Inside Rome’s Exorcist Conference: Are Demons Using AI to Possess People?
Sean Tobin on exorcism, mental illness, artificial intelligence, social media addiction, loneliness, and the spiritual dangers of modern technology
As artificial intelligence and algorithmic technologies increasingly shape modern life, Catholic psychologist Sean Tobin believes the deepest crisis may not be technological at all — but spiritual.
Speaking in Rome during one of the Catholic Church’s largest annual gatherings focused on exorcism and spiritual warfare, Tobin reflected on the growing overlap between mental illness, loneliness, compulsive technology use, and what many believers increasingly interpret as spiritual oppression.
A practicing psychologist who works closely with exorcists and individuals reporting demonic phenomena, Tobin argues that modern society’s obsession with self, stimulation, and digital affirmation mirrors ancient spiritual patterns described in Christian theology for centuries.
In this conversation, we discuss:
Why Tobin believes modern technology can condition people in ways that resemble “a form of possession”
The Vatican-linked conference on exorcism and why AI became a major topic this year
How social media, algorithms, and smartphones may contribute to anxiety, isolation, and spiritual fragmentation
Why Tobin thinks modern culture increasingly searches for supernatural meaning through demons, exorcism, and the occult
The relationship between psychology, trauma, mental illness, and alleged demonic activity
This is a conversation about AI, demons, exorcism, mental illness, spiritual trauma, loneliness, modern technology, and the search for meaning in an increasingly fragmented world.
Transcript
CNS Note: This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI tools. For precise quotations, CNS recommends referring to the video above.
Intro: Sean Tobin is a practicing psychologist working at the intersection of mental illness, spiritual trauma, and demonic possession. He was recently in Rome for one of the Catholic Church’s largest annual gatherings exorcists-in-training, where this year, speakers explored a disturbing question: what happens when ancient spiritual fears collide with modern technology? In this conversation with Catholic News Service, I ask Dr. Tobin about the rise in public fascination with demons and exorcism, the psychological patterns he sees in his patients, and why some religious thinkers now believe the modern crisis of anxiety, loneliness, and compulsive technology use may also be a spiritual crisis.
Robert Duncan: Dr. Sean Tobin, thank you so much for sitting down with Catholic News Service.
Sean Tobin: It’s my pleasure to be here.
Robert Duncan: How do you see the devil as being active in the world today?
Sean Tobin: What I see happening overall in society is, especially with the rise of technology, is we’ve become so self-focused. And what’s interesting is even in the garden, right, Satan doesn’t originally turn us from God to evil. He turns us from God to self. And when he can turn us to self, it can cut us off from God when self-will reigns, right? And then we actually can, it allows space for every other evil, right? But I do think we’ve become more self-focused than ever before. And I think the rise of social media and internet and other things have unfortunately contributed to that. Not that they’re evil in themselves, but there’s a great book by Romano Guardini called The End of the Modern World, where he talks about how man does not have the power to properly integrate these technologies. We can’t keep up morally with the changes, and we don’t have that formation. So we have to be very intentional about how we use technology because it can create a state where we’re so self-focused that all we’re doing is seeking either the confirmation of what we already believe, or it’s to the point where we’re expecting so many answers immediately and expecting that there is an answer, that we can’t tolerate that discomfort or that mystery that ultimately creates the space where we can come to believe and experience God. So it’s becoming harder and harder for people to even be still enough to pray.
Robert Duncan: You mentioned technology, and I think that might be a good opportunity for you to tell people why you’re here and that technology is actually part of the thematic substance of this conference. So tell me about the conference and how AI and other forms of technology can be vehicles of—
Sean Tobin: Of the enemy and stuff, whatever, yeah. Well, I think, again, even the apple in the garden, whether it’s an apple or whatever fruit, it’s not good or evil. It’s how we’re oriented towards it, right? So I think that technology is the same thing. It’s amoral. It’s not good or evil. It’s how we use it. But I think that the way we are using a lot of technology has been to our detriment. I mean, we’re the most isolated, lonely, anxious society ever. There’s a great book called The Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anne Lemke that goes in depth into that, how the smartphone is the new hypodermic needle of our generation. So at the conference, I mean, it is a course for exorcists. There’s like 300, mostly priests and some mental health workers that are there, bishops as well. So it’s sometimes reported in the news as a Vatican conference.
Robert Duncan: Yeah, it seems to be centralized or promoted by the Vatican. So who hosts it?
Sean Tobin: Right now, yeah, it’s at a Legionaries of Christ college just outside of Rome. And they’ve had it for about 20 years now. But it seems to be the official Vatican gathering of priests.
Robert Duncan: Are there Vatican representatives there?
Sean Tobin: Yeah, Father Bamonte is the exorcist for Rome. He gave a talk actually just before I got here today, which was excellent. He gave a Q&A, and I mean, he’s got so much experience.
Robert Duncan: Did you get a sense that he had a particular Vatican line on what the tone of the conference should be?
