Have You Ever Told a Lie? You're Evil! Now, Go See Your Therapist!
Written: Nov 06 '01 (Updated Nov 07 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very easy to read though it handles tough subject matter.
Cons: It is the author's personal diary and should be read as such.
The Bottom Line: The author of the book say's it's a "dangerous" book. It is, but not for the reasons he so vainly thinks.
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| ispeakup's Full Review: People of the Lie : Vol 2. The Encounter with Evil... |
Everybody has heard of “The Road Less Traveled,” by its often-used phrase from the Robert Frost poem (“I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference)”, and/or the title of the book of the same name. The full title of Dr. M. Scott Peck's book, “The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth,” can probably be credited with inspiring the genesis of the psycho-babble phenomenon as it first appeared as a popular money-making device in the late 1970s. I personally recall that this book graced the non-fiction best-seller lists for years and is credited with “introducing over three million readers to an integration of the deepest insights of psychiatry with those of religion.”
Peck’s other noted book, and the subject of this review, is “People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil.” The book, on its back jacket cover, is labeled, among other salutary reviews, “a daring study of evil, a “deeply penetrating book,” “an act of courage.” In its preface, the reader is introduced to the book with the admonishment to “Handle With Care.” Upon turning the first page of the Introduction, its very first lines state: “This is a dangerous book.”
Dr. Peck personally believes that his writing has the potential for harm and can cause pain. Like an explosive device, by digesting his words, by their very potency, the words can eat away at your innards and bring out the very devil that we all fear. Dr. Peck admits, himself, that he asked his colleagues, “Do you think that this book about human evil is itself evil?” Their response: No. I could have expected as much. He is credited with introducing a whole new blend of psychotherapy using a religious and spiritual element considered revolutionary. Under the circumstances, it’s hard to say no to celebrity. John Travolta’s “Battleship Earth” is an excellent example of our tendency to reward genius however “naked and bare” it may truly be.
Well, I personally beg to differ with Dr. Peck’s hand-picked critics. However, I will not sit on high and judge my fellow man, using terms of art that in and of themselves conjure up the phantasmagoric and macabre. I won’t use such a term to label the book. Rather, I would say that this book about human evil itself is “not evil,” but “ill-advised.”
The book is a fascinating read and should be read as such. However, to equate its words with all the religious implications it purports to address is, indeed, a dangerous road to travel. With all due respect to Dr. Peck, who openly addresses his own doubts about its tenets, I believe that it is a dangerous book because it attempts to qualify the subjective by answering the question: what is evil?
I do not go to church on any regular basis, and am more apt to pray to my ancestors than to Leonardo DaVinci’s brother whose portrait graces most Christian places of worship throughout the world. I was brought up in a Christian tradition, but ascribe to the tenets that could be considered universal practices aspired to by humans around the world. I try to be kind to my neighbor, I reproach myself if feelings of jealousy should stir within, and I honor my parents. At times I am good. At times I am not so good. I am human. As a human, I try to overcome the negative in my life by re-assertion of its positives, which is very hard to do often times. I have never killed anyone, nor do I advocate the killing of another human being, either state sponsored or under the guise of religion. I do play God at times: I save spiders (thanks to “Charlotte’s Web,”) whereas I will kill a fly. I am good. I am bad. I eat chicken. I don’t eat pork. Am I good or bad for doing either? But am I evil? That is the question. Dr. Peck dares to tell me the answer.
In his book, Dr. Peck attempts to justify certain cases or behaviours that he encountered in his practice of psychiatry for which, personally, he could not find a cure. Essentially, he labels those patients “People of the Lie.” His examples are fascinating and are in and of themselves interesting reads. His chapters include titles like the following: Toward a Psychology of Evil; The Encounter with Evil in Everyday Life; Charlene, A Teaching Case; Of Possession and Exorcism; Mylai: An Examination of Group Evil. Within those chapters, he lists case scenarios by name, such as “The Case of Roger and His Parents,” “The Case of Hartley and Sarah,” “The Case of the Spider Phobia,” and “The Case of the Voodoo Dream.” Without giving all the chapter segments away, as an example, Dr. Peck cites these as instances of trying to qualify the gradations of good and evil. For instance, he writes about a couple whose child committed suicide. The parents gave the gun used by their son to shoot himself to their other son (the brother) as a gift. I do believe that the parent’s behaviour was bizarre, but I don’t know if I can judge it evil or not. Not being versed in psychology or psychiatry, perhaps it’s not enough to say that they were totally incapacitated by the tragedy of their son’s act and in not taking responsibility for it, sought to treat it as a non-occurrence. But that’s a bunch of crap, most likely. But are they evil?
