Satanism and Psychopathology: Some Historical Cases.

Satanism has baffled many historians and cultural commentators. Who in their right mind would ever worship Satan, the representation of absolute evil? When in the 1980s, there was an alleged epidemic of Satanic Ritual Abuse in the United States, mental health professionals were pressured to approach this phenomenon from a clinical perspective. In this article, we consider the way some diagnostic criteria laid out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), could (and could not) be applied to some historical and contemporary aspects of Satanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]