Giving the Devil His Due: M. Scott Peck’s People of the Lie: The Hope of Healing

Human Evil and Glimpses of the Devil

D. A. Begelman

Where to begin? One surmises there is a subtext in M. Scott Peck’s appeal to readers since the publication of his popular The Road Less Traveled (Peck, 1978).  It is his view that “science” can vindicate “religion” with assistance from those who, like him, purport to have knowledge of both. For many in his readership, having been a practicing psychiatrist added a certain luster to his religious views, enhancing a portfolio usually lacking in other inspirational authors. Hence, the attractiveness to his fans of such notions as “the psychology of evil,” “a science of evil,” or “evil as mental illness,” ideas that hover tantalizingly between the spiritual and the prescription pad; between the City of God and the consulting room.

            Although Peck makes no brief for Creation Science or Intelligent Design, the mating of science and religion is his continuing mantra. This troublesome aspect of his world view deserves more scrutiny than he is prepared to concede. He assumes that religious beliefs about demon possession are “hypotheses,” subject to the same strategies of confirmation as scientific theories. The position is also articulated by some on the opposite side of a philosophical divide, like the atheist Richard Dawkins (Dawkins, 2006). Dawkins believes the existence of God is a “theory” about which science eventually has something telling to say. Despite this, the problem is surely more complicated than holding that science and religion differ only with respect to the mathematical likelihood of confirmation. For example, it is puzzling as to what data-base science might even hypothetically appeal in confirming the existence of the “soul,” whatever the fancied improbability of so doing.

Other treatises likewise confuse logically independent strands of discourse. In a disinterested, if not servile, treatment of traditional church teaching on exorcism and possession, Wilkinson (2007) declares that when medieval thought and tradition intersect with modernity “…Science and rational thought are put aside, replaced by faith as its own form of spiritual truth” (p. 15). This vintage palaver is suspect, inasmuch as its spin on “faith” turns out to be tacitly dependent on science and reason in the first place. Before determining authentic possessions, “scientifically” oriented physicians—according to Wilkinson, Catholic medical practitioners whose relationship to the Vatican is rather on the chummy side—are polled in order to determine whether certain “possessions” fall within the purview of natural law. The paradox here is obvious: physicians, presumably specialists on natural diseases, are, in virtue of their exclusionary pronouncements thereby cast as self-styled experts on the compass of otherworldly phenomena lying wholly outside the purview of their expertise. Exorcists and theologians, customarily bereft of scientific credentials, consequently rely on those secular conjectures to ascertain which possessions must be regarded as “authentic.” The symbiosis seems to be a form of contrived—and suspiciously vetted—reciprocity, designed, as one might well imagine, to validate the supernaturalistic mind-set. However, medical practitioners have no more business declaring which phenomena must be understood in supernaturalistic terms than entomologists have pontificating on Hindu scripture. (Objection: but physicians do not fashion supernaturalistic explanations; they only declare what phenomena can be covered by naturalistic formulations. Response: physicians have no authority to declare that any phenomenon is outside the purview of natural law; when they do, the implication is that the supernatural is authorized as agency. What other implication can the exclusionary emphasis possibly have?)

Peck’s tendency to confuse disparate levels of discourse had him engaging “demonic” forces in exorcisms as though the challenge could be likened to a laboratory experiment, or an exercise well within the compass of a flatfooted empiricism. This is not the only problem of Peck’s discourse, but it is seminal enough to cast a pall over almost everything else he discusses.

            Peck believes he is an adept at discerning “evil” with a difference, unlike one atheist who accompanied him at an exorcism. The disbeliever perceived no such elemental stuff. Peck flirts momentarily with the plausible idea that exorcisms might be heavily influenced by suggestion, and, like Freud before him, dismissed any role for suggestibility without supplying the reasons for so doing. Evidently, personal premonitions were accorded the highest epistemological value in this psychiatrist’s version of  “science.”