Sean Tobin: I got a sense that he knew what he was talking about. And when people were asking questions, there was just this different kind of authority in the way that he spoke. And yeah, I do think there’s an air, for me, of it’s kind of more an official statement. He’s also very careful about certain things. Like there’s some topics that are not fully understood yet. Like something like generational curses or generational healing is kind of a hot topic. And he was pretty good about giving space for the controversy and the clarification. And so I think it does a good job trying to go after what is true and speak authoritatively about what is and isn’t. But yeah, at the conference itself, I think this is probably one of the first times that there’s been presentations on AI itself. Not just because people can use it maliciously, even people in the occult, right? But in a sense, there’s a—I guess for me, what I find fascinating is anything we create, it kind of mirrors God’s own creation. And we’re almost making like digital angels, especially as superintelligence eventually kind of emerges in some form. It’s not the first time that man has had such a close relationship with a superintelligent creation or whatever. In the garden, we dialogue with a language model that was superintelligent, that turned us back towards ourselves and away from God—the enemy, right? The angel of light that was the interpreter and counselor, you might say. And so I think that there’s a tendency, as we’re oriented toward these things, again, it helps us find more of what we’re looking for. If we’re wanting just reassurance and self-praise, it’ll give it to us. But if we want to think critically and seek God, it can help create space for that. But I think largely nowadays, as people are ambitious, people are seeking their own happiness, their own progress and wealth and enticed by everything else in the world, a lot of these systems, algorithms, social media—they’re not really designed to integrate us. They’re designed to engage us, to keep us engaged. And so being mindful of that, we have to be very careful about the way that we begin to internalize and integrate this technology. Because in some sense, the way the algorithms can know us and tailor everything, the phone can answer your question before you even ask, right? It’s going to get to a point where we’re so conditioned. Some people will be so conditioned by it. It’s almost like a form of possession, where they’re not going to realize how much freedom they’ve given away.
Robert Duncan: You said that through a sort of form of osmosis, we could be influenced in such a way by the algorithm and its logic that it could be as if we were possessed. But I wonder, given some of the stories that have been reported of people who are depressed and dialoguing with an AI, have been encouraged to follow through with a suicide or something like this. Is it a reasonable concern to think that the technologies themselves could be channels of these kinds of powers?
Sean Tobin: Stories like that, like even minors who have committed suicide after being influenced by a chatbot, right? That’s kind of old technology though. The technology really is changing so much. And it is kind of an amalgamation of what seems to be universally true. Not that it actually gives us truth, but they are getting smarter and smarter. There’s more safeguards and we’re learning from mistakes, right So I think it’s going to change, where there’s going to be less of a risk of that kind of thing. Even there was a danger at one point where there was a psychotic disorder emerging, where part of the chatbots—it’s like sycophantic, where we want to hear that we’re good, that we’re special. And it was telling us that: “That’s a good answer. That’s a good question.” And it inflates people’s ego. They’re actually even changing that to be a little bit more, you know, like a normal conversation, less appealing in that way. So the technology is changing and growing, and in some sense becoming more intelligent artificially. To me, again, the greatest danger, it’s what’s going to atrophy in us, where we’re not going to recognize, just like with the rise of social media, the damage that is being caused, that we’ll have to figure out a way to reverse.
Robert Duncan: Tell me more about the conference. You said that you go if you are training to be an exorcist. And you are not training to be an exorcist because you’re not a priest. But two questions: What does training to be an exorcist entail? And why are you there?
Sean Tobin: Well, training to be an exorcist—first of all, an exorcist is someone who’s an exorcist in the Catholic world. It’s usually someone who is designated by the bishop to be the representative to serve the community or anyone seeking that kind of spiritual support. Traditionally, it’s been a priest. But in the early church, it wasn’t always a priest. In the course of history, there’s actually been even some women saints who are known for a charism, like Catherine of Siena and others. But an exorcist traditionally is someone who, again, is designated by a bishop, usually a priest. And they, in some sense—it’s kind of an emerging field. They’re still developing the whole formation. There’s different institutes that have recently been formed to do that.
Robert Duncan: And I’m guessing different bishops have very different visions of what that ministry looks like.
Sean Tobin: Absolutely, absolutely. But more and more, they’re looking to Rome. They’re looking for really this conference to be one of the main training tools. And so this conference is a whole week long. And from morning to evening, it’s session after session where they systematically go through everything from canon law to the role of—the talk I’m going to give is the role of a psychologist as part of the team serving the exorcist. And so they have a full range of topics to kind of cover everything, even the proper administration of the rite, to have certain boundaries in place, or different kinds of protocol, and to understand even how lay deliverance ministry and the formal exorcism kind of complement one another and the space for all of it. So it’s a very thorough program. And this one primarily is for newly recruited or assigned exorcists or those that are just seeking more training, community. But it is kind of a gold standard, it seems, for preparation for anyone who is asked to become the exorcist.
Robert Duncan: And you were invited?
Sean Tobin: Yep.
Robert Duncan: Can you say who invited you or what was it?
Sean Tobin: Yeah, the institute itself reached out to me. I was recommended by a dear friend of mine, Dr. Mary Healy. She’s an incredible woman, theologian. She sits on the Pontifical Biblical Commission. Very brilliant lady. She’s even, I think, the first female who works on the dicastery for worship. So amazing lady. But yeah, I was very humbled that she recommended me. I think largely because she was instrumental in kind of guiding my own thought theologically. I wrote a book this past year, Big God, Little Devil. And she was a great advisor for kind of putting it together and reviewing it. And so I think in light of that, she felt like I had something to contribute. Because I really do, I think, look at the whole experience of exorcism in a different way. Where I think because of my training in psychology—which again, in the past, psychology and faith have not really been good friends—but I think now it reveals more about what’s happening, even in the rite. Where the rite is not some magical formula that happens over someone and they’re freed. It really is an encounter. It’s a preaching of the gospel. They’re experiencing the presence of Christ in the priest. And all the sacramentals are touching the body and speaking to the soul to revive their spirit. There’s so much more happening in the room. And that’s really part of what my talk is about. It’s that I believe a psychologist really helps prepare the soil in the person to receive the ministry so that they can even be present in the room, present in the process. So I think too often in our society, we expect you to go to a psychiatrist when you’re suffering because you want a pill to just take away the pain. People can approach the exorcist in the same way, where it’s like, “Just do it to me and it’s done.”
