[Desdemona]

Because of my education in head-shrinking, I can spot various mental problems quite readily, but I'd like to know how to tell when Satanm aliosque spiritus malignos are present.

Funny you should say that. A lot of exorcists are psychiatrists, actually. All other explainations have to be ruled out before exorcism begins. Every account I've read, though, says that the possessed recoil at the sacred. They spit at a Crucifix or Holy Water, won't go near a church and utterly hate them. No two cases are the same, but that is the one thing they all have in common - hatred for the blessed. Beyond that, you can't make up some of this stuff.

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

A lot of exorcists are psychiatrists, actually.

Wait! Most psychiatrists are atheist or agnostic. Most do not believe in the devil and see religious ideology as weakness or disorder. At least in California, most mental health people with any sort of preternatural belief system are into New Age, shamanism, etc. There are very few Christians. Even the Bishops themselves no longer believe and will refer to psychiatrists.

Malachy Martin and Fr. Amorth are right. People who have harassments or possessions are often misdiagnosed and mistreated for years.

I read a story once of an Episcopal priest who was also a psychiatrist. He had some institutionalized patients that no matter what he did, they did not improve. Out of desperation one day he tried exorcism. More than one walked out of the hospital completely cured.

The only Catholic psychiatrist I know of who was involved in exorcisms is Rama Coomaraswamy M.D. He is brilliant but a bit 'offbeat' as of late in his thinking. But, his articles on psychiatry and exorcism are quite good. One thing I read which has stuck with me, he stated (paraphrasing) "The mistake psychiatry makes is that the spirit is not located in the psyche. The psyche is within the spirit."