Psychiatry is the field of medicine that is most in conflict with spiritism. And it is the field in which spiritists are most active and successful. The reason is obvious. Most psychopaths are simply possessed; and what is beyond routine in psychopaths of psychological, educational, neurological or cerebral origin is equally infested with lower spirits. In this respect there is no doubt for practising spiritists and especially for spiritist psychiatrists. For this reason, the number of spiritist psychiatric clinics in Brazil is large. In the state of São Paulo alone, there are thirty-five such facilities in operation, and several more are planned or under construction.

The medical staff of these centres is not always spiritist, but is generally made up of a majority of non-spiritist doctors. The official authorities put obstacles in the way of non-conventional medical treatment in these centres; but the spiritists face all the difficulties and, moreover, continue to build new hospitals because they feel a great responsibility for this problem, since they are the only ones who really know it in its greatest depth. It is their task to do something for the millions of victims who have received inadequate treatment in whole or in part.

These hospitals have formed an association to better fight for their rights and to maintain more frequent and effective relations with each other. This specialised hospital network helped the state government during the Juqueri crisis (Franco da Rocha Hospital in the capital) by participating in the distribution of the excessive number of patients that turned Juqueri into what people called the devil's cauldron.

The Amparo Spiritist Hospital was under construction when a renowned physician and writer published an article in the newspaper Ultima Hora speaking out against the project, claiming that the spiritists were interested in the cause out of conscience because they produced madmen and felt obliged to help them. A spiritist journalist and psychologist replied in the Associated Newspapers that the spiritists were interested in the cause because medicine could not cure the mentally ill. The spiritist principle of charity compelled them to do so. The hospital was built and others soon followed.

The slander that spiritists make madmen began with the clerical and medical campaigns against the doctrine. Kardec addressed this issue by pointing out the absurdity of this accusation and by recalling that the myth of the devil has produced more madmen in the world over the centuries than one can imagine. He pointed out that medical treatment had always proved inadequate for the simple reason that science refused to recognise the signs of possession.

He referred to the predisposition of certain people to madness, which has led to the loss of reason in people all over the world who dedicate themselves to the study of music, mathematics, theology or other cultural subjects. All the more so because, according to the professor, there is a certain degree of madness in all of us, which can be triggered by any kind of excitement. As an example, he cited the cases of individual and collective possession that occur with frightening frequency in religious communities, and claimed that spiritism is the best and most effective prevention against various types of madness.

It has now been scientifically proven that this degree of madness can be triggered by telepathic arousal, both by incarnated beings and by disincarnated spirits. Some years ago, the psychoanalytic physician Jean Herenwald devoted a book to this question entitled ‘Telepathy and Interpersonal Relations’, in which he cites impressive cases from his own clinic. American, British, French and Soviet research has provided irrefutable proof of this reality.

Whately Carrington of Cambridge University has examined the facts in depth. Spiritism is not intended to combat psychiatry or to negate its achievements or those of psychotherapy in general, but it clearly offers new perspectives to this specialised field of treatment to advance scientifically proven aetiological and curative research. It reveals to psychotherapists the hidden face of psychopathological reality, just as astronauts have shown astronomers the hidden face of the moon.

Spiritist treatment methods have proven their effectiveness and continue to do so on a daily basis all over the world. The Spiritism offers psychiatry a comprehensive theoretical and practical contribution which psychiatry cannot reject on the basis of assumptions and prejudices from a long outdated past.