Module 4: Assignment 2

The two metaphors, strange actions = illness and strange actions = possession, highlight and hide many different aspects of a person’s strange behavior and how we conceive and react to each situation. The strange actions = illness metaphor highlights the fact that mentally sick people cannot control they way they act. It states that the strange actions these people do are just “side effects” of their advanced mental disease, which will take a long time and a great amount of drugs and therapy to heal. People react sympathetically to mentally ill patients because they know that their actions are justified by their illness. This metaphor hides how truly outrageous and disturbing some of these patients’ behaviors can be. Sometimes it becomes very difficult to explain some people’s actions by medical science alone.
The strange actions = possession metaphor highlights completely different aspects than the strange actions = illness metaphor. This possession metaphor infers that there is more to a person’s behavior than just mental difficulties. It suggests that a supernatural power is at work. This metaphor also highlights the truly outrageous and sometimes violent behavior these people experience. Even some doctors have trouble explaining these occurrences through their advanced medical terminology. For example, in “A True and Most Dreadful Discourse,” the family members in the room could smell an awful stench, and each of them saw a child illuminated in the bedroom window. Does that mean everyone in the room was mentally ill? Even though I suspect Margaret did have some mental condition, I believe that some supernatural power was at work that night. Scientists believe they can explain everything that happened that night, but a person needs to know how far “a coincidence” can go. When a roomful of people can attest to the same story, can all of them really be mentally ill or “mistaken?” The strange actions = possession metaphor hides the fact that some of the strange behavior might be justified by a mental illness. When many people see a person convulsing for the first time ever, their imagination runs away with them, and they actually believe this person is possessed by the devil. People are more wary of patients who are possessed than patients with a mental illness because the source of their strange behavior is not precisely known. People in general are afraid of what they don’t know, and no one (who’s still living) knows what happens in the afterlife. So through this assessment, strange actions thought to be possession of the devil or a demon are somehow more disturbing than those of an illness. Have people ever thought of that? Why are we more disturbed by individuals who are possessed than people who just have an advanced mental disease? Their actions are very similar, yet people react in different ways depending on which metaphor is derived.
The healing processes of strange actions = illness and strange actions = possession are also very different. In the mental illness cases we have seen over the years, the patient was admitted into an institution and expected to get better after a long time and a lot of drugs and therapy. The people who didn’t understand their loved one’s illness could just drop them off at one of these mental hospitals and visit every once in a while to observe his/her progress. People also expected professional doctors and therapists to treat their relatives or friends. If a person was to take his/her mentally sick relative to a priest for an exorcism today, he/she would be the gossip of the town. In the past when someone was though to be possessed, priests were the main “dictator” in the healing process. If a doctor was brought in, he/she would be expected to recite the chants to drive the devil out just like the rest of them. The victim’s family would summon the help of the entire community to help drive the demon out. So in the past, the patient had a ton of support to help them heal, and today we are finally starting to see that. Doctors and therapists cannot stress enough that family and friend support is as vital to the recovery of a patient as drugs and therapy are. The more and more comfortable society becomes with the idea of mental illness and how sick people can act, the bigger and bigger part it will play in the healing process.
Of course we perceive Eve differently than Margaret because we are living in the 21st century and the exorcisms are a little outdated. As far as treatment goes, I would treat the two just as they were treated. Eve obviously was not possessed by the devil, so she should receive gradual therapy to help her deal with her multiple personalities and in time, heal entirely. Like I stated earlier, I’m not sure if Margaret was actually possessed by the devil, but some higher power was at work. So even though exorcisms are not practical in this day in age, Margaret was treated correctly. She didn’t believe she was mentally ill. She believed that she was possessed, so she knew the only way to recover was to have an exorcism. If she was thrown into a mental institution, she may never have had a full recovery because she herself would not believe that she was healed. With the help of plenty of people and priests through the exorcism, she was able to achieve a quick full recovery. Mentally, she believed she was healed because she knew the “devil” was driven out of her, and that, perhaps, was the best medicine anyone could give her. As far as accountability, neither woman did anything to deserve what she got. People in the 1500-1700s believed that people who were possessed by the devil had sinned gravely so that the devil could come upon them. I don’t believe that those people sinned any more gravely than any other person during that time period.
Ian Hacking would say that the writer of “A True and Most Dreadful Discourse” is mistaken. He would research more into Margaret’s childhood to try to discover links between significant events in her childhood and her most recent “questionable” behavior. So he would agree more, but not entirely, with the diagnosis of Eve White in “The Three Faces of Eve.” Perhaps Eve was just reacting badly to her social circumstances. Maybe she had suppressed her intense dislike for her husband and her housewife role so long that she finally just let that side of her “emerge.” And with the help of her physiatrist, she really started to believe that she had multiple personalities. We may never know exactly.