Dr. Peck was sure he personally confronted Satan during an exorcism. His account of the encounter with the fallen angel is as vivid as it is suspect:

"When the demonic finally spoke clearly in one case, an expression   appeared on the patient’s face that could be described only as Satanic. It was an incredibly contemptuous grin of utter hostile malevolence. I have spent may hours before a mirror trying to imitate it without the slightest success. I have seen that expression only one other time in my life—for a few fleeting seconds on the face of the other patient, late in the evaluation period. Yet when the demonic finally revealed itself in the exorcism of this other patient, it was with a still more ghastly expression. The patient suddenly resembled a writhing snake of great strength, viciously attempting to bite the team members. More frightening than the writhing body, however, was the face. The eyes were hooded with lazy reptilian torpor—except when the reptile darted out in attack, at which moment the eyes would open wide with blazing hatred. Despite these frequent darting moments, what upset me most was the extraordinary sense of a fifty-million-year-old heaviness I received from this serpentine being" (Peck, 1983, p.196).

If fifty million years ago marked the debut of the Evil One, he first appeared at the tertiary phase of the Cenozoic era. At that time, there were no humans to bedevil, unless Satan’s modest aim was to work his wiles on the brainless creatures then slithering about on the planet. Since that era was not even close to the creation of the universe, the Devil, by Dr. Peck’s calculations, was a late comer to the heaven from which he was later expelled because of his pride, envy, and incessant grumbling—to the din of trumpeting archangels. 

Peck’s description of his contact with the archfiend is doubtlessly inspired by centuries of iconography, and a rumor mill spruced up by the transports of fancy bequeathed us by the likes of Hieryonomos Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, Gustav Doré, William Blake, and numerous imaginative others. Even granting his theological premises, on what “scientific” basis does Peck distinguish the presence he experienced as Satan—as opposed to a lesser demon, a lesser demon imitating Satan, a patient simulating a lesser demon, a patient simulating Satan, or the group suggestibility of a “team” of exorcists who, with the notable exception of the atheist, seem enraptured by Peck’s commanding presence? Moreover, Peck’s identification of the evil one makes little sense absenting previously authenticated encounters with him. In Dr. Peck’s proposed “science of evil” what are the empirically established rules by which a malevolent entity is accorded a greater or lesser stature in demonic hierarchies? And what uniquely “scientific” rules permit Dr. Peck to identify real demons in the first place?

Peck informs us with his trademark air of solemnity that true possessions are actually rare. The assertion flies in the face of other supposed “facts” about their prevalence. These include the spate of possessions reported in early modern European history, not to mention the current epidemic of possessions believed to be occurring within communities of American Charismatics, Fundamentalists, and Pentecostals. Even Wilkinson, as late as 2007, documents the increasing popularity of the rite of exorcism in and around such traditionally circumspect European vicinities as Rome. Dr. Peck not merely throws caution to the winds on the basis of limited experience with the putatively demonic; he also implies that many believers have the wrong take on the phenomenon in question, and that, as we shall see, centuries of history can be summarily ignored.

Writers in this country, who like Peck promote the value of exorcism, celebrate the Christian version of the ritual. Like such early church fathers as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Cyprian, they evidently believe that the successful casting out of devils by Christian clergy, following the example of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, suggests a proof of Christianity. The emphasis all but ignores those exorcisms documented across the wider transcultural landscape. Christian rites are in the slim minority when one considers the international panorama, especially rituals that are an ingredient form of cultural life in countless other societies. In addition, the efficacy of Christian exorcism, like the one undertaken on Anneliese Michel (Goodman, 1981; 1988), can be lengthy, traumatic, and unsuccessful, whereas others are remarkably successful. Failures are routinely explained by positing either the intransigence or enduring malevolence of the demonic presence involved, or some moral failure in the exorcized individual. However, if “science” is to be our bent, any fleshed out conception of what Peck calls a “science of evil” should also include carefully researched ratios of successful to unsuccessful American exorcisms (with suitable operational definitions of success and failure), lest the unwary appropriate a lopsided view of the power of the rite.

Even the unreported failures of American exorcisms are a comparatively minor problem for Christian practitioners when one considers successful exorcisms outside the Christian fold. For example, Giel, Gezahegn, and van Luijk (1968) and Torrey (1986) report the case of an Ethiopian exorcist, Abba Wolde Tensae, who kept records of brief and successful African exorcisms totaling a million over a fourteen year period. How does the Christian exorcist reconcile such heathen success stories with the religious convictions he draws from his own practices? By assuming that the power of his faith is such that its devils transmute into other forms in non-Christian cultures? In line with this, Peck avers in People of the Lie: “Would that same spirit be identifiable—under a different name—in the exorcisms of Hindus or Hottentots? Is Satan merely a demon that attacks Judeo-Christians or is it a cross-cultural, universal enemy? It is an important question” (Peck, 1983, p. 201). Peck supplies no hint about how such a question can be answered—even hypothetically.

