What an Excellent Day for an Exorcism

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the movie version of The Exorcist so around Halloween news articles about the book, the movie, and the actual events that inspired both began to pop up all over. I would like to take this fortieth anniversary to reflect a little on the role of gender in the understanding of possession, both as it is portrayed in popular culture (The Exorcist) and through history. My interest in this topic comes from my love affair with the movie. Having been an undergraduate at Georgetown University, I saw the movie five times in my four years there – once every Halloween when the university would show the film in Gaston Hall and once in theaters when “the version you’ve never seen” was released. I also have a vivid memory of reading the whole book one Saturday my sophomore year because although I started it in the morning, it took me into the evening to finish it and I remember coming downstairs to see my roommates saying, “I couldn’t be up there by myself anymore.” Scary stuff.

Since the exorcism that inspired the book took place primarily in St. Louis with Jesuits from Saint Louis University, this year the SLU Library and Office of Mission and Ministry hosted a panel discussion with University Archivist John Waide, Jesuit historian John Padberg, SJ, and Thomas Allen, author of Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism. The original exorcism involved a young boy from Maryland who eventually came to St. Louis where the ritual took place. I attended the immensely popular panel to hear about Allen’s research into the events. Allen’s talk highlighted the different evaluations of the events – whether or not it was considered a true form of demonic possession – coming from both the Jesuit who evaluated the events for the archdiocese and those who took part in it (though those who took part in the exorcism ultimately came to differing conclusions as well).

But what struck me about the whole event was a distinction that Fr. Padberg made between different types of demonic attacks, which he mentioned before talking at length about the seventeenth-century demonic possession at Loudun. The exorcist in that case was another Jesuit, Jean-Joseph Surin, SJ, who I’ve done some research into in other contexts, and who, according to Fr. Padberg, in the end successfully drove the demon out of the Ursuline nun by calling the demon to come into himself (which should be familiar to anyone who knows The Exorcist).

In my dissertation research, I recently finished reading Being Interior: Autobiography and the Contradictions of Modernity in Seventeenth-Century France by Nicholas Paige which discusses (among other texts) Fr. Surin’s autobiographical writing about the possession and the demon’s attack on himself.[i] Now, what caught my eye was a claim that Paige makes about Fr. Surin, of which I was reminded by Fr. Padberg’s talk. Paige states that according to Fr. Surin’s autobiographical account, he underwent a form of demonic obsession, not possession (which had been the case of the nun). The overall point that Paige makes here is the difference between possession (in which the subject is entirely passive) and obsession (in which the subject is involved wholly). Paige explains:

To seventeenth-century demonologists, obsession was the flip side of possession. Furetière, in his 1690 dictionary, defines it as a state in which “les demons, sans entrer dans le corps d’une personne, le tourmentent et l’affligent au-dehors” (demons, without entering the body, torment and afflict the person externally). Furetière’s definition is in one sense an accurate rendering of a distinction new to seventeenth-century demonology, and seems to fit the events of Loudun well. Unlike the case of the possessed Jeanne des Anges, demons did not speak through Surin’s body. But it is equally true that in Surin’s own somewhat idiosyncratic view, obsession was a much more serious perturbation than possession. Devils are inside the possessed, but only in bodily terms, not in terms of spiritual interiority; the possessed is invaded, but her identity itself is not destabilized.[ii]

Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the Italian exorcist, makes similar distinctions. He describes possession as “when Satan takes full possession of the body (not the soul); he speaks and acts without the knowledge or consent of the victim, who therefore is morally blameless.”[iii] Obsession, in contrast, he describes as having symptoms of “sudden attacks, at times ongoing, of obsessive thoughts, sometimes even rationally absurd, but of such nature that the victim is unable to free himself. Therefore the obsessed person lives in a perpetual state of prostration, desperation, and attempts at suicide. Almost always obsession influences dreams.”[iv] Although he doesn’t make the distinction about the involvement of the mind and the will as explicit as Paige does in his text, the distinction is there. Obsession involves thoughts entering one’s mind; possession involves the body, but not the mind. And, as Paige explains, Fr. Surin himself thought obsession the more dangerous spiritual attack. In a note, he quotes Surin’s account as saying:

Obsession is much more damaging to the soul than possession. The demon makes use of the body of the possessed in order to carry out many unruly actions, and of her tongue in order to utter blasphemies and horrors; and [yet] while he carries on in this way, the soul is most often united with God, [and] enjoys and possesses him in a profound peace. … In obsession the demon acts on the powers of the soul through the mind, the imagination, and all the faculties, using a thousand temptations, and makes every effort to lead the soul into sin.[v]

What is particularly interesting in Paige’s analysis is the gender distinction in Fr. Surin’s case. Jeanne des Anges was possessed. She had no agency in the attack and though her body was used by the demon, her mind, will, and soul were unaffected. Fr. Surin, in contrast, was attacked through his mind and will, an attack much more perilous for his soul. As Paige explains further:

Thus, if the possessed’s body is a docile instrument, her mind remains steady, and her interiority intact, whereas obsession qualifies as a true spiritual crisis. From a gendered perspective, such a distinction is important, for the possessed woman is denied agency; her body is the theater on which male exorcists prove their power, and the privileges of successful spiritual combat do not accrue to her. The obsessed man, on the other hand, engages in precisely the valiant inner combat denied to the possessed woman.[vi]

Thus, in this case of the possession at Loudun, we have an interesting separation between what happens to the (female) Ursuline nun (possession) and what happens to (the male) Fr. Surin after he calls the demon into himself (obsession). The nun is passive, both during the demonic attack and Fr. Surin’s exorcism[vii], while Fr. Surin is the agent in both the exorcism, his own attack from the demon (calling the demon into himself), and in the subsequent obsession.

All this made me wonder about the history of possession. Were women seen generally more susceptible to possession than men? [viii] Before the modern era, were the majority of exorcisms performed on women instead of men? Did the – what we would now call – misogynistic views about women influence the way in which the Catholic Church approached spiritual combat? Interestingly, Fr. Amorth comments, “Several times I have been told that I exorcise more women than men. This is true for all exorcists. It is not a mistake to think that women are more exposed to evil attacks than men. Men and women are not exposed in the same manner. It is also true that women are much more inclined than men to turn to an exorcist for a ‘blessing’.”[ix]

This gender distinction I find particularly interesting in light of William Peter Blatty’s adaptation of the story of the 1949 exorcism that took place in St. Louis into the book and the film. The 1949 exorcism was on a boy; Blatty adapted this story and switched the gender to that of a girl. Thus, although originally inspired by the story of the St. Louis exorcism, what occurs in The Exorcist mirrors the gender distinctions of the possession at Loudun in which a young girl is the passive instrument of both the possession and the exorcism while two Jesuit priests are the active forces of the exorcism, ultimately freeing the young girl only when one of them calls the demon into himself.