The Case of Charlotte was particularly interesting as Dr. Peck labels his patient worthy of the book's title. This patient, extremely intelligent in her own right, underwent over 400 sessions (at $50 each) with Dr. Peck, and ultimately, in his estimation, she could never be cured. He admits to his failure. However, his examples of her evil? That she didn’t divulge everything until sessions down the road. She played psychological mind games with him and he felt sexually repelled by her. She did have some strange idiosyncracies, such as the fact that she considered personal checks to be a “love offering.” She would hover around his office, sit in front of his studio and listen to music in her car. She even made a groping pass at him. Was she evil? I cannot judge nor do I believe that it is my place to do so. However, he seems to put himself in the God-like psychiatrist's position of qualifying evil based on whether he can comprehend his client’s seemingly senseless acts. His inability to totally comprehend a strong woman’s behavior, almost masculine in its pursuit of him, made her evil. He became the prey, instead of the other way around. He became the victim, reacting to her, instead of the other way around. Was she evil? Who knows? Dr. Peck thinks he does, a prime example of intellectual arrogance.
Essentially, Dr. Peck’s classification system, though never fully explained, stems from his traditional religious beliefs of classifying good and evil. If you believe in the principle of religious dogma stemming from his psychiatry,which he never admits to as a sort of "Christian Psychiatry" then you will agree with this book, that there are, indeed, “People of the Lie.” And we’re all in trouble.
Dr. Peck’s conversion to Christianity factors very prominently in the psychology of his book, so religious skeptics might be wholly turned off by its very premise. Although I don’t believe in writing reviews that quote ad nauseum, in this case, his own prefatory warning is worth recounting, as it underscores the very premise of why the book is faulty in the first place:
“I referred earlier to Jesus as my Lord. After many years of vague identification with Buddhist and Islamic mysticism, I ultimately made a firm Christian commitment – signified by my non-denominational baptism on the night of March 1980, at the age of forty-three long after I had begun working on this book. In a manuscript he sent me an author once apologized for his “Christian bias.” I make no such apology. I would hardly have committed myself to something I regarded as a bias. Nor do I desire to disguise my Christian outlook. In fact, I couldn’t. My commitment to Christianity is the most important thing in my life and is, I hope, pervasive and total.
But I am concerned that this outlook will, when most apparent, unnecessarily bias some readers. So I ask you to be careful in this respect also. Great evil has been committed throughout the centuries – and is still being committed – by nominal Christians, often in the name of Christ. The visible Christian Church is necessary, even saving, but obviously faulty, and I do apologize for its sins as well as my own.”
I believe Mr. Peck is trying to have it both ways. He attempts to write a book about psychotherapy, looking through the lens of his own religion, which he, himself, only committed to with ardor in his middle-life. Whether this transition towards religiosity was borne through a spiritual crisis, I don’t know, but to then write a book that subsumes your whole new and radical way of thinking, and sell it as a new science of psychiatry, is indeed, dangerous. His claim that he had written the book before he “found God” suggests that in his own search for himself he might have chanced upon the salvation he so longed for and sees it as a cure-all for the world. Dr. Peck’s examples of “evil” also subsume a Christian prescription for its expurgation by exorcism, a ritual fully known to us through the book and the film, “The Exorcist” where exhortations to the devil coax the “horned one” out of its human host. He explains that the "nihilist" (commonly defined as one who believes in nothing) is coaxed by the demon to be an un-believer (“In account after account of exorcisms the demonic voices will propound nihilism of one variety or another.”).
I say poppycock.
The definition of nihilism in Websters is “ a. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence; b. A doctrine that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.” If we attempt to look at the inherent inconsistency in religion, then it’s easy to understand that a proponent of nihilism might be considered heretical.
There is a school of thought in certain religious circles that believes that the religious commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” has an asterix next to it. Killing is allowed to prevent people from aborting babies. Killing "killers" is okay, even if it turns out that they were innocent. In some religious practices, a cleric, who takes a vow of abstinence from sexual intercourse is in a position to give advice about relationships between man and woman, he who has foresworn the opposite sex. In other religions, a pastor or preacher can exhort his own parishioners to chastity and spousal fidelity, yet themselves, repeatedly visit prostitutes and have extra-marital affairs. To say that one who doesn’t believe in these religious leaders (who teach us about God’s “word” every Sunday) is a follower of the devil is akin to saying that a woman who walked and thought independently as a human being in the 1600s was a witch (Five of the women from Salem, Massachusetts, who were burned at the stake under the guise of religion were exonerated this very week). My own definition of nihilism is someone who does not believe in social or religious institutions as the saviour of humanity, rather, looking at his or her existence as a thoroughly personal and individual experience.
To say that humans are demonic for not believing in Christian or other organized social precepts would label animals (who generally don’t kill for sport, who don’t intentionally pollute the earth, and who take care of their young until they are capable of doing it themselves) inherently evil. Yet, our fascination with the animal world and our wholesale redefinitions of family to include pets such as cats and dogs, suggests that we should look to the animal kingdom to find our own salvation.
The book’s best chapter deals exhaustively with an important chapter in American war history, namely the Mylai Massacre, in exploring the psychology of “group evil.” The name of the hamlet in Vietnam is now synonymous with one of the cruelest casualties of that now universally recognized senseless war.
