extremely disappointed - Rated 
Reading this book felt like groping one's way through a thick fog, Goodman's style of writing is clumsy and heavy going,
the author seemed to use the experience of Anneliese as a vehicle to promote her theories of trance states and,to place Anneliese's experience within a scientific framework, the author also showed ignorance of Annelies's veiled description of 'the three days darkness' which has been the subject of at least two books.
I will not be buying any more books by this author.
Tragedy & Traversty - Rated 
This book certainly makes for compulsive reading. Perhaps, paradoxically, it's also one that made me want, had it been possible, to slap the author. I have to say she wrote much more like a "believer" than as a neutral anthropologist, and it is this "belief" of one thing or another, in my opinion, that appears to be one of the lynchpins behind the probably avoidable tradgedy of a tormented young girl slowly starving herself to death. If anyone is in doubt about the tragedy of this case, a photograph of Annelies alive and well along with her just before her death appear at http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/emilyrose.php
Goodman does do a good job of relating the character and psychology of Anneliese's childhood life and psychology. I think it becomes clear quite soon to the reader that here is a very lively, very pretty and academically very talented young girl whose mindset is clouded by the mythological realm of an unusually super-strict and unusually ultra-"superstitious" Roman Catholic upbringing.
One thing that struck me was the difference between her pre-exorcism experiences and her experiences during the 1975 exorcism marathon, where she was exorcised regularly every few days and sometimes unrelentingly for several days in a row. Her earlier experiences were the occasional seeing of faces when she looked at the hills, or seeing regular people as having evil or distorted faces. This plus what is more commonly known today as "sleep paralysis" - the sensation of waking up paralysed with a pressure on ones chest, or of someone looking over you.
The first problem, I believe lay with the medical practitioners' frequent references (but little action) regarding epilepsy, temporal lobes, and so on, and their insistence on moving Anneliese from one practitioner to the next, each of whom made wholly inconclusive murmerings. They prescribed ineffective pills, and invariably passed her on from one doctor to someone else, in towns away from her home. Having experienced this depressing process myself over a ten-year period, I can sympathise somewhat with the feeling of despair and depression it left her with.
The second problem was with the behaviour of the ministry of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany at the time. Whilst undoubtedly they cared for their subject and their subject's family, when I read Goodman's transcripts I thought it should have become clear and obvious to the Preists that they were not dealing with "Satan", "Hitler" and the denizens of Hell, when the demons resorted to name-calling using terms such as "pig" and "snottynose", and using expressions such as "so there!". They were dealing with a girl, and a very strict and pure Catholic one at that, who whilst very intelligent, had not the emotional maturity to even allow her demons to be rude.
What she was, was a girl in the 1970s with normal thoughts on boys and even marriage on her mind, whose mother had told her since an early age that boys and dancing were terribly wrong (and indeed who banned even her devout Catholic boyfriend from her home), and yet simultaneously a child who had been exposed to images of blood-scarred holy statues, stories of excorcism, and tales of the deeds of the spirits of dead local Catholics, since early childhood.
What a strange and unpleasant irony, that she had yet to lose elements of sexual and childhood innocence through the foreboding of her mother, yet had lost her "supernatural horror" innocence pretty much as a toddler due to the same source.
My own personal conclusion is that an exorcism in the manner of what was conducted was innapropriate (those who believe in the power of using only one's own religion may not agree with me, but remember - she died), and her medical practitioners seemed uncaring and were effectively completely useless. However had she reached her malnourished state and been taken back into a hospital (the book mentions she never showed her "possessed" characteristics in front of officials or strangers, just friends and family - the first thought would then be surely to get her out of her house, where she was surrounded only by her family and familiar priests?) and drip-fed, with visits from family, Priests and friends but under the oversight of a caring medical institution. She would then possibly have survived.
This book became the basis for the film "The Exorcism Of Emily Rose", and as with all movies, it should be noted that there are many major differences between the stories.
Disappointing..... - Rated 
This book is largely a narrative account of the life of Anneliese Michel, yet it claims to be an anthropological study. The academic analysis is reserved for the final two chapters, and although the notion of RASC propounded is generically believeable, the manner in which the author attempts to weave this into Anneliese's experience is not. It lacks credence, and feels academically and analytically flimsy. Also, the author seems to me, at times,to confuse demons which are though to exist independently of the person i.e. in the orthodox catholic version of possession, and 'demons' articulated by the person in RASC, which are simply parts of the individuals repressed character claiming a voice.
Also, I think further exploration of the role of the anti-epilepsy medication in AM's demise would have been really useful and very informative.
Compulsive reading! - Rated 
I had seen the film "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" and decided that I would like to read the book about the girl that the film was based on. From my own point of view I found they made the film sympathetically to the book, some of the instances did not, of course, (as films do), happen in the order that they did in real life, but all in all everything appeared to be covered, extra things were in the book too, especially regarding what happened after the exorcism failed right up to Anneliese's death and also what happened regarding her grave etc. It is well worth reading and I am very glad that I gave this one a go!
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