Is there anything wrong with seriously entertaining this possibility?
Not according to the author of a research article published this month
in Journal of Religion and Health. In ‘Schizophrenia or possession?’,1
M. Kemal Irmak notes that schizophrenia is a devastating chronic mental
condition often characterised by auditory hallucinations. Since it is
difficult to make sense of these hallucinations, Irmak invites us ‘to
consider the possibility of a demonic world’ (p. 775). Demons, he tells
us, are ‘intelligent and unseen creatures that occupy a parallel world
to that of mankind’ (p. 775). They have an ‘ability to possess and take
over the minds and bodies of humans’ (p. 775), in which case ‘[d]emonic
possession can manifest with a range of bizarre behaviors which could be
interpreted as a number of different psychotic disorders’ (p. 775). The
lessons for schizophrenia that Irmak draws from these observations are
worth quoting in full.
Source: University of Oxford
Comments
Post a Comment