Possession, exorcism and psychoanalysis |
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Authors: | Nick Tosh |
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Affiliation: | Mailman Research Center, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA, USA;Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA;Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland |
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Abstract: | This paper investigates the historiographical utility of psychoanalysis, focussing in particular on retrospective explanations of demonic possession and exorcism. It is argued that while ‘full-blown’ psychoanalytic explanations—those that impose Oedipus complexes, anal eroticism or other sophisticated theoretical structures on the historical actors—may be vulnerable to the charge of anachronism, a weaker form of retrospective psychoanalysis can be defended as a legitimate historical lens. The paper concludes, however, by urging historians to look at psychoanalysis as well as trying to look through it. Full-blown psychoanalysis is a bad historical lens but it may, in some cases, be an excellent explanatory template: a thorough understanding of how psychoanalytic therapy functions in the modern world is, for example, a good theoretical preparation for historians seeking to understand the sixteenth-century’s demonological universe. |
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Keywords: | Psychoanalysis Possession Demonology Witchcraft Narrative Retrospective explanation |
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