I was hoping for a timely post for Halloween but just missed the deadline. Witches are considered an icon of the season, although I have not seen a lot of those costumes recently. I came across an important book that analyzed the witchmongering movement in 15th to 18th century. Witchmongering was term was coined by Reginald Scott in 1584 in his book The Discoverie of Witchcraft. He used it to describe people promoting the ideas and superstitions about witchcraft – specifically those who profited from spreading these ideas. His book discusses the idea that witches have connections to the devil and Scot’s position was that this was all imaginary. He studied magic and concluded that the belief in witchcraft was rooted in illusions, imposters, or inaccurate conclusions due to mental disorders. He sought to prevent marginalized individuals from being attacked as witches.
Despite Scott’s rational approach, witchmongering was
actively debated for at least another century.
Thomas Ady wrote A Candle in the Dark in 1656 and took a similar
position. Popular opinion about the
existence of witches and their presence began to wane around 1700, but
witchcraft laws and executions persisted much longer. In Great Britain the
Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1736. By
the late 18th century most witchcraft prosecutions and punishments
were banned in Europe. The last witchcraft trial in the US was in 1878. There is a detailed history of both
witch hunts and executions of witches resulting in the executions of tens of
thousands of women. Even though most
people do not know the details of this dark practice – the concept witch hunt
is used rhetorically these days to indicate an unfair investigation.
There are various ways to analyze the history of
witchmongering. Social scientists have looked at anthropological and
sociopolitical analyses. Rhetoric seems like a powerful approach to me because
humans seem to use the same patterns over time to make irrational
decisions. Rhetoric is a component of cultural
inheritance. In the case of
witches – anxiety provoking events like crop failures, illnesses, economic and
political instability, religious and sexist biases could lead to accusations of
witchcraft. But once the precedent was
set behaviors, social factors, and personality factors could also be included
as well as accusations of supernatural phenomenon like sorcery
and causing
people to disappear. There is no
doubt that some had mental illnesses but that is not currently considered to be
a major factor in the women who were persecuted.
Ady describes a common scenario in his era. The poor and
disabled went door to door in those days asking for relief. Many were elderly,
malnourished, and disabled. If they were denied assistance by the landowner and
his crops or cattle failed or one of his family fell ill – that person could be
blamed for witchcraft as a source for these problems. They could be subjected to false tests or torture
and sentenced to death as a witch.
Once these negative qualities were specified as evidence,
the sequence of events proceeded in the same manner that can easily be observed
in modern American politics. If enough
people are anxious about some matter, it is easy enough to incite them. Just claim that you are the only person who
can solve that problem and find a group that is the modern equivalent of
witches to blame. In recent months we
have seen documented and undocumented immigrants, women, non-white minorities,
university professors, public health officials, public sector employees, the
disabled, the economically disadvantaged, the food insecure, members of the
previous administration, and just about anyone who is a critic of the current
administration. Scapegoating a small segment of the LGBTQ community may have
been the deciding factor in that last Presidential election and it continues to
be an issue.
Ady’s book is a tour de force against witchcraft. He begins his three part treatise by directly
confronting popular notions of witchcraft with the Biblical moral code of the
day. He lists 16 – “where is it written”
or “it is written” clauses in his introductory “A Dilemma that Cannot bee answered
By Witchmongers.” In the subsequent text
he elaborates on how references to witches have been misinterpreted to fuel
witch misinformation. An excerpt of the
Dilemma is reproduced below. Note that the original spellings are preserved:
At the end of this this volume he gives two excellent
counterfactuals to falsify witch mongering. It is clear from these examples
that any misfortune can be erroneously ascribed to witches and therefore witch
mongering and everything that involves adds no explanatory power. That is made much worse by the fact that this
non-explanation resulted in the deaths of thousands.
