The Witch as Scapegoat

Adolf Leschnitzer, a Jewish historian of German origin, draws a close parallel between the persecution of Jews and of witches. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he writes, persecution of Jews was replaced by persecution of witches. Then the process was reversed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the late Middle Ages persecution of Jews can already be shown to have been staged as a device to divert attention. .. When, after the great persecutions, massacres, and expulsions from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. witches and sorcerers became the new subjects of persecution. With the disappearance of the Jews, they took their place as the desperately needed new outlet for emotional release.  

Although Leschnitzer s assertion about Jews and witches alternating as society s scapegoats does not fit the facts quite as neatly as he makes it seem, his general thesis is sound. The witchcraft mania,  

In much the same way, today all manner of misfortune is attributed to madness. And, as in earlier times, the masses respond to the call urging them to take up arms against the enemy—defined abstractly as mental illness, but embodied concretely in persons defined as mentally ill. 

It is consistent with the scapegoat theory of witchcraft, but not with the psychopathological theory of it, that the individuals persecuted as witches were often helpless and poor and that, in addition to witches, Jews, heretics of all sorts, Protestants, and scientists whose opinions threatened Church dogma, were also victimized by the Inquisition. In short, whereas psychiatric theory relates the belief in witchcraft and the persecution of witches to the mental diseases supposedly harbored by the witches, the scapegoat theory relates them to the specific conditions of the society in which such beliefs and practices occurred. Because of these different perspectives, psychiatric investigations of witchcraft concentrate on the witches and ignore the witch-hunters, while nonpsychiatric investigations of it reverse this focus.  

Although the passions of the people, receptive to the propaganda of the Church, made possible the spread of the witch craze, the inquisitors played a decisive part in it they determined who was cast into the role of witch and who was not. When they pointed their fingers at women, women were burned when at Judaizers, Judaizers were burned and when at Protestants, Protestants were burned. 

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The psychopathological theory of witchcraft is, as we have seen, not the only available or possible explanation of the witch-hunts. The view that witches were society s scapegoats was held by Reginald Scot four hundred years ago, was articulated into a comprehensive and persuasive explanation by Jules Michelet more than one hundred years ago, and was massively documented from original sources by Henry Charles Lea more than fifty years ago. Why then do institutional psychiatrists and psychiatric historians ignore this competing explanation, and prefer instead the view that witches were madwomen An effort to answer this question will help to clarify not only the practical import of these two theories of the witch-craze, but also the nature of Institutional Psychiatry as a modern mass movement. 

The evidence presented thus far establishes, I believe, the basic similarities between the social situation of witches and involuntary mental patients. At the same time, although, as scapegoats and victims, witches and madmen resemble Jews and Negroes, there are also some important differences between them which deserve some brief remarks. 

All explanations fulfill a practical, strategic function. The psychopathological theory of witchcraft is no exception. Its principal aim is to authenticate, as enlightened medical scientists, the physicians who propound it. The effect, if not the intent, of this explanation is to sidestep the competing explanation of witchcraft, namely, that persons alleged to be witches were not mentally sick but were society s scapegoats. In other words, the basic function of the medical theory of witchcraft—and, in my opinion, its basic... 

Here Cide unmasks homosexuality as a socially stigmatized role, like witch or Jew, which, under the pressure of public opinion, its bearer is likely to disavow and repudiate. The homosexual is a scapegoat who evokes no sympathy. Hence, he can be only a victim, never a martyr. This is as true today in the United States as it was in France a half century ago. The same applies, moreover, to the mentally ill he, too, can only be a victim, never a martyr. 

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