Robert Duncan: Well, that’s how it’s portrayed in the films, right? I mean, I think maybe if anybody’s watching this that doesn’t come from sort of a Catholic context, they may think, well, if the possession experience is anything like I’ve seen it portrayed as, how do you even have the space to do that preparation work? Because, you know, the person’s in all these kind of states.
Sean Tobin: They’re not manifesting all the time, you know. But even while they’re manifesting, and there’s some times where maybe they’re not as conscious or they black out, but there’s still a part of them, almost a distant part of them, watching it happen, watching the demons do things through them. And when you can dialogue with that part of them to understand what’s happening inside of you when the demons were just speaking, you know, there’s still a part of the person that’s very active in the process. And typically when a demon is speaking through someone, internally they’re trying to get it to stop, right? Which actually can be counterintuitive but causes more of the inner conflict. So yeah, there’s always a part of the person still present. Again, whenever Jesus healed someone in the gospels, it was very relational. It wasn’t mechanical. I mean, there was a woman Satan bound for 18 years who was hunched over. And when he saw her, he called her a daughter of Abraham and just said, “You are free.” He was welcoming her again to community. That was part of her healing, right? The demoniac—he asked, “What’s your name?” He’s connecting with that person underneath. So it’s so much more than this formula. I mean, the rite, just like the liturgy, you know, it seems very formal and structured, but there’s so much space within it for the mystery and the encounter. It’s liturgical. And the sacramentals themselves speak so much more than—I mean, an image speaks a thousand words, right? The sacramentals themselves have a power to impart a real truth to a person in a way that simple catechesis can’t.
Robert Duncan: Do you think that the devil is more active now given the scale of global conflict than in the past?
Sean Tobin: Well, I think that the devil has always been at work, partly because I think as some of the saints describe, he’s almost like God’s quality control agent. He’s always had a position. I think about Pope Leo XIII who had that vision of Satan and that contest that he proposed to God to give him a century to try to destroy the Church. That gives me some reasons to think that maybe this is a special kind of time, a special season we’re in. But I think that he’s always been active. But ultimately I think God is even more active and we are heading towards a day that has been planned. It’s interesting. I was atheist for a big portion of my life. Watched the movie The Exorcist—
Robert Duncan: How big are we talking?
Sean Tobin: From childhood till 21.
Robert Duncan: Were you raised in a Christian home?
Sean Tobin: My family was Catholic, Irish Catholic, but I was a big skeptic and had a lot of more personal issues that made the capacity to believe and experience a God who’s so close and loving kind of difficult to grasp. But yeah, I was interested in horror movies back then and I didn’t believe in God, but I actually believed in the devil, which is kind of ironic. And I think that the world is more open to the idea of an evil force, even something personal, which doesn’t necessarily make them Catholic or Christian. I think a lot of different spiritual worldviews have that in their context, right? But I think especially nowadays, when science seems to be able to explain everything, it struggles with certain mysteries, right? And when you hear about someone who’s coughing up nails or levitating or a little woman that is crushing a metal-framed chair or bed supernaturally, these things raise a lot of questions. And I think as they should. I think signs and wonders are meant to kind of challenge what we think we know to create that space for wonder and the possibility of coming to faith.
Robert Duncan: I want to obviously ask you about the things that you mentioned and whether or not you have witnessed such things. But before we get there, people ask God all the time for proof that he exists. I would wager that most people don’t get the kind of proof that that question generally suggests. But the things you’ve mentioned and that other exorcists mention, it seems like the devil has no problem proving that he exists. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Sean Tobin: Yeah. Well, I think that sometimes the secular world can argue against the existence of a good God because of the existence of evil, while simultaneously I think the very existence of evil proves that there’s goodness, right? Following that to the end of absolute being. But so it’s confusing, right? And even the demons believe there’s God. That’s not really the point. I think what it comes down to is when you’re asking for that kind of proof, people want to have an experience with, or even deeper, an encounter with a living God. And it’s not so much that we just want a reason to believe some kind of philosophy is true. I mean, for anyone to be a Christian, I think fundamentally it’s because we’ve met Christ. We’ve experienced him as alive in some way. And our hearts are restless until they rest in God. I think it’s normal to search and to ask, even for signs. I mean, Gideon in the Old Testament asked for signs again and again and again, and that wasn’t wrong. But the way the Pharisees asked for signs was more testing God. So that’s a little bit more complicated, even asking for proof, you know? Because I think faith needs some evidence in some sense to have something to hold on to.
Robert Duncan: The people that seek out—first of all, maybe you could tell people a little bit about the professional work you do and how—well, why are you talking about this at all? You’re not in a Roman collar, you’re a psychologist. So tell me a bit about your work.
Sean Tobin: Yeah, well, I was in religious life for a brief period of time. After my conversion, I went pretty deep into studying philosophy and theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. And while I was actually in religious life, I witnessed some demonic manifestations in people at conferences or retreats, someone shrieking out—
Robert Duncan: What kind of conferences were you going to?
