The Exorcist and the Horror of Medical Uncertainty

This column, Pathologizing Pop Culture, is about the moments in art and media that represent the psychological toll of medicine on patients, families, and clinicians. As a psychologist who works at the intersection of trauma and healthcare, I see pop culture as a tool to understand the zeitgeist of our time and a means of processing the complexity of being in a human body. 

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SOMETHING ALMOST BEYOND COMPREHENSION IS HAPPENING TO A GIRL ON THIS STREET, IN THIS HOUSE…AND A MAN HAS BEEN SENT FOR AS A LAST RESORT. 

THIS MAN IS THE EXORCIST.

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Widely remembered as a landmark horror film about demonic possession, The Exorcist is, in many ways, also a story about medical trauma. I point to one infamous scene in which Regan undergoes a cerebral angiography with disturbing realism. 

Cited as one of the most unsettling medical sequences in film, the scene reportedly induced strong visceral responses in movie goers including numerous reports of vomiting and fainting. From our view in 2025, we can appreciate that 1973 was a simpler, less desensitized time. Yet, it still represents a notable point of the viewers’ experience of The Exorcist and the public’s relationship with medical procedures. 

The scene is graphic, clinical, and emotionally vacant. There is no demon yet, just a child, restrained and frightened with her terrified mother looking on and a team of medical professionals doing what they do every day. The procedures depicted are routine. The protocol is followed. But from the perspective of Regan and her mother, Chris, the experience is harrowing. For many viewers, this moment evokes a visceral response not because of the supernatural terror, but because it reflects a deeply human one: the helplessness of watching a child undergo invasive testing for a mysterious, progressive illness and slowly watching them succumb. As a viewer you start to feel it too: the desperation and dawning realization that no one has answers.

The slow boiling horror of The Exorcist lies not just in the build up to the possession and exorcism, but in the very real fear of no diagnosis. It is a story of a parent navigating a system that cannot explain what is happening to their child. It plays on our fear of the descent through the medical system, from specialists to scans to psychiatry to finally, in desperation, an exorcist. The film also grapples with the physical and emotional immensity of being the helper and the lengths that we will go to try and save a life, knowing that it might not be possible.

‍The Exorcist’s director, William Friedkin, once said that he “tends to be attracted to characters who are up against a wall with very few alternatives…the film then becomes an emulation of how they cope with very few options.” This is the core experience for many of medical trauma, a deep loss and destabilization in mind, body, and spirit. 

Art offers society a mirror, often reflecting the emotions that are hardest to name. Horror can be particularly good at this allowing an abstraction of the complex emotions that come with trauma. It’s no coincidence that the popularity of medical procedurals, trauma-centered storylines, and illness-based narratives surged post-pandemic. These stories allow us to process collective experiences: curiously, voyeuristically, and sometimes cathartically. 

“Art for the public” as director John Waters would say, can also be a vehicle for stigma. The Exorcist leveraged the public’s fear of possession and demons and fueled religious panic. This fear has a deep rooted history that is often entwined with ableism and mental health stigma. Even today, for some, neurological and psychiatric symptom presentations can be so terrifying and inexplicable that the only possible answer becomes supernatural. This belief and fear of the unknown has led to innumerable harm of vulnerable people over the course of history. Symptoms like involuntary movements, dissociation, hallucinations, or delusions, have been repeatedly equated with possession cementing harmful associations in the public psyche. It invites the public to fear what is not understood, including the people who experience these conditions.

Humans have long used storytelling to manage our fear of death and the unknown - what researchers call terror management theory. In the absence of answers, we fill in blanks with monsters, myths, and rituals. There is a reason so many portrayals of illness and trauma appear in the horror genre. These experiences evoke a deep and primal response - grief, disgust, sorrow, helplessness - that lends to metaphor. In The Exorcist, a disease becomes a demon and the failure of the helper becomes an insurmountable invading evil force. 

While maybe not the first film to come to mind when thinking of healthcare, The Exorcist plays on many of the core fears that come with medical stress and trauma of one’s body being taken over by an unknown entity, the grief at watching a loved one suffer, and our fear of failure. 

In this column, I’ll continue to explore the representations of medical trauma across pop culture, not to critique their clinical accuracy, but to reflect on the emotional truths they contain. These artistic representations remind us that what we do matters and what it feels like to be on the receiving end of care. 

I invite you to watch The Exorcist through this lens.

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Until next time! 

Sacha

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Connect with Sacha:

Email: pathologizingpop@gmail.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachamcbain/

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