Demonic Foes: My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal

by Richard Gallagher M.D.

Overview

The world’s leading psychiatric authority on demonic possession delves into the hidden world of exorcisms and his own transformation from cynic to believer over the course of his twenty-five-year career.

Successful New York psychiatrist Richard Gallagher was skeptical yet intrigued when a hard-nosed, no-nonsense Catholic priest asked him to examine a woman for a possible exorcism. Meeting her, Gallagher was astonished. The woman’s behavior defied logic. In an instant, she could pinpoint a person’s secret weaknesses. She knew how individuals she’d never known had died, including Gallagher’s own mother, who passed away after a lengthy battle with ovarian cancer. She spoke fluently in multiple languages, including Latin—but only when she was in a trance.

This was not psychosis, Gallagher concluded. It was, in his scientific estimation, what could only be describe as paranormal ability. The woman wasn’t mentally disturbed—she was possessed. This remarkable case was the first of many that Gallagher would encounter. Sought after today by leaders of all faiths—ministers, priests, rabbis and imams, Gallagher has spent a quarter-century studying demonic activity and exorcisms throughout history and has witnessed more cases than any other psychiatrist in the world today.

In this eerie and enthralling book, Gallagher chronicles his most famous cases for the first time, including:

• A professional who claimed her spiritualist mother had “assigned” her a spirit who “turned on her.”
• A petite woman—”90 pounds soaking wet”—who threw a 200-pound Lutheran deacon across the room to the horror of onlookers in a church hall;
• And “Julia,” the so-called Satanic queen and self-described witch, who exhibited “the most harrowing” case, a “once-in-a-century” possession.

Going beyond horror movies and novels, Demonic Foes takes you deep into this hidden world, sharing in full details of these true-life tales of demonic possession.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062876478
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	184,948
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Richard Gallagher, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist, is a professor of psychiatry at New York Medical and a psychoanalyst on the faculty of Columbia University. He graduated from Princeton University, Phi Beta Kappa in classics, and trained as a resident in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. The world’s foremost scientific expert on the subject of diabolic attacks, he has been an active member of the International Association of Exorcists since the 1990s. He lives in Westchester, New York.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Introduction 1

Part 1 From Skeptic to Observer

Chapter 1 Initial Journey 19

The Interested Student

Chapter 2 A Priest Comes Calling 29

Observing External Oppressions

Chapter 3 Julia, the Satanic Queen 43

Her Possession and Her Remarkable Abilities

Part 2 Investigator and Diagnostician

Chapter 4 Troubles of the Spirit 73

Diagnosing the Spectrum of Possessions

Chapter 5 Diagnosing the Variety of Oppressions 91

Chapter 6 Troubles of the Mind 103

False Cases and Other Medical Tasks

Chapter 7 Catherine-Mother, Housewife, and Possessed 131

Her Series of Exorcisms and What the Rituals Are Really Like

Chapter 8 The Serious Investigator 151

Chapter 9 The History of Beliefs in Evil Spirits, the Emergence of the Idea of the Paranormal, and Infestations 159

Chapter 10 Alice 189

A Case of a Successful Exorcism and a Further Word About Causes and Solutions

Part 3 Consultant and Scholar

The Advocacy and Cautions of a Physician

Chapter 11 Barbara and the Wider Satanic Panic 201

True vs. False. Memories

Chapter 12 Final Controversies 231

The Abuse of Exorcisms and a Final Note to Critics, Searchers, and the Media About the Scientific Status of Possessions and the So-Called Paranormal

Epilogue: The Reality Behind These Phenomena 241

Why Demons Attack

Acknowledgments 249

Notes 251

Editorial Reviews

09/21/2020

Psychiatrist Gallagher combines experiences from his practice and from witnessing exorcisms with academic interpretations of exorcism accounts in this beguiling memoir. Putting his “professional qualifications on the line,” to write the book, Gallagher, a devout Catholic, recounts how he first became interested in “psychosomatic medicine” after his brother claimed to be healed of various physical ailments by a witch in France. The author first observed possession firsthand after an American Catholic priest asked Gallagher to evaluate a patient in a psychiatric hospital who described her condition as “demonic oppression.” True demonic oppression and possession, Gallagher contends, are rare and feature several distinctive attributes—superhuman strength, aversion to sacred objects, and “speaking foreign languages or possessing hidden knowledge.” Gallagher details cases, five of which he gives a personal account, like that of Anneliese Michel, who received a Catholic exorcism in Germany in 1975, and his engagement in the early 1990s with the hair-raising Satanic priestess “Julia” who “was never delivered from her demonic presence.” A lack of verifiable empirical evidence about any of the cases covered, however, will fail to convince skeptics and critics. Regardless, Gallagher’s piquant accounts should appeal to believers. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

A thought-provoking read sure to attract intrigued skeptics and believers alike.” — Booklist

From the Publisher

2020-07-22
A professor of clinical psychology at New York Medical College chronicles his decades of experience with people who believe they are demonically possessed.

In his foreword, Joseph English, past president of the American Psychiatric Association, writes that this book “may be unique in history: the serious treatment of a long-disputed topic by a superbly credentialed academic physician.” Gallagher was drawn into the world of demons by a priest who asked him to help rule out medical causes for a woman who said she was being beaten by invisible spirits. He’s been working in this field, mostly as an unpaid consultant to Catholic priests, ever since. Gallagher provides helpful context and background, including the history of belief in demons and the role of the Catholic Church in their exorcism, and he explains signs of the presence of demons: superhuman strength, speaking in foreign or archaic languages, abusive attacks, unexplained knowledge of the exorcist’s personal life. The author defines a continuum between demonic possession and oppression (possession is more serious) and describes the suffering of the possessed. He speculates on how victims came to be pursued by demons (several subjects indulged in satanic worship) and analyzes cases where a belief in demonic possession masked true mental illness. Skeptics be forewarned that Gallagher truly believes in demons. A Catholic, he calls them “cosmic” terrorists who despise humans and seek to “negate our loving personalities, destroy us spiritually…even cause our physical death.” The author doesn’t provide an explicit cosmology or theology for the origin of demons. In the name of confidentiality, he changes names and locations of his victims and the priests he worked with and doesn’t provide anchoring dates, making it difficult to further research his account. Nevertheless, this is a cogently written book on a fascinating subject. Believers will love it, unbelievers will relish an argument with its premises, and even the most skeptical will marvel at the mysteries of human behavior it investigates.

An unsettling, absorbing account of the phenomenon of demonic possession by a medical expert.

Kirkus Reviews

A thought-provoking read sure to attract intrigued skeptics and believers alike.

Booklist

A thought-provoking read sure to attract intrigued skeptics and believers alike.

Booklist