Sean Tobin: Yeah, actually just very normal Catholic conferences that were speaking about the life of prayer and contemplative—
Robert Duncan: Steubenville is famous for the—
Sean Tobin: Steubenville was more charismatic, for sure. It wasn’t so much there, actually. It was in religious life. We specialized in leading retreats, individual retreats. And sometimes people would be there who were very broken and troubled. And I remember one time at a mass, the priest was reading the line, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.” And there was this woman in the congregation who immediately started shrieking like, “No, no, make it stop.” And I was sitting there as a brother thinking, what is happening, right? I’d never experienced that before. But yeah, so it put kind of a question in my mind. So when I eventually discerned to leave and go back to school studying psychology, as a believer who, as a Catholic who actually reads the Bible, it always got me thinking, what was Jesus doing when he’s meeting with an epileptic boy or a man whose mind was not well, like the demoniac? He healed things that seemed like psychiatric conditions, but he was driving a demon out to heal them. And that always confused me and intrigued me. And so I started asking lots of questions in grad school. I went to a Catholic university and then to a Protestant university to finish the doctorate. And I didn’t get a lot of answers, just more questions. So I ended up doing my dissertation on exorcism, deliverance, and psychotherapy, and basically studying everything in the scientific databases. But then when I started to work professionally, I had gone through a bunch of training at different sites, including I worked at a psychiatric hospital for a time where I saw a lot of different crazy stuff. But after having a really good relationship with my local auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles, I started being referred people who either needed a psychological evaluation before they received an exorcism or just needed support alongside the process. But I also found that I started getting sent a lot of people by word of mouth who seemed to be suffering from some kind of demonic phenomenon, whether it’s just something in their house, a more harassing kind of experience, or something interior. And it became kind of a specialization for me. And I found a way to sit with people with what was presenting and sometimes have seen some incredible, incredible transformation.
Robert Duncan: People listening may have noted that you said that you had a particular interest in horror films growing up and wonder whether or not you have charted a course through to be in The Exorcist film, but in real life.
Sean Tobin: Yeah, well, no, I wouldn’t say I had a huge passion for it. I think I had a curiosity. I think any young man wants to face what he is afraid of and show that he can overcome it. I think a lot of horror movies are actually about that. It’s about facing a fear and coming out as that one survivor, you know, on the other side of it, almost like a narrative, projective thing or whatever. Not a huge advocate for horror films, but I get what it’s about in some ways. So I’m not like a huge horror fan, but to me, it was still just more the honest question of where does the demonic and mental illness fit, right? Because I think the tendency is we make things either spiritual or psychological. But I think that’s kind of a false dichotomy because within the human person, I mean, the spirit, the soul, the body make one nature and it can be these categorical errors, right? Jesus touched the body and healed the soul. And so for me, I was trying to understand not so much, you know, what’s what, but what’s happening in the human person while something spiritual can also be happening.
Robert Duncan: Maybe you could give people listening just a little bit of the history of the development of the Church’s attitude towards exorcism. Because, you know, what you just said—that people want to separate the spiritual and the mental illness—is in a sense, if I’m hearing you properly, maybe reading between the lines a bit, a response to an attitude that I think the Church had in the second half of the 20th century, which was to say many of the cases that in the past we thought were maybe of demonic or supernatural origin actually can be explained by, you know, mental illness.
Sean Tobin: Yeah. But then again, in the gospels, the man with multiple personalities, Legion or whatever, it was a demon still, right? So it’s both ends. But it’s true that maybe in the past there was an over-pathologizing, you know, of—or describing something as spiritual—which we’ve learned now has a strong mental health component, right? I do think that a lot of current exorcists are trying to do some damage control from what the Enlightenment has done, the age of scientism, where there’s a lot of skepticism about anything supernatural. And so there is sometimes some advocacy for the possibilities of these things being real. I think among believers though, ever since the first century, there’s always been kind of a challenge of dualism that we have, right? Between the body and the soul. And so I think sometimes it’s difficult to grasp how integrated those are. And often the people that I see that come in, people would almost feel more relieved to know it’s a demon and that they’re not mentally ill.
Robert Duncan: Well, I can understand that.
Sean Tobin: Yeah, because it can seem like almost a shame or—
Robert Duncan: But that impulse though is what some people would say would explain a kind of credulity in demonic forces in the world because it relieves us of responsibility.
Sean Tobin: Right. The challenge for believers is, I mean, in scripture as a believer, all we have to do is submit ourselves to God, resist the devil and he’ll flee. So there is an act of participation in grace, a responsibility we have, a conversion, an interior work that we have to go through to seek that kind of freedom. The kind of people that I tend to see are believers. It’s not like someone on the fringe being evangelized for the first time, or like in the gospels when Philip is preaching in Samaria and driving out demons just in the gospel, right? That’s a different context for what we often see and who the exorcist tends to see. I think it’s sensitive, but I think we have a lot of catechized believers who aren’t always evangelized. Now we received in baptism the grace that sets us apart from the enemy, as much as the waters of the Red Sea set us apart from Pharaoh, right? But that baptismal identity needs to be actualized and lived to the full. And I think in a lot of ways we have a very confusing worldview. We’re not very well-formed spiritually as well as theologically. And I think people just carry into their faith—we take for granted how much of our family of origin, our culture, our belief systems, our wounds, our fears actually do play themselves out in our spiritual life and can even create vulnerabilities for the enemy.
