If you’re a Christian, you know that the spirit realm exists. But it hits differently when a psychiatrist testifies that demons are real.
Dr. Richard Gallagher
Dr. Richard Gallagher is a psychoanalyst on the faculty at Columbia University and a professor of psychiatry at New York Medical. He wrote a book about demons and demonic possession in America.
In one of his published blogs in The Washington Post, he wrote, “I’m a man of science and a lover of history; after studying the classics at Princeton, I trained in psychiatry at Yale and in psychoanalysis at Columbia. That background is why a Catholic priest had asked my professional opinion, which I offered pro bono, about whether this woman was suffering from a mental disorder. This was at the height of the national panic about Satanism.”
He wrote this in July 2016.
Demons and Demonic Possession
Even though Dr. Richard has been in his field for many years, he acknowledged that this particular topic is controversial.
“In my experience, the idea of demonic possession is so controversial and so often misunderstood that I want at the outset to establish some scholarly plausibility to the notion along with my bona fides.” This was written in the introduction of his book. Entitled, “Demonic Foes: My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal.”
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Dr. Richard emphasizes stories regarding demonic manifestations like levitation and remote seeing, in which possessed individuals may communicate what someone is doing and where they are doing it while being hundreds of miles away. He used Julia as an example.
A Psychiatrist Testifies that Demons are Real
“Julia demonstrated to me very clearly that she could see, for instance, the chief exorcist at a distance [even though] he was 100 miles away,” Dr. Richard stated this in an interview with The Christian Post last Thursday at his house.
“She could describe him to a tee and what he was doing which was unusual for his normal routine. There’s no way she could have guessed that. If one is familiar with occult literature, one realizes that there are occultists, people [who] have turned to dark arts who claim they have a third eye, and that they can see things from a distance, this is an analogous phenomenon. She had this paranormal ability to do that. And she was very clear where she got that ability,” he added.
“People have tried to study these things for years without reaching much in the way of a conclusion. Human beings don’t have those abilities on their own. They either get it from below or from above. Julia recognized that and she recognized that she got these paranormal abilities from Satan himself,” he further explained.
Demons and Demonic Possession are Real
Nonetheless, Dr. Richard cautions that, while there is proof that demons and demonic possession exist, caution must be exercised while discussing the subject in order to avoid exaggerations.
Read the full interview HERE.
Demons and demonic possession are real. In the Bible, Jesus Himself encountered a few and cast out some. And people have seen it.
Though we are convinced that they exist and are real, the power of Jesus far outweighs their power over us. If in this world we have troubles, we need not worry because Jesus overcame the world.
Header image: Stone sculpture of a demon [Francesco Ungaro]. Pexels, 31 March 2016, https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photography-of-beige-concrete-decor-96928/
Reference: The Christian Post
