I don’t think ancient reports of spirits were metaphors. I think ancient people were less distracted by mundane affairs and more attentive to literal spirits.

I hold an unpopular belief: I think that the conscious personalities of humans survive past the death of the physical body. In short, I believe that the soul is real enough to have an impact on the physical world — usually before the mundane body dies, but sometimes afterward. I even believe that it is possible for living humans in the mundane world to communicate with the human minds/souls in the afterlife.

I do not think minds are secreted by brains. I think that mundane physical things are manifested by the larger, more spiritual planes.

Modern psychology has replaced the language of spirits with the language of cognition, drives, and archetypes.

…but failed to achieve much beyond replacing language. Such as for example drag the whole thing from the bog of unfalsifiable babble and noticeably more onto terra firma.

Consequently, as a pseudoscience it has exactly the same usefulness to anyone as primitive cargo cult performances do:

A. lend an ear and drone generic calming BS to the private clients, and

B. thimble-rig up some oracular validation for those in power and out of confidence.

But in doing so, it has lost something of the vividness and immediacy of the older metaphors. To say that someone is in the grip of an “evil spirit” captures the lived experience of being overcome by destructive emotion far more directly than to diagnose them with “maladaptive behavioral tendencies.”

That’s a matter of taste. The author may be just walking in circles away from the boring scenery.