Robert Duncan: So what patterns have you noticed in these clients that come to you? You mentioned that many of them are religious believers, but what does your typical client look like?
Sean Tobin: Yeah, typical client. Well, the ones that suffer from demonic stuff—
Robert Duncan: What percentage would they be of your total?
Sean Tobin: I would say actually probably about 60% of my clients are primarily there because they’re religious. They’re primarily there because they’re trying to understand what’s going on spiritually.
Robert Duncan: And how many people do you see, like a month or a week?
Sean Tobin: Right, I usually see about five or six people a day. So an hour a client, and you do notes and everything else too. I can tell you about how last week was and some of the people that I saw.
Robert Duncan: Tell me.
Sean Tobin: Yeah, well, one of the clients I saw regularly—one of the first times I ever met her, in the course of our conversation, all of a sudden she starts looking at me. Her face starts contorting, and then she starts growling, and then speaking in some language that she doesn’t know.
Robert Duncan: Do you know it?
Sean Tobin: No, it sounded Italian, to be honest, but she doesn’t know Italian clearly. And I should probably record it one of these days and see what it is. But bodies contort. I’ve seen her stand on one toe in a very weird posture.
Robert Duncan: And you’re alone in a room with this person?
Sean Tobin: Yeah, no problem. Yeah, I trust in the Lord. And he didn’t seem very intimidated when the man they were trying to chain and keep in the tombs was coming at him, you know, the demoniac there. So I think that’s part of—yeah, that’s part of the gift, I think, I want to help bring people to, is the confidence in God and how much he really has set us apart. And ultimately that the enemy serves his purposes in a mysterious way. But so someone like this, right? I see people who have experienced trauma—
Robert Duncan: Sorry, if we could go back to this part. You gave a few examples, colorful examples of the things that she could do or were done to her, however you like. Is there enough normal space in order for conversation and therapy.
Sean Tobin: Yeah, so how much is it that kind of presentation or how much is—I’ve learned a couple of tricks over time where sometimes if you change the subject, be like, “So tell me about, again, where you came from, where you were born.” You can see the presentations change where it’s as if parts of the self still have agency while other parts that are a little bit more provoked, you know, become the territory that the enemy can operate from.
There’s degrees of possession, ultimately. I also sometimes provoke people on purpose. I tell them, “You’re God’s favorite. He loves you. He’s got a special plan for your life. He died for you. If it was only you, he’d do it again.” You know, all these things that provoke something because, I mean, when you see in Mark chapter one, the first time before Jesus is well-known that someone manifested with a demon, I mean, it was a guy in church, in the temple, right? But it was after this witness of, “Who is this man that speaks with authority?” That authority though, it provoked something in this man where a part of him felt like it was a threat, like it’s here to destroy me. And the demon spoke out, right? And Jesus silenced it and it came out of the man.
I see that all the time where oftentimes there’s a part of us too that gets provoked by God. Maybe it’s called to surrender or to trust or to let go. And we have a hard time sometimes accepting that, right? Our journey with God is very complicated and nuanced, and that’s okay. It’s not always demonic, but I think sometimes it can be because ultimately he wants to set those parts against one another to ultimately keep us from being open and trusting to receive the Lord as he is.
And so I—just his love, I think, provokes people. His presence provokes people. And if I can bring that to them in some way, even sometimes, you know, speaking about certain elements of the gospel, it often will get a reaction from someone who is heavily demonized. But then that gives me territory to work with because I have this idea that in scripture, we say that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour, right? “To resist him, steadfast in your faith.” Well, a roaring lion is a terrible prowler. He reveals where he’s hiding. You know, he is an attention grabber. He wants us to react to the manifestation. But God is using that to expose something hidden, an area of influence, an area of weakness, fear, or brokenness.
And so when the manifestations happen, that’s actually when the enemy’s weakest. And so I’ve learned, I guess, to sit with that, to attend to the part of the person that’s broken underneath, you know? Like when the man’s manifesting, “I’m Legion, for we are many,” it’s because Jesus was asking him what his name was. He’s trying to attune to something deeper, to call a man into his self. And so I think when you look past the manifestations, there’s an opportunity there that God’s creating.
Robert Duncan: You told me a few things earlier. You told me that maybe 60% of the people you see, you think could have some demonic influence.
Sean Tobin: Sometimes it’s just things moving around their house. They hear chains and screams or whatever at night.
Robert Duncan: Okay, so to be clear, you’re saying 60% of the people are coming to you because they believe—not necessarily that you ascribe demonic.
Sean Tobin: Okay, that’s important clarification. That’s true.
Robert Duncan: Is there a key that you know as a psychologist when it’s actually merely psychological?
