Paper short abstract:

What is it like to be a Muslim possessed by a jinn spirit? How do you find refuge from madness and evil in a place like Denmark? In this presentation I discuss some of the ways in which Danish Muslims have sought to protect themselves.

Paper long abstract:

When Muslim patients seek healing in the psychiatric institutions of the Danish welfare state or the religious healing practices offered by mosques their bodies and souls become a battlefield between the moral demands of Islam and the normative ideals of secularism—religious and political doctrines that are often portrayed as mutually incompatible. Yet in strikingly similar ways, both psychiatrists and Muslim exorcists appear to use transgressive, even sacrificial practices of healing to counter their patients' perceptions of their condition.

In this presentation I will show videos of and discuss the experiences of a Palestinian refugee, living in Aarhus, Denmark, who was sentenced to long-term and intensive psychiatric treatment after a severe case of jinn possession which caused him to smash up the interior of a mosque, crash several cars, and insult a number of people. In particular I discuss the dynamics of a particular kind of psychoeducation that applies what in Danish psychiatry is conceptualised as "respectful coercion" in order to facilitate a situation in which patients may freely choose to comply and submit to the psychotropic treatments they have been sentenced to take. With tools from ritual theory, studies on the effects of placebo, as well as theories on ethical self-cultivation I discuss the differences and parallels between these interventions and his experiences with exorcisms in the mosques.