“Possessed by the devil”
And is it surprising?: Zu Eltz, who is not a doctor, misdiagnoses Freud’s successor in a terrible and general way, leaving no room for doubt: The psychiatric, allegedly psychiatrically incurable, “insane” patients sent to see him were not paranoid psychotics but “possessed by the devil”. An unbelievable scandal presents itself to us. Seriously ill patients whom we GP’s have transferred to psychiatrists in good faith, are further transferred to theologians without our knowledge who then do not even write a report about what they are doing and inform us how they actually go about healing those who are possessed by the devil. Does one have them list all of their sins? Does one urge them there to confess and repent, given that they are already seriously ill with guilt? Does one even drive their obsession out of them using certain other measures?
Pope Benedict very successfully introduced and held well frequented crash courses in exorcism for priests. “The demonic penetrates all slots and cracks” is the title of the article in “Die Zeit” quoted here. This is what comes of increasing the amount of preaching about fear of hell. Incidentally, having knowledge (!) of the article, the psychiatrist judging me wrote that my mistrust of psychiatry was certainly paranoid. Her approach therefore bordered on crime.
We can go as far back as to Nietzsche who writes: “The worst thing that could have happened to Christianity is this type of preached “Christianity” of violence, and additionally a religion conveying such an intense fear of God that one feels obliged to help instead of simply behaving in a Christian manner and acting responsibly and motivated by understanding.”
