On Demons: Spiritual, Psychedelic and Psychotic Experiences of Malevolent Agency

How is the subjective experience of demons different from the experience of benevolent spirit companions? This presentation explores how negative emotional valence, lack of control, and high-arousal characterize malevolent agent encounters. Moreover, the ways we respond to malevolent spirits, both spontaneously and in religious/therapeutic contexts, resemble strategies for responding to (e.g., resisting or reconciling with) hostile agents in real life. Benevolent spiritual companions, much like friends in real life, diminish the perception of hostile spiritual forces, and can be summoned as allies in spiritual struggles. The dynamics of Cognitive Companion Construction (CCC), both hostile and benevolent, reflect an amplified imaginative process of social-cognitive simulation – in which the mind synthesizes negative and positive agent encounters into a symbolic (generalized) form, so as to update and generalize our responses to social actors (including the self) in real life.