The Exorpsychiatrist

G as in Good H as in Happy links to a fascinating Dallas Morning News interview with M. Scott Peck, the psychiatrist author of The Road Less Traveled, whose new book is "Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist's Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism and Redemption" (Free Press).

The Road Less Traveled, originally published in 1978 as the Me Decade was running out of gas, stood out by its contrarian insistence on personal responsibility and rigorous self-honesty, when all around it was self-indulgence and self-pity. More striking from today's point of view, Peck saw no contradiction in setting his tough-self-love within a progressive Christianity.

People of the Lie (1983) is the book of his that has meant the most to me. In it, Peck dared to say that there are evil people, and not only the Hitlers, Stalins and Pol Pots, but some of our parents, siblings, and coworkers. (No, not YOU GUYS.) He described how they operate, and if you've ever run afoul of one you'll instantly recognize the intense confusion they generate as cover for their machinations, like a squid's cloud of ink. At least once a year I give this book to someone who is struggling in an evil person's no-win toils, and it is a life- and sanity-saver. Yet Peck expressed compassion for the evil; he said that they suffer from a mental and spiritual illness of absolute narcissism, a self-inflicted curse that invites and, in extreme cases, even involves demonic possession. He hinted at having participated in exorcisms.

In his new book he goes public with those stories. Some intriguing clips from the interview:
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[Y]ou can't go much further until you study exorcism scientifically. It would be a tremendous kind of shift. . . . My hope is that it becomes recognized and acknowledged . . . that such a thing as the devil exists. You might get it pinned down and learn how it exists. It would be extraordinarily significant for the human race. . . What we need to do is integrate science and religion, instead of throwing one or the other out.
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Q: You refer to the devil as "it." Do you believe in a personal demonic entity?

A: "He" and "she" connote sexuality. Believe it or not, we live at the mercy of a very sexy God.

C.S. Lewis said that in relation to God, we are all feminine. God is creative and life-giving. Satan is not the least bit creative, only destructive. There is no sexuality in it. And it's an ugly it.
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During the exorcism, the demonic clearly becomes revealed. She had a subhuman or satanic face. It was not frightening as much as amazing.

Seeing is believing. I can't expect people who haven't seen it to be converted.
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Q: You believe that possessions, though rare, may actually be on the increase. Why?

A: The way possessions look depend on the times. A medieval possession wouldn't look familiar to us. But if you were to ask scholars what is the leading philosophy of our time, it's postmodernism, which is so horrible. It's the total loss of any kind of faith.

Premodernism was the age of faith. Modernism was the age of reason. Now people are disillusioned with both. They're into deconstructing, which means destroying every kind of belief. It leads to nihilism, which is not a good thing.

If you read the accounts of exorcisms through the ages, there's always some element of nihilism. In one of my cases, the demon said that all the negative and positive energy in the universe canceled each other out. It all comes to nothing.
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The most important thing for me is the truth. If we can stay completely rooted in honesty as far as possible, I think we're safe.
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- amba

Comments

[hello hello]

I was so happy to read this. I too found "People of the Lie" to be very significant, have given it to others, and indeed was myself given the book at a time when I was working with a person perfectly described by Peck's book.

[Dilys]

Glad to have been the link for this article. Peck has always been willing to step out a little bit and speak what he has seen, whether or not he expects agreement. The next steps in studying this will be interesting. Traditionally, "exorcism" has not been a trade-school skill...

Dilys

[Karen]

I love Mr/Dr. Peck, I was married to a very Narcissistic "Man of the Lie", and was so mentally and emotionally frailing around for some explanation, and being so unusually self sacrificing on his behalf, for his salvation from himself. It hurt me to look at him and unbelievably KNOW he was uncapable of love, had never experienced and never would experience love, not even for his 3 beautiful boys.... thank you "Scotty" as was written in People of the Lie", my soul was definately the battleground of Matt's evil, and I loved him so much (even on a non-wife level) but yet as of yet, I was unable to love him enough. But you helped me to understand like I never could have had a not lived it.