Peck’s hunch about the transmuted forms of the Devil parallels past attempts at extending the purview of the Christian gospel of salvation even to individuals who lived before Jesus. The doctrine of the “righteous pagan” was circulated by the second century missionary bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus, who sought to reconcile the idea that there is no salvation without acceptance of the gospel with the inconvenient fact that most of humanity had no knowledge of Christianity, much less an inspirational relationship with Jesus Christ. He accordingly fashioned a doctrine of dispensationalism, the idea that ethical pagans had a dim recognition of higher truths that God had arranged to disclose to them through dilatory instruction. This courtesy culminated with the possibility of salvation by accepting the gospel after death in whatever region of the after-life they happened to find themselves. Irenaeus, no doubt a zealous purveyor of higher truths of his own devising, was a major player in cobbling a version of Christianity that thumbed its nose at second century competitors like Gnosticism. To this day, orthodoxy harbors the delusion that the religion it touts either lacks a piebald provenance or had been around forever in its present form.

The argument that the success of non-Christian exorcisms is illusory, and either does not involve real demonic entities or is a staged manipulation of the Devil to befuddle heathen sensibility, overlooks another possibility altogether. Perhaps the sword can cut both ways, and American exorcists tout the wrong religion! For consider: if successful Christian exorcisms are didactic illustrations of the truth of Christianity, why isn’t the shoe on the other foot considering the even more impressive record of successful non-Christian exorcisms across the immense transcultural landscape?

Even within the Christian tradition itself, Dr. Peck makes no mention of the tortuous history of exorcist practice, especially in the early modern historical period, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During that time frame, the number of exorcisms, reportedly far from rare, was influenced by era, geography, and socioreligious climate. Demonic possession, often attributed to witchcraft, increased in England and the central European nations at points at which antagonisms between Catholics and Protestants heated up. Barnett (1965) has pointed out that Catholic Ireland was virtually witchcraft free during periods that witch-panics and exorcisms abounded elsewhere. The same became true after a time in Spain, where Catholic hegemony and a preoccupation with rooting out infidels like Jews, Judaizers, and Moriscos held sway (Atkinson, 1960; Peters, 1989; Elliot, 1990; Netanyahu, 1995).

During the early modern period Catholic/Protestant antagonisms often took the form of clashes over the reality of demon possession. In the seventeenth century, for example, French exorcisms played a strategic role for Catholic orthodoxy. They were spectacular events, notorious for their theatrical flair, and often staged for numerous spectators. At Loudon, seven thousand were reportedly in attendance at one exorcism (Oesterreich, 1996). The propagandistic value of the spectacles was not lost on the Huguenots, or French Protestants. They had doctrinally renounced exorcism and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as remnants of Catholic superstition. “Successful” exorcisms effectively moved thousands into Catholic confessionals, after driving a partisan point home more eloquently than lengthy treatises in defense of the true faith (Walker, 1981).

Nowadays the Catholic and Protestant approaches to exorcism are often reversals of the early modern picture. Catholicism, reeling from the history of fraudulence and pseudo-possessions in Europe (Robbins, 1959), has adopted a circumspect attitude toward the sacrament. The stance notwithstanding, there is the occasional priest who breaks ranks with his church to conduct maverick rituals out of the conviction he must personally rise to the occasion to save an endangered soul. Many Charismatics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Born-Agains within the Heartland Deliverance Ministry nowadays embrace the ritual, often in huge gatherings supervised by itinerant preachers (Cuneo, 2001).

