Driving Away Evil Spirits Is All in a Day’s Work for Psychotherapist

Votive candles flicker in red and yellow jars on a makeshift altar of wood and cinder blocks. A gnarled piece of incense burns in the hollowed head of a ceramic Aztec god--spewing curls of black smoke into the windowless room. In hushed tones, a fatherly healer recites prayers before the altar’s crucifixes while the emotionally tortured woman at his side drinks three times from a goblet of rainwater. When the ritual is over, leaves from a California pepper tree litter the floor and the woman seems at peace.

On the bus ride to her therapist, Maria was panicky.

The woman, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, had begun feeling dangerously out of control after her baby girl started crying. Once, when she lost control, she threw a pot of boiling water at her husband and ended up in a mental ward. This time, the shy soft-spoken woman walked into the Norwalk office of psychotherapist Ignacio Aguilar expecting help from the Old World cures that abound in the Mexican countryside, not from the theories of Sigmund Freud.

That’s exactly what she got.

Aguilar has all his professional credentials hanging on his office wall: a framed master’s degree in social work from USC and a certified therapist license from the state of California. Beyond these pieces of paper are 17 years of experience working as a psychotherapist at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk where he has counseled hundreds of mentally disturbed patients.

But in his practice, Aguilar, 63, also has borrowed methods from Indian pueblos in New Mexico, Tijuana herb shops and village wise men in outposts throughout Mexico. The Mexico City native considers himself a folk healer with a repertoire of “mystical approaches.” He is among a handful of licensed therapists in Los Angeles County who turn to ancient rituals of the Hispanic culture when traditional therapy fails to make headway with a patient.

For Maria, who visited Aguilar’s office recently, there seemed to be little that would help her aside from her faith.

Trying to raise three girls, the 35-year-old Mexican immigrant was coping with an abusive husband and a neighbor she suspected was trying to harm her. Aguilar had been providing her conventional counseling. But she wanted a spiritual cleansing to drive out evil spirits after she had lost an amulet, which she believed protected her from harm.

The candles were glowing when she quietly entered Aguilar’s office and was directed to kneel before the altar. After both prayed quietly, Aguilar massaged her temples, neck and arms--making the woman seem as limp as ribbon. Then, he abruptly shook her as if to awaken her from a trance and let her sip from a goblet of rainwater “from the heavens.” He splattered drops of the liquid on her head and body.

Religious Connection

Next, the therapist took the branch of a California pepper tree and began vigorously brushing the woman with its shiny leaves--releasing the scent of pepper in the room. This tree is used because it is thought that Christ’s crucifix was fashioned from one. More prayers were interrupted by the blowing of a large conch shell into the woman’s ears.

Maria snuffed out the bowl of incense with a note pad and peered at the black image left behind on the paper. “It looks like a dove,” she said. The good symbol, Aguilar told her, meant that the evil spirit had been banished.

The woman looked radiant. “My mind is not cluttered anymore about these ideas,” she said smiling. “I feel fine.”

Aguilar said he began practicing folk medicine in the mid-1970s at Metropolitan State to fill a void in treatment for those unable to benefit from Western-style medicine. “When I first started doing it, it was very difficult for me. I really had to force myself to do it.” But he added, “The important thing is not whether I believe, the important thing is that the patient believes.”

Newly arrived Latino immigrants from the countryside are the usual candidates for the unorthodox treatments, according to a number of mental health professionals. Often they blame their mental illness on evil spirits and spurn suggestions that their problems might come from within, these experts say. A wife might believe a witch placed a hex on her to drive off her husband. Seizures could be explained as the wrath of God.

Specialty Shops

Usually, these people might seek out a neighborhood folk healer called a curandero or find one at a botanica shop, where amulets, herbs, feathers, candles and statues of saints are sold. Once primarily confined to East Los Angeles, botanicas are sprouting up rapidly across Los Angeles’ Spanish-speaking neighborhoods--a few even advertising in the Yellow Pages.

Curanderos , who have traditionally operated in the shadows, also are getting bolder. In downtown Los Angeles this week, several people on Broadway were distributing calling cards for curanderos that boasted of being able to cure headaches, alcoholism, nervous disorders, and mal de ojo , or evil eye.

“Whether we like it or not, these people are bringing with them this kind of belief,” Aguilar said. “There are many places in the community that are practicing this non-traditional medicine, but it lends itself to a great deal of quackery and exploitation.”

Even the administration at Metropolitan State proved to be disbelievers. Several years ago, hospital officials told Aguilar he could no longer conduct his controversial rituals on the hospital grounds. He still works at Metro, but he also maintains a private office a few blocks away where he practices his more unconventional therapies.

Others who counsel Latinos don’t go quite as far as Aguilar, but they applaud his work and occasionally send him patients for folk healing. Like Aguilar, many said they attempt to honor the spiritualism of their Latino patients and believe folk medicine is healthy because it bolsters a person’s ties to his native culture.

“Why not utilize it if it connects them with strengths in their past?” asked Jerry Tello, a Los Angeles therapist, who keeps a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe and other cultural symbols in his office. If pressed, he will perform a ritual cleansing if the client promises to explore through therapy why he or she is feeling poorly.

Traditional Practice

The number of people who need the services of a faith healer is small, most therapists say. Latinos traditionally seek help from family and friends, physicians or their church if they are troubled. Yet, it is generally agreed that many Latinos loathe seeking help from a therapist because of the stigma attached to mental illness. Some mental health professionals who have made referrals to folk healers can recite stories of surprising results.

When therapists “come across someone who believes strongly in folk healers or curanderos , it should be the responsibility of the mental health practitioner to refer them to a folk healer,” said Armando Morales, a professor at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Morales once resorted to a Tijuana curandero when he failed to help a patient who was experiencing hysterical seizures. The folk healer spread a large amount of garlic on the woman’s body and the seizures vanished.

“If that’s what they believe, you have to work within the cultural limits of people’s belief system to help them,” agreed Vangie Montalvo, a bilingual Los Angeles County mental health worker. “You can tell them they will get better with medication or therapy, but if they don’t believe it . . . that’s a problem.”

Last fall, Montalvo sought Aguilar’s help for a 19-year-old woman whose protective Latino family was rejecting traditional treatment. The woman heard voices and her family was frightened by the way her body would twist uncontrollably in grotesque ways. The family, who believed the mother’s co-worker had placed a curse through black magic, took the woman to Aguilar after priests refused to perform an exorcism.

Improvement Told

After a limpia , or spiritual cleansing, intended to dispel evil spirits, the patient improved and the family became more receptive to traditional therapeutic advice, Montalvo said.

The cures sometimes seem magical, but experts say the explanation is mundane. While the dimensions of the human brain remain largely uncharted, the power of faith appears to have tremendous curative value. If a person believes that an amulet will help, it just might. If somebody thinks it’s hogwash, the amulet might as well be a lump of coal.

“Trust . . . is a very important part of the recovery process. If someone believes in faith healing, that it will be helpful, it probably will,” said Arturo Fierro, a Montebello clinical psychologist with a predominantly Latino clientele.