Sean Tobin: Yeah, again, I think it can be both-and. So it’s less important to me to prove whether or not it’s real. And it’s more important to understand what it means to that person. Because whether the demon’s there or not, why does this person not have peace in Christ, right? I mean, Jesus had no problem with the devil hanging out in the desert until he was annoyed after the third time and sent him away, you know? He wasn’t so quick the first time to send the devil away. So the presence of the devil is not that important. It’s looking for the presence of Christ. So he should be afraid. The devil should be afraid of us more than we should be afraid of him. So that’s really fundamentally what I’m looking for in a person. Whatever they’re suffering from, how do I move them to a place of greater peace and integration and wholeness in their life and confidence, right? Especially in the love of God, in the presence of God. But obviously there are certain conditions, whether it’s like schizophrenia or like you said, maybe some personality disorders that can seem to resemble the character of evil, right? Or something explicit that is like schizophrenia where you could have visions that maybe aren’t really there, right? Well, even in the case of schizophrenia, I’ve worked with people who say they hear the devil. And while it’s saying gibberish or strange things, it can seem like a delusion. It’s not really in the scope of science to prove empirically whether or not a demon isn’t there or not. It still could be. I mean, a demon could present itself as mental illness to someone, right? It is the devil’s mental illness that we’re suffering from in some sense from the beginning. But again, for me, it’s how is this person suffering? What does it mean to them? And how do I help them move towards wholeness in some degree? And whether it’s explicitly confronting this experience and the presence of the devil in their life or not. I think in the course of someone who is mentally ill, the change is different. I think it’s a little bit less realistic to see some of the phenomenon go away. When you have a lot of hallucinations, auditory or otherwise, they tend to last a lot longer. And that you do need to treat it with medication because it is primarily a neurological, a brain disorder. So you do have to treat the body directly to improve the symptoms, which again doesn’t negate that there couldn’t still be a demon. But again, who cares if there’s a demon or not? That doesn’t keep you from coming to a place of peace and wholeness.
Robert Duncan: Do you believe that the devil attacks believers and unbelievers in equal measure? I think he hates all God’s children.
Sean Tobin: But I also think that in some sense, Raniero Cantalamessa said that the strongest proof of the devil’s existence isn’t found in the sinners or the possessed, but in the saints. Because by way of their life, his works are exposed. And in some way, God has always used the enemy. John Chrysostom said he uses the enemy like a surgeon uses a scalpel, or a vine dresser uses pruning shears, or like a shepherd using a sheepdog to drive the flock back to him. I think that he’s always been used as part of sometimes the redemptive purposes of God. And so it’s not so much maybe that he’s less active in a believer’s life, but we can be more aware of his activity in our lives. Some people say, if you have a great calling, then the devil is going to target you more. But I think we’re all the target of God’s jealous love. But I do think that in any of our callings, there’s a training as well. And again, I think he’s our sparring partner so often, our training partner that God permits in order to prepare us, just like with Peter or Job or anyone else. So I wouldn’t say that it’s more so, but then again, the devil, of course, he’s going to want to, at least in his mind—which never operates outside God’s will—he obviously wants to try to prevent the saints or any believer from preaching the gospel or living the gospel. But his activity is always under the restraint of divine providence.
Robert Duncan: You told me earlier that most of your clients, maybe you said all, are believers or Christians.
Sean Tobin: No, yeah, I actually stopped working with more secular people, yeah.
Robert Duncan: And why is that?
Sean Tobin: It felt like doing surgery with one arm behind my back. I think that the relationship with God is one of the most important relationships we have. And when we talk about mental health and mood disorders, I think how you think God sees you and feels about you has one of the greatest impacts on our health. And I don’t understand sometimes why you can talk about your parents and do an empty chair technique and pretend they’re there to look at that structural relationship that you’ve internalized, you know? But we can’t do that with God because it’s still a very real relationship. And so actually one of the first questions I ask believers when they come in is, between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who do you feel the closest to and who do you feel the furthest from? And I find in that answer it tells a lot about the inner workings of a person and their framework for experience.
Robert Duncan: Can you give me an example?
Sean Tobin: Sure.
Robert Duncan: Like if I were to say the Father or the Holy Spirit, I mean, what would that be?
Sean Tobin: You won’t get personal. You don’t want—yeah. So, I mean, a lot of people, they feel close to Jesus because maybe they’ve suffered and they’re naturally an empathic person and they can identify the mercy of God, the closeness of God in Jesus. The Father can seem distant oftentimes because they have a father who maybe was busy or less engaged or not really seeking out that child. Or the Holy Spirit can be distant where this person can be more self-reliant, is more skeptical of comforts, and in general is kind of taking care of themselves, right? And so in some way, we have a gift in having three unique persons within the Trinity because we relate to each one differently. But I think in a meaningful way—I would say even the kind of church we’re attracted to has a lot to do with our psychology as well.
Robert Duncan: Say more.
Sean Tobin: Whether it’s something very structured or a little bit more, you know, free-flowing. I mean, just personalities alone—someone who’s choleric versus sanguine—will feel more comfortable in those spaces. But I think naturally we try to find something that’s familiar, that speaks to us. But that’s, I think, one of the beautiful things about the Church, is not only is there room for everything, but we have an opportunity to go beyond just what’s my preference and comfortable, to try to find all of God, to seek all of God. I think even within different movements, like say the Protestant world, right? The born-again movement. I see a lot of people who are really trying to find a way to leave their past behind, to somehow change their narrative, to try to heal from it. And that can be a very convenient belief, you know? “I’m once saved, always saved,” instead of having to do this deep interior work still of conversion. So again, a lot of these ideologies and even church identity or styles of worship have a lot more to do with how God’s meeting us where we’re at, but always inviting us into the fullness.
Robert Duncan: Do you ever wonder, or have you ever asked yourself, whether, to the extent that you were doing psychological work, your religious faith has clouded your judgment? Does it shape too much your worldview to see maybe a spiritual problem when maybe the person needs medication?