As a rule, Catholic exorcisms are allowable only after endorsement by such higher placed prelates like bishops, and only when a case meets stringent criteria of possession. Stringency was in part a historical outgrowth of the troublesome profusion of pseudo-possessions documented by the Church. In this atmosphere, the seventeenth century ecclesiastical landscape was peppered with the fulminations of bishops and archbishops, like Clement August of Cologne, who inveighed against a generation of venal exorcists whose avarice drove them to see devils everywhere. In a pastoral letter of 1669, the bishop of Pomerania, having grown incensed with the carnival atmosphere surrounding exorcism, threatened excommunication of priests initiating wildcat exorcisms prior to obtaining permission from him. Felix Joseph Huber de Wavrans, bishop of Ypres, likewise castigated the charlatanism of exorcists a century after the Loudon possessions (Lea, 1957, p. 1055). Unmasked pseudo-possessions were exposed in cases like those of John Darrell, a Protestant exorcist, who was convicted of rehearsing people how to act possessed (Thomas, 1971). Countless pseudo-possessions were investigated and exposed by James I of England, translator of the Bible, and himself a prominent demonologist of his day.

Pseudo-possessions, whether or not a result of charlatanism, increased in seventeenth century Europe to a point at which the rhetorical value of the rite to Catholicism was nearly overshadowed by a widespread atmosphere of mendacity and hucksterism. Today, the reticence of diocesan officials to approve exorcisms mirrors the skepticism of their forbears in whose age it was common knowledge that fools rushed in where angels feared to tread. Martin Antoine Del Rio’s 1599 treatise Disquisitionum Magicarum summarized the pitfalls of exorcisms undertaken without proper authorization:

"Suspect of pact with the demon are those who without authority assume the function, whether layman or clerics, claiming peculiar powers by the grace of God, and those religious and others who assume peculiar super-natural virtue greater than others. It is a device of the demon to pretend to be ejected by them in their public exorcisms. All are warned to place no faith in the father of lies". (Lea, 1957, p. 1051).

                        It is rarely noted in the popular literature on the subject that criteria of possession within the Christian tradition have run an inconsistent course down through the centuries. Older criteria tended to get stripped away from a presumptively authentic core when they became viewed as explainable in naturalistic terms, and with the advance of scientific understanding. A related phenomenon that challenged the appearance of legitimacy was that many exorcisms could drag on interminably—sometimes for years. In some cases, demons would reappear after presumably effective expulsions, deflating erstwhile triumphant exorcists.

                        The church formulated more stringent criteria of possession in the context of the foregoing concerns. Among those that survived the whittling down process were: revulsion to sacred objects, paranormal language, paranormal strength, and paranormal linguistic ability. The last named capability often manifested in a proficiency in a language presumably unknown to the host. Prior to the evolution of these four stigmata, the nature of demonic signs tended to shift over time, in accord with the thinking of the day. A Rouen treatise of 1644 listed eleven signs of possession, whereas Pere Esprit de Bosroger and Michael Dalton in his 1627 Guide to Jurymen listed seven. Francesco-Maria Guazzo, in his Compendium Maleficarum, developed a group of forty-seven signs (Robbins, 1959).

There are, of course, other dramatic signs of possession that, while not classical, were often understood to meet an unwritten test of stringency. Some examples include: several basso voices emerging from a teenager who was not visibly articulating the words (Vogel, 1935), mysterious stenches that came from nowhere (Goodman, 1988), spinning on one’s back like a top (Summers, 1956), and levitating (Fielding-Ould, 1919; Thurston, 1952; Rogo, 1982; Crabtree, 1985; Noll, 1990).

In criticizing the Catholic Church’s traditional criteria of possession—although Peck is not above using its Rituale Romanum in his exorcisms—he begs a critical question. He states, “my own firm belief, based on experience, is that these [Roman Catholic] criteria are so unealistically strict that they would deny an exorcism to the majority of victims genuinely possessed by the demonic” (Peck, 2005, p. 104). Yet Peck’s “experience” of the demonic is limited to but two rituals, neither of them successful. The record is not only dismal; it is a paltry basis for glib generalizations about the restrictive nature of Catholic criteria. Furthermore, the latter were historically formulated to sharpen differences between real and pseudo-possessions. Peck cannot, without begging the question, maintain that phenomena excluded by traditional criteria are nonetheless authentic possessions, with nothing to back up his claim other than personal conviction.

