The unaddressed problem of spirit entity overshadowing and interference

I liked the Aeon article overall.

While they didn't touch on the idea of possession, the author did mention the issue of materialist bias:

Yes, they do mention that this psychological phenomenon might have a spiritual dimension and that the mere mention of that is opposed by materialistic conventional science, but it's only in the context of seeing this way of looking at it as being perhaps of therapeutic benefit. Many things not real can be of therapeutic benefit, such as placebo effect in many cases - what's important is the net positive effect on the patient. This approach again refuses to even mention the possibility of the psychological phenomenon being a real actual influencing by spirit entities.