Sean Tobin: Well, I don’t see so much a conflict with medication. There’s a great passage in the Book of Sirach, chapter 38, where it talks about how the pharmacist makes medicines from the earth that are from God, and that we really need to give the doctor his place with these medicines, right? I think what it comes down to is we want to do all that we can for the body, for the soul, and for the spirit—the whole person. And I think that’s the model of scripture. And what’s informed by my faith is when Peter and John met the man at the Beautiful Gate, and they said, “Silver and gold we don’t have, but what we have we give you. In Jesus’ name, rise and walk.” It says that he goes into the temple walking, leaping, and praising God. So we see physical, emotional, and spiritual. The whole person was healed. Jesus touched someone, healed their soul. He said, “Your sins are forgiven, now rise and walk.” It’s the whole person he’s healing. And in my work, I mean, a psychologist is really psyche—soul. I study the soul in some sense. But as we know it, so much of trauma is stored in the body, in our nervous system. The Body Keeps the Score. And so I think we’ve come from a time where everyone is an expert in their own lane. But more and more, we have to understand the fullness of the person and to really help integrate them. And so I don’t have so much a preference for just like the spirit or the soul. I just want to understand what the person looks like in their wholeness. Actually, Pope Benedict XVI said that whoever wishes to heal man must see him in his wholeness and must know that his ultimate healing only comes in God’s love. So I am biased to think that love is ultimately what we need. But love can be expressed through medication too.
Robert Duncan: I think you said you’ve seen personally the spitting out of nails.
Sean Tobin: I haven’t seen the nail part.
Robert Duncan: The nail one, okay.
Sean Tobin: I’ve seen things move around the office. I’ve seen languages, things that they couldn’t know, that they know about me even. Yeah.
Robert Duncan: It would seem to me that if you’ve seen those things, you can’t have had much of a problem with doubt.
Sean Tobin: Yeah.
Robert Duncan: I mean, I’ve never seen such things, but is it an odd kind of consolation when you know that many people struggle not having the evidences of things that they believe in church? And by your own account, you have many of them.
Sean Tobin: Yeah.
Robert Duncan: Even if they’re coming from arguably a different source.
Sean Tobin: Well, I guess it’s kind of like the idea of Thomas the Apostle. Like, isn’t it easier when we can see, right? Again, I think then we’re circumventing the personal struggle of belief that there’s in all of us. Maybe there’s a certain area in your life where it’s hard to believe or to trust in God, right? And faith is empirical. We need evidence. And ultimately, Jesus is the perfecter and pioneer of our faith. He’s the one who calls it out and brings it to life in us. Faith is mysterious. And to me, I don’t so much seek a reassurance in these signs. Again, I don’t think signs and wonders are necessarily meant to be proof of faith as much as they are an argument to make a choice. What do you believe is happening? Because people could see the same thing and think there’s a quantum physics explanation for what’s happening.
Robert Duncan: Or you live in LA and there are sometimes small earthquake tremors.
Sean Tobin: Exactly. That’s why it’s moving on the wall. Exactly. So again, it’s that personal question that we have to respond to. Yeah.
Robert Duncan: There are many popular exorcists online with major followings.
Sean Tobin: Yeah.
Robert Duncan: What do you think of that phenomenon?
Sean Tobin: Yeah. It’s complicated.
Robert Duncan: Imagine you know several of them personally.
Sean Tobin: Some of them. Well, one of my favorites I’ll say is Father Dan Rehill. I was actually in religious life with him and he was one of my first spiritual directors. He was Brother Joshua back then. Awesome guy. Stephen Rossetti has told how a lot of exorcists, when they were asked in recent years to become exorcists, came into a culture that had become very secular. And it’s almost like they needed to prove to people that demons are real to take it seriously, right? Also because they wanted to warn people from some of the practices that were dangerous, like practicing the occult and kind of warning people about demons. Kind of warning people about that. So I think in some regard there is something good. But especially the virality of a lot of these media, people tend—the clickbait is so often these stories that often seem to promote the power of the enemy and what he can do. And some exorcists seem to be experts in demonology and know all about the demon behind this, the demon behind that. Personally, I find that kind of information a little bit problematic. When the disciples came back after they cast out demons and were celebrating about it to Jesus, he redirected their focus to your names written in the Book of Life. When people are studying counterfeit currency, they don’t study the counterfeit currency. They study the real so much so that the counterfeit’s easy to identify. So in the same way, I think we’re really called to understand the nature of God, the power of God. And that in itself exposes then what is of the enemy and why. We have to be very careful with the way that we talk about things. And I think sometimes people can think it’s a form of evangelization too, to scare people about the devil, to send them to Christ. But actually maybe Augustine of Hippo did say that fear can be like the needle pulling the love of God, the thread that sews up the garment, right? Fear enters first. I get that argument. But I just see a lot of believers who are trying to grow deeper in their spiritual life learning this stuff and becoming more anxious and more set in a kind of mixed faith that has a lot of fear. I think what people are really looking for again is they want to know, they want to experience more of the supernatural, more of what’s mystical, more of what’s—you know, that the spiritual is more tangible. But at the end of the day, no matter how much we know about the devil, I think what we’re really looking for is to know God. And it’s not the same thing. And so I think there can be a lot of confusion about those messages. And yeah, I think there should be more testimonies about what Mary did, what Jesus did to bring that liberation. And we should be celebrating those testimonies more than ever. And actually that’s what I focus on in my book, is this is what the person experienced in the context of this deliverance, and this is what God did. And it’s moving to hear how tender Our Lady is, how tender Jesus was in disarming those fears and redeeming some of those wounds and sending the devil running effortlessly, right? That’s the stuff that moves us and inspires faith, not fear.
