Do exorcists really cast out demons?

Answer 1

The answer is surprisingly yes. Despite the bad press that movies and popular culture have given Exorcisms, both the psychiatric profession and the church believe that Exorcism have a role to play.

The Christian practice of exorcism approaches the subject with a procedure of presuming mental or physical illness and employing mental health and medical professionals to rule out physical or mental causes before authorization of the exorcism ritual. By allowing the medical profession to attempt to solve the problem first, we can be assured that exorcism is only done when all possible benign causes are ruled out.

The church then treats the person has having a malignant demonic possession and an exorcism may be performed.

Demonic possession is not a valid psychiatric or medical diagnosis recognized by either the DSM-IV or the ICD-10. Those who profess a belief in demonic possession have sometimes ascribed the symptoms associated with mental illnesses such as hysteria, mania, psychosis, Tourette's syndrome, epilepsy, schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder to possession. In cases of dissociative identity disorder in which the alter personality is questioned as to its identity, 29% are reported to identify themselves as demons. Additionally, there is a form of monomania called demonomania or demonopathy in which the patient believes that he or she is possessed by one or more demons.

The fact that exorcism works on people experiencing symptoms of possession is by some attributed to placebo effect and the power of suggestion. Some supposedly possessed persons are actually narcissists or are suffering from low self-esteem and act a "demon possessed person" in order to gain attention.

Nevertheless, Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck researched exorcisms (initially in an effort to disprove demonic possession), and claims to have conducted two himself. He concluded that the Christian concept of possession was a genuine phenomenon. He derived diagnostic criteria somewhat different from those used by the Roman Catholic Church. He also claimed to see differences in exorcism procedures and progression. After his experiences, and in an attempt to get his research validated, he has attempted to get the psychiatric community to add the definition of "Evil" to the DSMIV.

Answer 2

yes, the Roman Catholic Church have a special section in their diocese that train their priests for exorcism and other supernatural powers