The Cultural Construction of Monstrous Children. Группа авторов

would end up ‘outside’. The image is that of a cooking pot on the verge of explosion. Roll also sought support from the field of neurology, asking if these phenomena could be attributed to a disorder of the nervous system.⁴⁴ Admittedly, some cases lend themselves to such analysis, since the chosen subjects often suffer from epilepsy or severe migraines. But, in the final account, Roll did not find a higher rate of neurological disorders in his sample group than in the general population. His theory seems too vague to be either tested or falsified. As parapsychologists were unable to reach enough evidence for a theory of poltergeist/RSPK based on its connection with adolescence, they began to criticize this faded track.⁴⁵ From this, previous investigators were shown to have worked from positions of personal prejudice, quickly selecting the teenager suspected of being behind the events, without considering the other people around them. When they detected emotional conflicts, this was often done with unquestioned ‘projective’ methods – such as evaluation using inkblots – which are generally regarded to invariably point the finger towards something psychologically problematic, regardless of the person involved. Moreover, adolescents, as often being naïve and naturally in heightened emotional and psychological states, made obvious prime targets in such cases.

This fluctuating relationship between the poltergeist and the supposed teenage anomaly can be seen to come from either a defect in how diagnoses were made or the plurality of possible profiles. This second hypothesis brings us back to the starting point as there is not one kind of person identified as being more likely to experience a haunting, and thus no typical ‘naughty little girl’. In the second half of the twentieth century, new voices have been heard in the discussion. For example, Dr Alain Assailly has drawn attention to the frequency with which a middle-aged adult has intervened in poltergeist phenomena.⁴⁶ But this search for a new socio-demographic profile has had similar faults. A more comprehensive approach has been developed, as noted by Rogo and Phillip Snoyman, that claims that family dynamics, as a whole, are more responsible for the evolution of the phenomena than just an isolated individual, at least in the poltergeist cases they investigated.⁴⁷ This view of the poltergeist as the product of an organized group, in a ‘systemic’ perspective, became the dominant approach thereafter, both therapeutically⁴⁸ and at the theoretical level.⁴⁹ The model of pragmatic information developed by physicist and psychologist Walter von Lucadou offers a phenomenological description of the four stages of development of poltergeist activity that also includes critical observers and society in general. This model applies much more constructively to the case of Jeanne, which was examined earlier. Despite this, however, the myth of the naughty little girl – or more generally the myth of the teenage source of poltergeist – still thrives in the twenty-first century. Many still give credence to this simplistic explanation and consequently repeat the damage and trauma of earlier times. Today, teenagers themselves identify and even find agency of sorts with this fascinating and frightening figure, propelled into the media through the uncontrollable Carrie created by Stephen King or Regan McNeil from The Exorcist (both reproduced and adapted across various films, novels, comics etc.).⁵⁰ It must be said that parapsychologists have contributed to the wide spread of this myth. Not only did they sometimes invite the media to share the fruits of their investigations, but some have subsequently become ‘scientific’ advisors for Hollywood. Indeed, when Steven Spielberg produced the movie Poltergeist (1982), American parapsychologists William G. Roll, Charles T. Tart and Daniel Scott Rogo signed a document, for which they were paid, authenticating the phenomena presented in the film as inspired by a true story. As such, this short chapter can also claim to be inspired by a true story.

      Notes

1Hubert Haddad, Théorie de la Vilaine Petite Fille (Paris: Zulma, 2014).

2Alan Gauld, ‘Frank Podmore (1856–1910)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

3Frank Podmore, ‘Review of Mr. Andrew Lang’s “The Making of Religion”’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 14 (1898–99): 128–38; Andrew Lang, ‘The Poltergeist and Its Explainers’, in The Making of Religion (Appendix B) (London: Longmans, Green, 1898), 324–39; Alfred Russell Wallace, ‘Mr Podmore on Clairvoyance and Poltergeists’, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 9 (1899): 22–30.

4Frank Podmore, ‘On Poltergeists’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 11 (1896): 45–116.

5Gustav Klosinski, Sectes: alerte aux parents (Paris: Brepols, 1997).

6Pascal Le Maléfan, ‘La vérité est ailleurs, La place du paranormal à l’adolescence comme mode de traitement du réel pubertaire’, Adolescence 26.3 (2008): 709–21.

7Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive [1830–1842] (Paris: Hermann, 1998).

8Louis Figuier, Histoire du merveilleux dans les temps modernes (Paris: Louis Hachette, 1861).

9Nicole Edelman and Pascal Le Maléfan, ‘Science et spiritisme: Le cas Angélique Cottin’, L’Histoire 128 (1989): 50–54.

10Haddad, Théorie de la Vilaine Petite Fille.

11Carl Gustav Jung, ‘Sur la psychologie et la psychopathologie des phénomènes dits occultes’, in L’énergétique psychique (Zurich: Librairie de l’Université, [1902] 1956).

12Théodore Flournoy, Des Indes à la planète Mars. Etude sur un cas de somnambulisme avec glossolalia (Geneva: Alcan-Eggimann, 1900).

13Pascal Le Maléfan, ‘Richet chasseur de fantômes: l’épisode de la villa Carmen’, in Des savants face à l’occulte 1870–1940, ed. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Christine Blondel (Paris: La Découverte, 2002), 173–200.

14Pierre Janet also prefaced Grasset’s book Le Spiritisme; see note 15.

15Joseph Grasset, Le Spiritisme devant la science (Montpellier: Coulet, 1904), 66.

16Ibid., 332.

17Renaud Evrard and Andreas Sommer, ‘Pierre Janet and the Enchanted Boundary of Psychical Research’, History of Psychology 21.2 (May 2018): 100–25.