Robert Duncan: Just because you mentioned it earlier, I do want to ask you about the hot topic you mentioned that came up: generational curses.
Sean Tobin: Sure.
Robert Duncan: I think that—I mean, that’s something I hear about. A lot of people believe that they are under a kind of generational curse in one way or another. So what does that discussion look like among your colleagues?
Sean Tobin: Sure. Well, among my colleagues, scientifically, we recognize that illness is generational. I mean, we inherit a disposition or predisposition towards different things, both in our physical conditions and even certain behaviors that we’re weaker towards, right?
Robert Duncan: Well, mental illness, it can be inherited.
Sean Tobin: Absolutely, absolutely. But a spiritual inheritance in some sense—well, faith is generational. He’s the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Paul recognized in Timothy that that faith first lived in his mother and his grandmother, right? That there was a flame that was kind of passed on. But I think one of the controversies is if we have a generational curse—and first of all, what is a curse? It’s not just someone cast a spell or did something. A curse is the opposite of a blessing. A blessing builds someone up. It gives life. And a curse tears down and breaks them down and confuses their identity, right? So fundamentally it has an impact psychologically, relationally. When we don’t give a good example to our children, in some sense that can be a form of a curse where we’re not building them up, right? Because with children, more is caught than taught, right? But there is this kind of belief that we do inherit some spiritual thing, like some spirit of a curse comes upon us. And a lot of people look to Exodus that says that the sins of the father will go to the third and fourth generation, right? And so sometimes there seems to be like this mystical transfer of guilt, kind of like original sin. But that’s different because it also says in scripture in Ezekiel that no longer will it be said that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge. God really has come in between to separate, to allow the generational bondage to stop. He gives us the opportunity to come to him, to seek healing. Yeah, to recognize that all of our brokenness is in a context that goes generationally, right? But we have an opportunity to end that generational pattern, to really come to God to seek healing, and that the blessings of God go to the thousandth generation, that there’s far more blessing available than there is the power of a curse. But I think a lot of people approach this stuff with a very superstitious attitude and are trying to seek out some formula or some way to change that pattern without taking responsibility for it, almost looking to blame maybe why they’re suffering rather than owning it and doing what they need to do to change.
Robert Duncan: Pope Francis spoke very often in his pontificate about the devil from early on. And maybe this will just show that I haven’t been paying enough attention, but off the top of my head I cannot think of Pope Leo having yet spoken at least quite in the same way. Is that true? What has Pope Leo said about the devil? And is there a particular expectation you or the other exorcists at this conference have about the direction maybe Pope Leo wants your work to go?
Sean Tobin: Well, I love how Pope Francis sometimes lightheartedly talked about the devil too. If I could share one of his jokes, he said he too knows what it’s like to have a mother-in-law because he too suffers with the devil every day. Or one of the lines in my book that I use of his is that “the devil exits by faith, but re-enters through superstition.” And that whenever we engage in superstitious thinking, we’re dialoguing with the devil, and we never dialogue with the devil. I think that’s really important. So he does obviously talk more about the devil, but he’s also been pope a little bit longer. Yeah, Pope Leo XIV, I believe I have read once where he did talk about the devil. But again, we make such a big deal of the devil. When you read the New Testament, he’s almost like a footnote. I mean, in the Gospel of John, there’s not a single exorcism in the entire gospel. It’s pretty interesting. Jesus is confronting unbelief instead and almost freeing the whole world from his power. I think again where we have this false emphasis where we give the devil way too much attention when he’s meant to be really the opportunity for a demonstration of God’s power and love. It’s meant to be part of evangelism even, to bear witness to the reality of the kingdom of God rather than becoming like a phenomenon or fad in itself. So I’m not so worried about him saying much about the devil. I believe that Pope Leo is very well-formed and is not ignorant of the enemy. But I think his heart’s where it needs to be as a pastor right now.
Robert Duncan: For anyone who may be watching who suffers from mental illness and has been listening to you, what would your message be to them? What would your message to them be?
Sean Tobin: Well, I might encourage them to read the book, read my book, Big God, Little Devil. But even more, I think the biggest challenge is to dare to believe in the love of God for them. And I challenge anyone who’s really suffering to simply go to be with Jesus, go to adoration, go to a sanctuary where you can just sit in his presence. And rather than just asking him to change what you’re feeling or to remove the devil from your life, to enjoy his presence, to simply enjoy God’s love. Because the presence of the enemy is not really the problem. We want to turn ourselves, almost by ignoring him, to the greater thing to give our attention to, which is this amazing love of God. And I would really challenge anyone who has beliefs and experiences where they’re forgotten by God or that he doesn’t seem to be doing anything and abandoning them, that they’re not worthy, to say those things at the foot of the cross. Because they’re all lies. You know, we are his beloved. He’s done everything for us. He’s given everything to speak that love to us. And what it really comes down to is receiving that truth and that love. And so I just challenge people to go there.
Robert Duncan: Dr. Sean Tobin, thank you for sitting down with Catholic News Service.
Sean Tobin: It’s an honor to be here. Thanks.