Author: Michael (M.D.)

confidential, HIPPA privacy protected, & mission-specific collaborations are here
open comments for general public and open subscribers are below
Admin PLB Accountant, R. Roma

Please see the excellent exchanges in all the comments at “Consented consent? ~ open question, to mentors, students, passers by.”

The comment by Cynthia, N.Y.,  June 13, 2021 at 3:51 pm, is a timely note about the reported request aboard the Delta flight bound for Atlanta.

“We would like all strong males to come to the front of the aircraft to handle a problem passenger.”

See the history of comments about these strong men.

This is the question that we are covering in our private pages with studies into  Dr. Richard Gallagher’s book, Demonic Foes: My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal.

These private pages are password protected.  We are collaborating and praying in great detail about our cases.  As is frequent with the process of differential diagnoses, cases can be misdiagnosed until we receive many corrections.  We finally get our diagnoses right.  Gabrielle Amorth gave a test in the mandatory documentary.  Amorth admitted, “I don’t know” if a case is a case of true possession rather than mental illness or just intense demonic harassment, “I don’t know … until!”

Until what?

Inigo auto-da-fé (SJ) noted how young psychologists can get killed doing this work of exorcism by trusting in clinical counseling.  This observation is not new.  It is an ancient observation.  It is in line with the Gallagher book.

Even in our own mentoring, we sometimes must move highly educated and competent counselors and newly learning psychiatrists to safe background positions.  We must sometimes make them mere observers of dozens or hundreds of cases.  Some are mature enough in faith to read scriptures, or to pray in agreement, or to pray silently and ask the Kingdom to come on earth, during this process.  This is not the same as rushing in, as on this jet.  This slow and steady mentorship is required until students gain maturity, “until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect [mature] man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

Equally dangerous is the contempt that so-called exorcists with no special training, and who have contempt toward education in general, and look down in scorn at mental health education in particular.  There are many “experts” out there with no training and who think they are the “strong men.” These experts say anything they want to say in self-promotion, often without accountability, or with accountability as immature as these immature exorcists.  We studied the tragic case of the murder of the victim in the Philippines who was punched violently in the chest by a boasting and loud “strong man” exorcist who attended a charismatic church, and he rushed in to punch the victim to “cast out” the devil, and the punch caused a fatal heart attack on the spot,

I want only to call attention now to this other danger of “strong men” who rush up to save others.  Cases in the U.S., and in mission fields, show that the victims of demon possession may also get killed by immature trust in psychology and psychiatry, and also by immature distrust and contempt on psychology and psychiatry.  Our teams have seen this happen.

We pray.  And God demands the best of both worlds.  God wants mature workers with spiritual discernment, long tuned and long practiced under mature discipleship.  Always aligned whenever possible with necessary diagnoses in best clinical sciences.

This maturity comes by working in hundreds of cases.

We must remember that it is the suffering victims of our foolish trust who may get killed by our many follies, thinking we are strong.

Who are the strong men?

by Michael (M.D.)
approved, edited Admin PLB Accountant
(see bios)