So what happens when you are a licensed, state certified psychotherapist and they find out that you include casting out of demons from patients as part of your therapy?

Fortunately, you get banned from practicing.

Mark Edward Tynan, an Australian psychologist, was found to have told church members that one of his patients ‘was under the control of Satan’ and that her parents had ‘dedicated her to Satan’.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

In his sessions Tynan treated two young female clients for dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder, with “inappropriate” treatments such as prayer, visualisation and reconstructing traumatic childhood events. The clients, who were also part of the 500-member community, were forced to discuss satanic abuse and supernatural events.

Wow.

He has been banned from practising in New South Wales.

In Uganda, where Christian fundamentalism has found a comfortable home, the belief that demons are the cause of problems is wide spread.

Sunday after Sunday believers (mainly Born-Agains) are warned that they are living in a time of ‘spiritual warfare’ and are thus to do everything they can to protect themselves from demons. Demons are typically blamed for everything from sickness, poverty, unemployment, barrenness, failure to get married, failure to get visas to travel to the UK, and even HIV-AIDS. Seriously.

To them, everything wrong is because of demons and of course the ‘captain’ of all the demons, Satan. As a result, exorcisms like this one shown below are pretty much the order of the day in a typical Kampala Born-Again church service:

It truly baffles my mind as to how grown-ups can take this nonsense seriously.