Can you be possessed

It is important to note that demonic possession is not the automatic explaination for unexplained behavior. Typically those viewed as "possessed" were merely afflicted by some mental condition unknown or untreated. In addition, exorcism is not the desired treatment. If the victim is truly possessed by demons, determined by authorities of the Church, then, and only then, may an exorcism occur. The Rite of Exorcism was first published in by Pope Paul V to quell a trend of laypeople and priests hastily performing exorcisms on people they presumed were possessed, such as victims of the bubonic plague, says the Rev.

It said the exorcist should not have anything to do with medicine. Leave that to the doctors. Learn about the true story that inspired the movie "The Exorcist".

Doctors, perhaps, like Gallagher. Gallagher says the concept of possession by spirit isn't limited to Catholicism. Muslim, Jewish and other Christian traditions regard possession by spirits -- holy or benign -- as possible.

Mark Albanese is among them. A friend of Gallagher's, Albanese studied medicine at Cornell and has been practicing psychiatry for decades. In a letter to the New Oxford Review, a Catholic magazine, he defended Gallagher's belief in possession. He also says there is a growing belief among health professionals that a patient's spiritual dimension should be accounted for in treatment, whether their provider agrees with those beliefs or not.

Some psychiatrists have even talked of adding a "trance and possession disorder" diagnosis to the DSM, the premier diagnostic manual of disorders used by mental health professionals in the US. There's still so much about the human mind that psychiatrists don't know, Albanese says. Doctors used to be widely skeptical of people who claimed to suffer from multiple personalities, but now it's a legitimate disorder dissociative identity disorder. Many are still dumbfounded by the power of placebos, a harmless pill or medical procedure that produces healing in some cases.

Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatrist who specializes in schizophrenia, arrived at a similar conclusion after he had an unnerving experience with a patient. Lieberman was asked to examine the videotape of an exorcism that he subsequently dismissed as unconvincing. Then he met a woman who, he said, "freaked me out.

Lieberman, director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, says he and a family therapist were asked to examine a young woman who some thought was possessed. He and his colleague tried to treat the woman for several months but gave up because they had no success. The film "The Rite" is based on the life of the Rev. Gary Thomas, one of the leading exorcists in the US. Something happened during the treatment, though, that he still can't explain.

After sessions with the woman, he says, he'd go home in the evenings, and the lights in his house would go off by themselves, photographs and artwork would fall or slide off shelves, and he'd experience a piercing headache. When he mentioned to this to his colleague one day, her response stunned him: She'd been having the exact same experiences.

The tragic case of the real 'Emily Rose'. If you want to know why so many scientists and doctors like Lieberman are cautious about legitimizing demonic possession, consider one name: Anneliese Michel. Michel was a victim in one of the most notorious cases of contemporary exorcism. If you have the stomach for it, go online and listen to audiotapes and watch videos of her exorcisms. The images and sounds will burn themselves into your brain.

It sounds like somebody dropped a microphone into hell. Michel was a German Catholic woman who died of starvation in after 67 exorcisms over a period of nine months. She was diagnosed with epilepsy but believed she was possessed. So did her devout Roman Catholic parents.

She reportedly displayed some of the classic signs of possession: abnormal strength, aversion to sacred objects, speaking different languages. Learn about Anneliese Michel. But authorities later determined that it was Michel's parents and two priests who were responsible for her death. German authorities put them on trial for murder, and they were found guilty of negligent homicide.

One of the leading skeptics of exorcism -- and one of Gallagher's chief critics -- is Steven Novella, a neurologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine. He wrote a lengthy blog post dissecting Gallagher's experience with Julia, the satanic priestess. It could be read as a takedown of exorcisms everywhere. He says Julia probably performed a "cold reading" on Gallagher.

It's an old trick of fortune tellers and mediums in which they use vague, probing statements to make canny guesses about someone. Fortune teller: "I see a recent tragedy in your family. How did you know? Or take the case of a person speaking an unfamiliar language like Latin during a possession. Did they understand Latin spoken to them?

Or did they just speak Latin? Learn why Novella thinks exorcisms are fake. Novella says it's noteworthy that no one has filmed any paranormal event such as levitation or sacred objects flying across the room during an exorcism. He's seen exorcism tapes posted online and in documentaries and says they're not scary. The most you get is some really bad play-acting by the person who is being exorcised.

In an interview, Novella went further and criticized any therapist who believes his patient's delusions. Telling a patient who is struggling that maybe they're possessed by a demon is the worst thing you can do. It's only distracting them from addressing what the real problem is. Driscoll, the Catholic priest who wrote a book about possession, is not a skeptic like Novella.

Still, he says, it's not unusual for people on drugs or during psychotic episodes to display abnormal strength. Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa, Illinois. That doesn't mean he thinks possession isn't real. He says the New Testament is full of accounts of Jesus confronting demons.

Yes, I do," he says. I don't know why it would be totally eradicated now. Channel 4 seems to think so, and next week plans to broadcast "as live" the exorcism of a young man who says he is possessed by evil.

Scientists intend to monitor the man's brain with electrodes to see whether the procedure has any measurable effect. Even within the Church of England, the idea of possession raises eyebrows. It means there are such things as non-human evil spirits that can take possession of a human being and require to be told to go somewhere else by a greater power," says Canon Michael Perry, who holds a doctorate in deliverance and edits the Christian Parapsychologist.