As a consultant psychiatrist, in about 13 years of practising psychiatry I've never used the MMPI or Rorschach tests. Nor do I even have copies of them in my office. Nor (I think) do any of my 14 strong team (although if anyone did it would be our psychologist.....and in the interests of pedantry, a psychiatrist went to medical school, a psychologist has a psychology degree that grants the academic title of "Dr").
I'd split this into two parts.
1. Evidence
2. Instinct
Pretty much any questionnaire test will be "evidence" based. That means, for example, it's been given to a large test group of subjects and analysed for trends. These "evidence based" tests are easily broken. If you "calibrate" one on a hundred men, then administer it to a woman then you have no evidence base to say that a test designed for men will be any use at all for a woman. It might be, but then you're back to instinct and common sense, not evidence. You could warp this example even more by wondering if a personality test calibrated on english people would be of any use if administered in a poor part of Africa.
If anyone knows what the evidence base is for how a "demon" would answer when given the MMPI then they read far stranger journals than I (but please tell me how to subscribe, I'm sure they're good ones
) I'd love to sit in on the session though.
"So, are you a demon?"
"No, honest, Gov."
"Any strong feelings about God?"
"Nice chap. I quite like him"
"So, you don't want to vomit at the sound of His name then?"
"Not at all."
"What does this ink blot look like to you?"
"A kitten"
"So not a bloody heart with a knife through it then?"
"No, really, I'm not a demon, but, er, could you move the holy water a bit further away please, this is a new shirt and I really don't want to get it wet.""
So, if I had any evidence based tests on me, I'd throw them away in this situation.
I think you're on instinct alone here. If your priest / doctor has any experience with mental illness they'd use it.....but here your question becomes too broad for an easy answer. You're basicallly asking "how do you diagnose mental illness". There are lots and they can be very different.
To give you a structure to start from. Think of things as being either "positive" symptoms or "negative" ones.
Positive symptoms are things that happen to people with mental illness that people who are well don't typically experience....like hallucinations, delusions etc.
Negative symptoms are abilities that everyone has that are impaired...like the inability to concentrate or think clearly.
Then you need to make a list of "positive" symptoms of possession, compare it to your list of symptoms of mental illness and cross out any symptoms that are on both lists....they can't help you tell the difference.
Your priest will be focusing on symptoms that are only on one of your lists. They're your genuinely helpful ways of telling one thing from another if you don't have actual experience or instinct to fall back on....so your priest will talk to the patient and focus on those.
Craig