In that incident, a company of troops, “C” Company was told to embark on a search and destroy mission to ferret out Vietcong supposedly hiding out in MyLai. Upon arrival, the U.S. troops could find no signs of enemy army troops. Instead, they found unarmed villagers. Between five and six hundred of those unarmed people was killed, indiscriminately. They were shot in their homes or in their backs fleeing from the massacre. Children were killed. The incident was never reported until a year after the event, in a letter by someone who had the temerity to write a letter seeking an explanation for the event safely after he returned to civilian life.
What is interesting about this book is the absolute power Dr. Peck uses to identify the examples of evil, totally excluding others. It is like titling a book called, “Favorite Foods of the World,” and including only the cuisine you like, in particular. For instance, Black Americans (meaning those who have lived in the United States for centuries, as opposed to the new black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean) might argue that the practice of slavery, which entombed a whole race of people for centuries, a people who are still struggling to unearth themselves from its evil tangled roots -- suffered the greatest evil of mankind. Taken from their homeland, never to return, they were chattel who were sexually abused to the degree that they are of such a mixed heritage that they no not have a homeland to which to return, nor are they totally accepted in the one in which they’ve lived as second class citizens for hundreds of years. Indeed, the masses of white Americans who aided and abetted the subjugation of another of “God’s creatures,” as they, too, were indeed made in his image (possibly closer to the “woolen-hair” image mentioned in the Bible, than to Leonardo DaVinci’s brother’s blonde flowing hair we gaze at with adoration). Yet Black American’s treatment by white Southerners, beneath that of a dog, would suggest that those people who enslaved them were, too, “People of the Lie.” Does that mean that the South, as we know it today, is a haven for descendant's of “People of the Lie?” For that matter, is evil inherited? Dr. Peck neglects to discuss with any depth that aspect of forced deprivation -- of a whole race of human beings. Were the Africans who sold human beings into slavery for gunpowder and mirrors also evil?
Under Dr. Peck’s theory, the international community’s handling of the Rwanda crisis during the Clinton administration might also be a new example of evil. PBS has an excellent overview of the Rwandan crisis at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/etc/slaughter.html. It chronicles the numerous explanations given by officials from the U.S. to the United Nations who attempted, in vain, to explain why they looked the other way at the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings in Rwanda. Was their neglect evil? I truly don’t know how Dr. Peck would classify it. The larger question still looms that a majority of Western institutions of power wield their power to their own benefit, and to the detriment of their own fellow man. Does that mean that Westerners are evil? And if you are of the majority Caucasian race that wields that power, are you evil for allowing it to happen? I can’t answer that any more than I can answer whether my inability to do anything to help society more than sitting in front of the computer and writing opinions is evil. In so doing, am I not withholding my physical assistance from aiding someone out there who is crying for help? Is imprisonment for the sake of punishment evil? Is slapping a defenseless child evil? Is paying tax dollars for defense, instead of education and the arts, evil?
This book should be read as pure fiction, an unauthorized sequel to the “Exorcist.” Dr. Peck writes beautifully and can conjure up the same feelings of apprehension and phobia as the original book written by William Peter Blatty. The book is only 269 pages, it does not have an index for cross-referencing (although it does have footnotes), yet it masks its personal slant in intellectual and psychological theory which is hard to rebut without the aid of other contrasting theories and opinions. For example, he talks about the Oedipal fixation of children (as sexually attracted to their parents while four year olds) as indisputable fact, without citing any contrasting theories to rebut the widely accepted psychological notion. In fact, he uses it to explain how Charlotte, the woman of the lie who was sexually interested in him, displaced her unresolved feelings for her father and used him as a substitute. And the fact that Dr. Peck couldn’t handle that is the basis for calling her evil. Another example is his conclusion that a male client, George, was a “coward,” who couldn’t confront his demons because he instead made a pact with the devil to keep from dying. His assignations of strength and weakness to his clients, and their attendant manifestations of evil suggest that Dr. Peck needs to check himself and take a refresher course in his own work, before espousing concepts of labeling good and evil based on whether he can handle them, personally.
This book is an example of another popular well-meaning writer who’s ascendancy to the leagues of the religious masses has allowed him to use his clout to further ignoble his newfound interest in religious dogma to a readership hungry for personal exploration and direction.
I agree with the first words of the book and throw a volley back to echo its beginning admonition: this book is dangerous. Dr. Peck has not convinced me that any human being can define evil. That’s the problem, isn’t it? One man’s evil is another word spelled backwards: “live.” Are they one and the same? And if the title, “People of the Lie,” was created from Dr. Peck’s stated belief that lying is a form of evil, then I question whether Dr. Peck is lying to himself -- that this work should be considered anything more than his personal and private diary of his new found belief in his own feeling of salvation and sanctity in the practice of a Christian religion.
Do I recommend it? Yes, with a caveat. Each reader should truly look within to debate the difference between good and evil in his or her own heart. Don't go to a psychiatrist to figure it out.
Recommended:
Yes
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ispeakup
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Location: Wherever I Am is Where I Live.
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Rewriting my novel a 3rd time after 7 years... hope springs eternal!
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