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

I thoroughly enjoyed reading every single moment of this book. I think it’s a well written series of psychological assessments on how possessions, and then exorcisms, have pronounceable patterns of recognition, and when properly addressed, treatment, and hopefully healing. He makes a clear definition of the difference between mental illness, various personality disorders, and the actual phenomenon in which the patient is possessed, and gets treated by an exorcist. He also states in most cases the exorcism event does not happen in one “session”, but over a period of time by a priest. Like any form of traditional therapy, sometimes the exorcisms are conducted over continuous weeks, or even over months. He has well balanced case studies: not every single exorcism is flash and bang, full of Latin prayers, holy water soaked beds, and demons rotating the victims neck in various ‘laws of physics-defying’ degrees. This book is dry as it is his clinical cases; patients, events and assessments. So it’s not for thrills and chills. I do appreciate the fact that he does make people aware of non-traditional events that even current psychology can’t explain. This is a pro-catholic/Christian book with his scientific assessments balancing the scales. This book does not assess other forms of exorcists, nor about Shamanism, new age cleaning/clearing, nor other cultures and their rights of exorcisms (Judaism/Islam/Buddhism/Hinduism). It’s very pro-western in its DSM IV and DSM V psychological assessments as well. Hope this helps. Like I stated in my first sentence: this book was fascinating!!

This book is a pretty dense read. It's not stories of possessions but more a clinical view of the diagnosis of possession.. without any real detail. Honestly disappointed.