Satan thinks that Anton LaVey has Asperger’s syndrome

Satan disapproves of psychology and its attempts to explain human behavior. He has successfully possessed mankind since the dawn of time, and that should adequately explain human behavior, thank you very much.

He is especially angry with the Freudian disaster which led His esteemed denizen Anton LaVey to both waste much time and to mislead His followers into performing rituals that, if anything, had the opposite effect of their goals. The pressure-cooker model of explanation of pent-up emotions that required release lest they destroy their host was shamelessly stolen from the Devil’s realm of thermodynamics with not a single mention of His infernal name in spite of His being the very force of entropy. The only demon ever to be summoned in the Freudian tradition of LaVey’s rituals would be your mother.

But, the Devil is a pragmatist and finds that communication is key. Resorting to the phraseology of psychology may be a better means of communication than through spasms, froth, and back-masked speech in a growling voice, even if He feels that He deprives Himself of due credit.

Using psychological terms, Satan thinks that his denizen Anton LaVey has Asperger’s syndrome. It is part of the autism spectrum disorder and is characterized by people with the syndrome appearing to function somewhat better than other autists, and generally possessing a superior intelligence. Autists are sometimes found to have savant, or magical or demonic, talent, as He prefers to phrase it, and among the herd, such fine qualities are undesired and considered a diagnosis.

As readers of Blanche Barton’s entirely truthful and in no manner exaggerated biography of Mr. LaVey may remember, she introduces him as remarkably skilled and mentally superior to others, whom he usually chose to avoid, as someone with highly specific interests, and as someone who had difficulties understanding and abiding by social norms. We lesser devils have noted that he speaks with a somewhat narrative voice and often takes on the persona of a character from a movie or a novel. We keep some distance from him, however, half in respect and half because his inability to take proper care of himself would require us to ignore the effects of poor personal hygiene.

The Devil is aware that Mr. LaVey feels a closer relationship with animals than most humans do, and suspects that it is a feature of LaVey’s condition, because Satan has noticed that His autistic denizens exhibit a peculiarly animalesque behavioral bent compared with His legions of “normal” sinners. Their social impairment (as those normal individuals regard any deviation from herd compliance) lead them to interact in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of those who walk on all-fours, and Satan ponders whether perchance autists occupy an evolutionary position somewhere in-between man and other animals. The Devil represents all humans as just another animal species, anyway, and reminds His denizens that His is the hand that wounds and heals.

On a sadder note, even here, in his right element of brimstone and flames, Anton LaVey’s condition exposes him to the same frustrations as any above-ground autist, who wholeheartedly agrees with Jean-Paul Sartre that Hell is other people: autists do not suffer from autism; they suffer from other people, and often develop depressions. Satan is sad to watch LaVey thus suffering fits of depression that can last weeks or months but He is the Accuser, not a psychiatrist.

It is unnecessary to minutely derive LaVey’s entire biography and evaluate it according to the diagnostic criteria for an autism spectrum disorder here. The long story short is that Satan has determined that the diagnosis matches, and that psychologial mumbo-jumbo is unnecessary because the good old word “demonic” suffices.