<p>5:5 <em>Always, night and day, in the tombs and in the mountains, he was crying out and cutting himself with stones</em>- A psychological approach to the self-mutilation which is a classic symptom of mental illness would be to understand it as him trying to stone himself, convinced he was unworthy and deserving of condemnation. No surprise, in this case, that the presence of Jesus lifted that sense of condemnation from him, and the miracle of the pigs was therefore performed to assure him that his sin really had been removed and condemned by drowning in the sea a figure of condemnation in Mt. 18:6 and Rev. 18:21. 33. The French social scientist Ren&eacute; Girard commented at length upon the curing of the demoniac. He took the gashing of himself with stones as being representative of the man's desire to stone himself, and he observes the phenomena of &quot;autolapidation&quot; (self-stoning) as being common within the mentally disturbed. But he observes further that the pigs running over the cliff has &quot;ritual and penal connotations&quot; in that both stoning and being thrown over a cliff were common methods of execution in primitive societies (Ren&eacute; Girard, <em>The Scapegoat</em> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) p. 176. The same points are made in Jean Starobinski, &quot;The Gerasene Demoniac&quot;, in Roland Barthes et al, eds., <em>Structural Analysis and Biblical Exegesis</em> (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1974) pp. 57-84). We recall how the townspeople tried to execute Jesus by throwing Him off a cliff (Lk. 4:29). And yet Jesus turned the man's fears on their head; for the pigs, representing the crowd who wished to stone the man and throw him off the cliff, are the ones who are thrown over the cliff by Jesus. The crowd therefore suffer the execution which they wished to inflict upon the victim. Thus &quot;the miracle of Gerasa reverses the universal schema of violence fundamental to all societies&quot; (<em>Ibid</em> p. 179). Now we understand why Jesus declined Legion's request to follow Him on His mission, but insisted he instead return to his own society and live at peace with them. For Jesus had taught the man that the crowd he feared were no more, the lynch mob he obsessively feared had themselves been lynched over the cliff. The man begged that the demons <em>not</em> be cast into the sea (Lk. 8:31) in the sense that he himself feared being cast over the cliff into the sea by the mob. But that fear was taken away by Jesus; for it was the demons, the lynch mob which he feared, the Roman Legions, which he saw represented by the pigs, hurtling to their own destruction over the cliff.</p>