In yesteryear, belief in the malevolent power of spirits and demons increased as the social impetus to discover them gained momentum. The number of reported possessions soared in periods of religious strife and factionalism. Yet in any such periods of crisis, inconsistent strands in the theology of demonic possession developed concurrently. The Christian tradition today and in yesteryear was not of one mind in its approach to the subject. In the distant past it harbored trends that were at cross purposes. Among these was a skeptical approach that still acknowledged the reality of spiritual intrusions. In 1749, Tartarotti, a theologian, insisted that barely one out of a thousand energumens (individuals possessed by evil spirits) was truly possessed. That the preponderance of these pseudo-possessions was relieved through exorcism only proved for him that fictional states could be remedied by “imaginary nostrums” (Lea, 1957, p. 1455). Tartarotti was not only aware that criteria of possession had run a tortuous, rather than smooth, ecclesiastical course; he saw little connection between successful exorcisms and the underlying condition of the allegedly possessed host.

Other theologians contributed to the wary, or skeptical tradition of demonology. Essentially, it held that any trafficking with or “fix” on demonic agency was fraught with pitfalls. This circumspect tradition coexisted with more ardent ones during eras in which a demonological mind-set went unquestioned. Hence, it was hardly secularization of oultook or radical disbelief that created opposition to a seamless tradition of demonological practice, including exorcism.

Clergymen with more than a nodding acquaintance with possession and exorcism have contributed to this wary or circumspect tradition. Their overriding premise, suggested in the remarks of Del Rio already cited, was that it was impossible to beat the Devil at his own game. The circumspect brand of theology was not only manifested by Catholic commentators; in one of its Protestant forms, avoiding snares laid by the Devil meant repudiation of all demonic invocation—even those like exorcism with a cherished place in church rites. One of its principal spokesmen was a physician, Johann Weyer, sometimes considered the father of modern psychiatry (Zilboorg, 1935; Zilboorg & Henry, 1941).

Ironically, psychiatric historians laud Weyer as a pathfinder out of a superstitious age. The designation is problematic, since the thrust of Weyer’s De Praesitgiis Daemonum (Mora, 1991), was not the renunciation of demonology, but rather the reordering of the ways Satan makes his influence manifest. Weyer’s vindication of witches, so praised by psychiatric historians as the beginning of a scientific/medical approach to the oppressed women of the sixteenth century, was never intended as undermining demonology. On the contrary, while humanitarian in effect, Weyer’s slant was laced with the customary misogyny of the day. Since women were inferior to men, declared Weyer, they were as “witches” more vulnerable to the deceits of the Devil. Their belief about their presumed prowess—that they were empowered by Satan to cast spells of possession—was merely a delusion installed by him. When it came to befuddling old women, Weyer argued, the Devil enjoyed an easy victory. The message was less “medical” than it was demonological with a difference. Psychiatric historians would do well to scrutinize De Praestigiis Demonum more searchingly before fashioning their version of a psychiatric poster-child of modernity; Weyer’s work fairly brims with demonological speculation.

For Weyer, there was no effective defense against the Devil other than reliance on the fortress of a simple faith. That faith had to be uncluttered by the contrivances of the Catholic Church—including its exorcisms. Weyer’s world view involved no less than a game of musical chairs over which real Satanic ally deserved persecution. The older villains in the Catholic panoply, the witches, were, pace Weyer, replaced by male magicians, and, not surprisingly, Catholic exorcists. Thomas Erastus, perceiving what he took to be the arbitrariness of Weyer’s recasting of operative demonic minions, subjected the physician’s arguments to withering criticism (Monter, 1969).

The intricacy of demonic guile was not a Weyerian innovation. The theme was also discernable in the writings of the early Church fathers. In the third century C. E., heresiologists like Origen cautioned wariness in dealing with occult powers, an admonition that became woven into the fabric of later demonology. Early Church fathers like Hippolytus in his Philosophoumena anathematized involvement in such black arts as sortilege and conjuration. Although the latter in acceptable form, exorcism, was widely advertised as evidence of the superiority of the orthodox faith, no evidence exists for exorcisms having converted disbelievers between the Apostolic Age and the fourth century C. E. (Fox, 1986, p.329). As one might expect from constituencies on the other side of the fence, exorcisms resulting in dramatic personality transformations in the possessed were often greeted with contempt, as they were by Protestants in later centuries. For them, the transformations might well have seemed a false simulacrum of change, or, alternatively, a riddle whose challenge merely taxed explanation in terms of more familiar paradigms. The emperor Marcus, dismissive of the Christian rite, classified exorcisms along with cockfighting (Fox, 1986, p. 329).

