question about annieliese michel

I don’t recall anything about a ouija board or any other occult dabbling in Felicitas Goodman’s book. Anneliese’s first experiences – visions of demonic faces – were unmediated, “out of the blue” impressions.

I don’t believe the possession was genuine because it was fed by folk-fundamentalism, clerical gullibility, and medical incompetence.

Goodman demonstrates that the condition was aggravated by misdiagnosis and mis-prescription. Moreover, the content of Anneliese’s ravings, while unpleasant and “wickedly” nasty, did not exhibit any truly supernatural intelligence or activity.

Goodman suggests that Anneliese was undergoing a spontaneous, classic shamanic initiation experience, an event not uncommon in circumpolar and other native cultures.

The difference – and the harm – being that her culture did not recognize it as such. Its religious custodians saw only demonic possession, and its medical custodians were not broadly educated enough to see in her symptoms a classic shamanic vision-pattern.

The resulting mis-readings and mis-diagnoses killed the unfortunate girl.

Goodman shows how the peculiar but quite natural brain events involved in the Michel “possession” were holistic – with a definite beginning, middle, and denouement. The shamanic brain events are “meant” to unfold in a particular way – if allowed to do so, and if “correctly” interpreted by the custodians of a shamanically-knowledgable culture.

Tragically for Anneliese, no one knew what was really going on, and clerical and medical intervention interrupted the
necessary unfolding of the shamanic syndrome before it could reach its natural climax and return the subject once again to social normality.

The result of this cultural failure was Anneliese’s descent into madness, starvation, and death.

The “demons” were part and parcel of her hallucinating brain state, roughly analagous to the “spirits” encountered in shamanic initiation. The names with which she labeled them probably originated with the hallucinations themselves, or were Anneliese’s subjective interpretation of her own dissociated personality fragments.

As Felicitas Goodman pointed out in “The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel”, the “demons” were obviously taken from local Germanic figures, e.g., “Hitler” – and they used the working-class crudities of the lower-class people whom anyone in Anneliese’s social milieu would have experienced locally. (“Locally” is the key: these “demons” were all-too-human expressions, with no suggestion of truly supernatural nonmaterial malevolent personalities.)

Sorry, I do not recall whether or not her eye color changed.

I don’t think of those things you listed as paranormal activity…

The demons telling her to eat is just delusion, and her delusional response was… not to eat. Or, to fast – which again puts her in a similar condition to shamans going thru an ordeal of fasting. Her delusions caused her to stop eating, to practice anorexea. That’s not paranormal, it’s just sick. You ask why she was doing it – well, probably because her mental illness drove her to it. She could have had an unconscious need to punish herself, or in her dissociated state, felt that the “demonic” compulsions were too strong to resist.

Not touching sacred objects – again, that’s not paranormal, it’s just acting out the kind of behavior that is expected when one is – or thinks one is – “possessed”.

Superhuman strength _might_ sometimes indicate paranormality, but does crushing an apple require superhuman strength? I doubt it. Even greater feats of strength do not require a paranormal explanation, e.g., the famous example in the Friedkin film, given by Dr Tanney, of the mother who lifts a car off her child. Enhanced strength, sure, but not “superhuman”.

You’re entitled to think that the Michel case was genuine, but I just don’t see in it any evidence of the supernatural, based on Goodman’s book. Her story is weird and chilling, but not due to any supernatural intervention, just to the wild, bleak landscape of insanity.

Blizzi, shucks, …blush…

Thank you Blizzi, but no, I don’t have the hotmail IM…

All right then. 🙂