The Exorcism

Ken Hollings

February 2005

The exorcism | Religion on the brain | Fields of vision | All in the mind? | Find out more

Fields of vision

Michael Persinger's original intention had been to stimulate the creative mental state necessary for scientific discovery. The intense electrical activity of the state is centred round the brain's temporal lobes and has long been associated with mystics and visions. It's similar to that of a common type of epileptic seizure that can occur without discernable convulsions. Persinger surmised that by stimulating the temporal lobes with an electromagnetic field programmed to resemble an epileptic seizure, he might trigger incidents of insight and potential significance. Wilder Penfield had similarly postulated that the temporal lobe system recorded all of an individual's experiences, which could be brought back to consciousness by the type of electrical discharge that occurs during an epileptic seizure.

Temporal lobe epilepsy has also been offered as an explanation for the intense mystical visions experienced by Ellen White, co-founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Movement. Born in 1827, Ellen was nine years old when she was hit in the face with a rock, breaking her nose and leaving her unconscious for several days. For years afterwards, she complained of impaired memory, nervousness, inability to concentrate and excessive fatigue – all symptoms associated with temporal lobe seizures. 'Wave after wave of glory rolled over me until my body grew stiff,' she would later write. This occurred shortly after she had participated in the 'great disappointment' of 1844, when the Second Coming of Christ, confidently predicted by Baptist preacher William Miller, failed to take place.

Disillusioned, Miller's followers turned to Seventh Day Adventism or to movements such as the Shakers. Like their antecedents the Quakers, the Shakers tremble in ecstatic fits 'with Risings and Swellings in their Bowels; Shriekings, Yellings, Howlings and Roarings'.

Faith seems linked to the body in crisis. Stress, fear and injury, Persinger theorizes, might provoke strange disorders in the electromagnetic fields around us. Environmental disturbances, such as solar flares, oil drilling and earthquakes might also chime with visionary claims, mass religious conversions, UFO sightings and even ghost lights.

Right living

To show his faith, medieval saint Benoist Labre would consume vermin. (Not until the 19th-century teachings of John Wesley was cleanliness placed next to godliness.) Religious and scientific nonconformists have sought ways ever since to reach the soul through the body and to temper the body via the soul.

In 1885, respected zoologist Dr Gustav Jaeger published his two-volume Discovery of the Soul. In it he proposed that the human soul was 'an odorous emanation' detected through our sense of smell. Pleasant fragrances were beneficial, he claimed, promoting cheerful, enterprising and courageous emotions. While unpleasant odours were noxious, causing gloom, depression and diffidence. To allow the soul to breathe properly, Jaeger recommended people should wear all-wool apparel. Dr Jaeger's theories may not have survived, but the knitwear label that bears his name can still be seen on the high street today.

Dr John Harvey Kellogg, a fervent Seventh Day Adventist, firmly believed that the bowels were the source of 90% of all ailments. He fed each of his patients half a pint of yoghurt and administered another half pint as an enema. If the patient's condition failed to improve, Dr Kellogg simply removed a portion of the intestine. His idea for 'cornflakes' was developed by his brother Will in 1906, forming the basis for the Kellogg's cereal empire.

Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, one of Sigmund Freud's most gifted followers, believed that the secret of well-being lay in the orgasm, ultimately claiming that all life was animated by a basic unit of sexual energy he called the 'orgone'. Driven out of Germany by the Nazis, Reich fled to America, where he started manufacturing 'Orgone Accumulators', designed to bathe his patients in orgone energy. The Food and Drug Administration brought an injunction against him for selling an untested medical device. The once respected psychiatrist was sentenced to two years in prison, where he subsequently died of heart failure after serving half his sentence.

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