Dr. Peck, much like others before him, may harbor a distorted picture of the inherent problems of demonology, even within the Christian tradition. Tabling for now the challenge to faith posed by disbelief in a secularist society, the complications for the doctrinaire Christian exorcist only begin—even within orthodox traditions. There appear to be several implicit premises of understanding driving exorcist practice, many of which have not been given the searching attention they deserve. In examining them, we shall assume for the sake of argument that the Devil exists and Christianity is true.

There are indisputable signs of true possession. The assumption has two complications. First, what is “indisputable” during certain eras later accommodated to explanation along naturalistic, not paranormal lines. For example, forms of epilepsy and conversion disorder were once classified as possession phenomena before medical advances brought them under the purview of naturalistic explanation. Accordingly, what is an “indisputable” sign of spirit intrusion in one epoch may in time become something less than this, depending upon the thinking of an age. However, there is no way to predict such future explanatory accommodations, whatever the direction of classification. This means that any particular formulation about the paranormality of demonic signs is always at best tentative or speculative.

Second, a so-called indisputable sign of possession must have an unquestionable connection to raw demonhood in order to be a valid indication of it. Yet “raw demonhood” cannot amount to merely another batch of signs of dubious validity without incurring a charge of circularity. Even if an actual devil in the flesh produced a “sign” of his presence, its recurrence on future occasions would be impossible to interpret for a variety of reasons, not the least of which might be an energumen’s deliberate or unconscious simulation.

As was mentioned, Church history is in part the story of how pseudo-possession can be carefully distinguished from true possession. The problem with any premise about “true signs” is that it is on a collision course with the assumption, emphasized by Weyer, that Satan is the “father of lies.” The conundrum here is that the arch liar, depending upon momentary whim or strategy, may be the kind of creature given to producing misleading signs of his presence—or absence. The possibility found its way into Descartes’ speculations in the service of establishing true knowledge. A so-called “pseudo-possession” may therefore be a true Satanic presence contrived to mislead exorcists. Accordingly, time-honored indices of pseudo-possession cannot be disambiguated. The issue has been engaged before, and is not without historical importance.

In the episcopate of French Angers in 1599, Marther Brossier, a girl who exhibited signs of possession a year before, became the focus of ecclesiastical inquiry. Her case was a prominent one, sparking divisions of opinion between prelates imbued with a mounting spirit of rationalism, and a more credulous group. The former constituency was represented by Bishop Miron, Cardinal de Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, and prominent physicians (White, 1955; Robbins, 1959). The latter constituency was composed of Capuchin Monks, led by Father Seraphin (Walker & Dickerman, 1991).

Demons were supposedly detected through the water and linguistic tests, both of which were administered to Marthe by Bishop Miron. The first of these crucibles involved being able to discriminate in single blind trials between holy water and ordinary (i.e., unblessed) well water. The second test involved being able to discriminate between Latin passages extracted from St. Jerome’s Vulgate Bible and pagan poetry in the same language. Marthe failed the discriminations miserably, whereupon the Bishop declared her pseudo-possessed.

The Capuchins demurred over the Bishop’s verdict. Their conviction Marthe was truly possessed was not gainsaid by failures to pass time-honored tests of diabolical possession. Failures on the tests for them were precisely how one should expect demons to behave when wishing to remain undetected: as if there were no demons at all, as indicated by test failures! (Although why they should contrive signs of pseudo-possession in the first place if their diabolical aim was to elude discovery is another issue.) For the Capuchins, Marthe’s demons could pass the tests readily if they so desired. According to the monks, demonic depravity and slyness were even more imposing than the other team of exorcists had imagined. They were manifested by simulating failure on acid tests of possession in order to convince the team the case was innocuous, one of mere pseudo-possession. (We should note that the Capuchin argument in effect amounts to a partiality to one set of signs—those that had them convinced Marthe was possessed in the first place—over another set, construed by the rationalist team to be positive results on the water and linguistic tests.)

