Wired for Weird

I saw this news about the Karnataka act against inhuman practices and black magic finally becoming law:

“The act bans performing any black magic, inhumane act and evil practices in search of treasure or bounty, tantric acts which include physical and sexual assault, practices such as parading people naked, ostracising a person in the name of a ritual and encouraging inhumane acts during said rituals, exorcism, assaulting people under the pretext of exorcism, misinformation and creating a panic-like situation under the pretext of ghosts and black magic and others.”

It brought back memories of this podcast on the strange impact of that famous horror movie, The Exorcist. In case you don’t know, that’s a movie from the 1970’s about a girl who got possessed, on whom a priest performed exorcism to finally rid her of the demon. As a consultant priest for the movie, Tom Bermingham said:

“Making the movie was strange enough. But the aftermath was completely bizarre.”

Bizarre how?

By the 1960’s, exorcism as a ritual had been dying out. But the movie sparked off a revival and even increase in the demand for exorcism again! Demons were now everywhere, tempting you, spoiling you etc. A lot of crazy behavior began to be attributed to demons, ergo the need for exorcism rose.

Add to that the fact that the medical industry of the 70’s didn’t have any clear ways to deal with mental illness or depression. This gap made people willing to turn anywhere for solutions, including exorcism. The societal perception that mental illness was somehow the individual’s fault whereas being possessed wasn’t meant people found it convenient to blame demons.

That was also the time that the Catholic Church was loosening its rules for priests and nuns. For example, they were now allowed to drive cars! But as the Church was becoming more practical and “worldly”, fear set in: isn’t the worldly the enemy of the sacred? Wouldn’t all this lower the Church’s standards, and allow demons to sneak in everywhere? Hence a spike in the need for exorcism.

An in-vogue treatment for chronically depressed people back then was the recover-memory therapy. Basically, it assumed the root cause of the problem was something horrible done to you earlier, usually sexual abuse. As a coping mechanism, you had repressed that memory. Recover the memory and you could begin the path to recovery. Given how long drawn, painful (and unsuccessful) such a method was, people turned to exorcism instead.

Law or no law, I guess people are wired for weird beliefs.