unmasked in his medium an alleged Apollo who was only the ghost of a gladiator.
Jaynes traces the logic of exorcistic discernment to the post-bicameral crisis, where the problem of false or intrusive spirits necessitated rites of verification and expulsion.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
exorcism, 163n
Jung’s index entry for exorcism within his treatment of Western religious psychology signals its presence as a recognized category in the comparative study of religious experience and psychic transformation.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958aside
Bewitched, bedevilled, possessed, addicted. Dissecting historic constructions of suffering and exorcism.
Alexander references a conference presentation that explicitly aligns historic constructions of exorcism with modern addiction discourse, suggesting structural homology between religious and clinical models of compulsive suffering.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008aside
Demonic possession, 15, 97, 105, 114–15
Herman’s index clusters demonic possession alongside dissociation and diagnosis in the trauma literature, reflecting the historical conflation of possession states with traumatic symptomatology that Charcot’s exorcism-reframing sought to resolve.
, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992aside