Exorcism: Jesus-Style

Ahead, the rush-hour gridlock was easing, making the voices in her head sound even louder. They were honing in now on a single command, and repeating it over and over: kill them all. Pam steered her car to an exit lane, abandoned it, and then began running. A police car managed to block her way back onto the expressway, saving her from the on-coming traffic.

For a long time, Pam (not her real name) has been in the clutches of something that has  re-defined her identity just as insidiously as Alzheimer’s disease eventually erased her father’s own. With respect to both, I have often called to mind the description in Mark’s Gospel of that agitated, out-of-control, unapproachable man of the tombs and the hillsides, crying out day and night and beating himself incessantly. (5:2-5)

Was that ancient tomb-dweller “psychotic”? Without a doubt. More importantly, he was “possessed.” And when I am honest with myself about Pam, what I most wish for is someone, anyone, who could make her own demons leave her for good. So when I recently read Scott Peck’s latest account of performing exorcisms himself as acts both of care and of desperation, I knew exactly the kind of impulse that could lead a Christian believer to take on a loved one’s demons directly.

Jesus took the demons on all the time. For St. Mark, his exorcisms clearly played the prominent, and perhaps even the decisive role in confirming everything else that he sought to convey in his singularly focused message about the kingdom of God. For us, the trouble is that Jesus’ exorcisms often impress more than his teachings do, and make people clamor for wonder-working more than for wisdom. It is easy to forget one important truth about confronting states of possession: without Jesus, exorcism is a problematic healing strategy at best, and when it isn’t effective (only one of Scott’s two exorcisms was), what we have to rely on is love.

Once, Pam had plenty of it. She and other “out of the closet” schizophrenic members of her church received regular support by a compassionate and understanding group of laypersons who prayed regularly for them and for the therapists who treated them. These prayer partners also offered very tangible kinds of help to family members struggling daily with the otherwise crushing responsibilities of being their stricken (adult) childrens’ and siblings’ primary, and sometimes only, caregivers.

One thing Pam’s own therapist was especially grateful for was the caregivers’ ability to communicate effectively an abiding love for her especially in and through her most off-putting episodes. He told me in amazed tones that they always seemed to be able to figure out new ways not only to keep things from getting worse, but to reduce the frequency and intensity of his patient’s most florid psychotic episodes. Tragically, this support group slowly slipped away, and when Pam moved to another city in the interest of what looked to be a major career advancement, her condition deteriorated irreversibly.

Loving actions can have a remissive effect on psychosis and possession, even if only temporarily. Pam’s own episodes were crippling, but  they were also relatively infrequent. Usually, she could hold them at bay by staying on her prescribed medications and in therapy, and by her harried parents’ keeping their home environment’s emotional force field at relatively low levels of intensity. But other things in Pam’s life helped too, especially her close and compassionate circle of friends in the church, and her active participation in worship, especially at Eucharistic celebrations and through what for her was the sacrament of confession and penance.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association posits that psychotic disorders like Pam’s affect perhaps as much as one percent  of the population. Since her congregation now numbers about 4,500, it is reasonable to speculate that as many as 45 of its members may be struggling as Pam did with a kind of distress that often looks like nothing less than states of possession. At one time, the pastor personally knew of seven.Where might the others be?  
Some of them are almost surely living in protective back rooms of their families’ homes, because they cannot function on their own and because institutions that once could have helped them are no longer accessible. Others may be on the streets, in alleys and parks,  living as the detritus of a society enamored with success, wealth, and fame and contemptuous of anyone who suddenly becomes inconvenient to its “well” members’ illusory sense of well-being. These psychotic, yes, possessed men and women are the tomb-dwellers of the modern world.

If we cannot exorcise their demons, though, we do not have to leave them “crying out day and night,” alone.