Exorcism
(In
Cecile Ernst book on exorcism she) states emphatically that she herself does not
“believe” in devils and
demons.
She stresses especially the strong craving for recognition that
psychically ill persons have and interprets their statements as hysterical
confabulations they use in order to attract the interest of those around them.
The extravagant theatrical display of exorcistic rites has a positive
effect only because it panders to this hysterical need of the patient for
attention and recognition. To me this interpretation seems to
oversimplify the facts of the matter quite considerably. We
have seen that demons are often regarded as desiring ceremonial honors.
When a person who is psychically ill wishes to attract the interest of
other people to himself, this desire, in my opinion, belongs more to the
complex and not always so much to the patient’s
ego.
Dr. Ernst holds the patient categorically responsible for his behaviour.
But in my opinion, the patient’s responsibility is only conditional.
In this connection the explanation given in an old text on exorcism from
Stans (1729) seems worthy of note. This text emphasizes that
a man can be possessed by “devils” when he has surrendered to sinful feelings
such as wrath, envy, hatred, lechery, and faintheartedness.
This seems to me to be a closer approximation to the true state of affairs: The
ego is
responsible only to a certain extent for the effect a person has on his
environment – namely, for what Jung called the personal shadow of the
individual, but not for archetypal psychic factors. Ignoring
one’s own shadow, though, is often very much like opening a door through which
these powers can break in. The question of moral
responsibility is therefore extremely subtle and requires different judgments
from case to case. P&R 116
… “an archetype in its quiescent, unprojected state has no exactly determinable forms only in projection.” The demons, accordingly, are archetypal formations that appear in the field of human projections. P&R 116