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Struggling with logismoi

We have learnt, after much observation, to recognize the difference between angelic thoughts, human thoughts, and thoughts that come from demons...Evagrius Ponticus...Texts on Discrimination in respect of Passions and Thoughts
"Alone of all the intelligences, Christ was faithful in His contemplation of the Divine. He, the healer and educator, shows men — or more precisely, the logikoi — the way back to their original innocence. It was against this background that Evagrios describes the ascetical and mystical processes (praktike); the struggle against the devil, control of the imagination, warfare against the eight passions (pride, hate, anger, lust, etc.), the acquisition of dispassion (apatheia), reaching beyond the physical world with spiritual knowledge of gnosis. The logikos or superior element of the self (with its "spiritual body"), having been enlightened by the knowledge (gnosis) of God, the supreme Intelligence, escaping the world and the apokatastasis returns to the primordial unity (the Henad)"....COMMENTARY ON THE PHILOKALIA: THE CONDEMNATION OF EVAGRIOS PONTICOS...by Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
Evagrius Ponticus developed a comprehensive list in 375 AD of eight evil thoughts (logismoi) or eight terrible temptations, from which all sinful behavior springs. This list was intended to serve a diagnostic purpose: to help readers identify the process of temptation, their own strengths and weaknesses, and the remedies available for overcoming temptation.

The eight patterns of evil thought are:
  • gluttony
  • fornication
  • avarice
  • sorrow
  • discouragement
  • anger
  • vainglory
  • and pride.
Some two centuries later in 590 AD, Gregory the Dialogist would revise this list to form the more commonly known Seven Deadly Sins, where St. Gregory the Great rolled acedia (discouragement) & tristitia (sorrow) into a newly defined sin of Sloth; Vainglory a part of Pride; and added Envy to the newly defined "Seven Deadly Sins". ...Wikipedia
"Building on an age-old tradition of spiritual counseling, the Eastern Orthodox churches have taken a lead in integrating exorcism and psychotherapy. Spiritual counselors perform exorcism to dispel logismoi, or what are variously depicted as demons, elementals, or negative thoughtforms. They recognize that logismoi can cause a variety of psychological conditions from mild neurosis to severe psychosis; in turn psychosis can manifest in physical pathologies. The existence of logismoi has almost entirely been dismissed in the west. To be sure, Jesus and apostles are reported to have driven out “demons;” but modern western scholars have tended to explain them away as figments of ignorant superstitions, predisposition to sin, primitive understanding of the cause of sickness, or unspecified mental illness. Similarly, reports that the early desert fathers, like Anthony of Egypt, confronted demons are dismissed as isolation-driven hallucinations or the side-effects of sexual frustration. Eastern Chrisitanity has always taken the existence of demons more seriously, and in consequence its healing ministry is more comprehensive."....Christianity: the One, the Many, Volume 2...by John F. Nash

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