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Besides the doctor-induced cases, most DID patients Kelley treated in the 1990s seemed to be role-playing. Few of these cases were grounded in reality. Genuine trauma-based DID is much rarer than many in the deliverance scene think, Kelley says.

Along with other skeptics, Kelley believes that some cases of DID could have also been "suggested" by the mass media and other forms of publicity. Rare instances of apparent dissociation were first described in the 1800s, but unprecedented numbers of DID patients were diagnosed after releases of the movie Three Faces of Eve in 1957 and the 1973 book Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber, so that cases peaked in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Possessed or Obsessed? | Many Christians say they are in need of deliverance but some may be giving demons more than their due.

Exorcism Therapy | An interview with Michael W. Cuneo, author of American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty

Pandora's Box of SRA | Satanic ritual abuse is often hard to prove, but it may not matter.

Exorcism 101 | What we can learn from the way Jesus cast out demons?

Learning English From MTV | Inside Agnieszka Tennant's article on deliverance ministries.

ReligiousTolerance.org offers information about dissociative identity disorder, as well as what the Bible says about exorcism and the variety of Christian beliefs on the topic.

The Lausanne Movement's August 2000 Deliver Us From Evil consultation, held in Nairobi, discussed many issues related to spiritual warfare. One of the papers presented was Jerry Mungadze's "Spiritual Conflict in Light of Psychology and Medicine," which says Christians have often been treated as demonized when suffering from psychological or psychiatric illness.

The International Society for the Study of Dissociation site offers both popular and academic information about the disorder, as well as links to related organizations.

Biola has a brief biographical sketch of Kelley.

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September 3 2001, Vol. 45, No. 11