Medicine, science, and rational thought were not enough to immediately correct the practice of persecuting women as witches. Pseudoscience and various “tests” were used
to prove that a woman was a witch. Many
of these tests defy reason like the pseudoscience of the current era. For example, one test of a witch was to bind
them, throw them into a body of water and see if they float. Certain marks on the skin were taken to be
the marks of a witch. That included
puncture marks inflicted with needles by others – if the puncture wound did not
bleed it was considered evidence of a witch. Ady provided counterarguments
about why these were inadequate tests. Needless
to say there were no control groups.
Despite Weyer’s direct observations there are competing
theories that social and cultural factors were important. It is likely that both played a part, with
psychiatric etiologies as suggested by Weyer playing the minor part. If you are identified as a physician who
works with a particular problem – it is likely that selection bias is operating
in the clinical population that you see and treat. Cultural symbols are often incorporated into
psychotic symptoms. In 40 years of
practice – I saw a handful of people who believed they were Christ-like and
many more who believed they were the Antichrist. During the time of Satanic
Ritualistic Abuse (SRA) I saw many people who were not delusional but believed
that they had witnessed homicidal rituals by satanists. Those are all modern examples of observations
that were not accurate and could be scientifically disproven.
If we agree that witch accusations and persecutions were
psychiatric, social, and cultural in origins are there some common factors that
might account for these patterns?
Anti-intellectualism is a complex societal problem that has been
examined by Hofstader, Pigliucci, and others (3-5). Hofstader traced some of it back to right wing
politics and religion in the 1950s where it still resides today. Hofstader described 3 forms (antirationalism,
anti-elitism, unreflective instrumentalism) to which Rigney added unreflective
hedonism and Pigliucci added academic post modernism as a fifth (4). Pigliucci also added a qualifier that post
modernism may be an intellectual anti-science field.
The refutation of witchmongering is an important lesson for
people in modern times. Reasoning and moral reasoning based on Christian principles
and local laws eventually carried the day – but it took a long time. Science through
early observations of mental illness were a small part of the story. The most significant aspects of this historical
period is focused on cultural inheritance and rhetoric. Neither of those dimensions is necessarily
predicated on the truth. The commonest ignored
pattern is the use of a scapegoat to avoid the reality of the situation or in
the worst case divert attention to an emotional topic that is really all part
of the scapegoating.
We typically see these issues categorized as hot button
issues or culture wars. They
are responsible for large scale irrational decision making about guns, abortion, welfare,
religion in schools, banned books, restricted access to voting, racism, misogyny,
the medically uninsured, and corporate welfare. They are currently responsible for the
dismantling of basic research, health care, food subsidies, public health, foreign
aid, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, and the layoffs and
firings of 200,000 federal employees. There is an estimated large death and morbidity toll associated with those decisions.
While we are no longer naming witches and prosecuting them –
a lot of the thinking behind that process has been passed along as cultural inheritance
and the associated rhetoric. A
significant number of Americans react to it in expected ways. Recognizing the pattern of scapegoating and
the associated emotions is a critical first step. The second is to figure out what science is
and what it is not. Science is definitely not doing your own research unless you have been trained in the scientific method or (ideally) are a scientist. The ultimate ability
is to be able to use reason, moral reason, and science to make the best
possible decisions.
That is the best way to avoid more witchmongering.
George Dawson, MD, DFAPA
Graphic Attribution:
“The Witches' Ride' William Holbrook Beard (1870), Public
domain, via Wikimedia Commons
References:
1; The National
Archives - UK. Early Modern witch trials. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/early-modern-witch-trials/
2: Schoeneman TJ.
Criticisms of the psychopathological interpretation of witch hunts: a review.
Am J Psychiatry. 1982 Aug;139(8):1028-32. doi: 10.1176/ajp.139.8.1028. PMID:
7046480.
3: Hofstadter, R.
Anti-intellectualism in American life. Vol. 713. Vintage, 1966.
4: Rigney D. Rethinking Hofstadter: three kinds of
anti-intellectualism. Sociological Inquiry.
1999. 61(4): 434-451.
5: Pigliucci M. Denying evolution – Creationism, science and
the nature of science. Sinauer
Associates, Sunderland MA, 2002.