History has accorded little attention to the Capuchin thesis of runaway demonic guile. Theologically, it deserves more. It implies the necessity of reappraisals of classical tests of possession. Be that as it may, the monks were probably unaware at the time of how far their position in Marthe’s case could be pushed to advance a radical skepticism about their own traditions. After all, any test of possession was credited by theologians who also posited the preternatural cunning of the Devil. Yet they expected the latter to accommodate nicely to ecclesiastical strategies contrived for battle with him! Perhaps the Devil’s reputation for “preternatural cunning” means having no expectations of victory when locking horns with him.

Even here, Peck hedges his bets about the craftiness of the evil one. He concurs with his mentor Malachi Martin, author of Hostage to the Devil (1977), that exorcism, even given the malevolence of Satan, reveals his “extraordinary demonic stupidity,” as well as his “extraordinary demonic brilliance” (Peck, 1983, p. 208). Peck offers as evidence of the former speculation the bizarre notion that Satan does not understand science, a “theory” confounded by the possibility he is only faking ignorance of it. Be that as it may, the Devil’s fancied incapacity may be shared by American fundamentalists. Their tedious iteration of the shibboleth “Evolution is only a theory” belies their ignorance of what science is all about, not to mention its technical deployment of the term “theory.” Heliocentricity, the structure of the solar system, gravitation, and the atomic structure of matter are also “theories,” although ones associated with a high degree of certainty. Alternatively, in reviewing imputed endowments among the spirits peopling demonic hierarchies, if the archfiend must be identified exclusively in terms of brilliance (as many of Peck’s medieval forbears maintained), an obtuse devil hardly qualifies as Satan.

Not content with risible characterizations of the diabolic host, Peck continues his zany polemic by announcing that angels are inferior to humankind in some respects. Of course, such exercises in altering the received wisdom about transcendental character traits are free for the asking, and have been attempted before. Mark Twain’s demon in his Mysterious Stranger was drenched in cynicism, disillusionment, and irony—a sort of Holden Caulfield with horns. The French novelist, Anatole France, in a Gnostic mood, sketched a view of the world at the mercy of an evil, not beneficent, godhead. We can envision confirmation of such a horrific being as everywhere in sight, from inquisitions and epidemics to tsunamis, gulags, and genocides. Madame Helena Blavatsky, the Theosophist, saw the Devil (as did Jung in his doctrine of the unity of opposites) possessing a modicum of goodness as a necessary tincture in the homeopathy of godhead. (They were both anticipated by Shakespeare, who in Henry V had his royal hero conjecture “There is a soul of goodness in things evil would men observingly distill it out.”) As in the Gnostic scriptures, Blavatsky’s theosophical demon was the light-bearer, or agent of enlightenment, a deity whose worldly influence was in stark contrast to a godhead somewhat removed from human affairs—as he was in the deistic beliefs of the Founding Fathers. Snakes did not always receive a bad press in the early, albeit discarded, scriptures of dualistic theology.

Skepticism about the actual existence of the Devil is thematic in liberal Protestant theology, whereas the mythological character of good and evil gods were principal themes in the works of Nietzsche and Freud. Jeffery Burton Russell, a religiously inspired historian of the theology of Satan, feels that there is more at stake in dismissing the existence of the Devil. To do so, Russell avers, means dismissing:

“…the resurrection, the incarnation, and indeed the whole idea of revelation—in which case the dispassionate observer may be forgiven for supposing that the entire New Testament is so riddled with superstitious misconceptions as to be altogether dismissed. On the whole it is more credible to suppose that the writers of the Gospels and the Epistles actually meant what they said about the existence and power of the Devil” (Russell, 1986, pp.217-218).

Do Russell’s comments constitute an argument in favor of the Devil’s existence or merely one in favor of what the writers of the Gospels believed about it? The latter shades into the former if one assumes that what Gospel authorities believed cannot possibly be doubted.

Let us take the aforementioned Capuchin case about demonic possession a step further. Negative signs of possession, as on the water and linguistic tests, ultimately require validation against raw demonhood. Otherwise, there is no way to assess whether subterfuges even in relation to acid tests of diabolical presence become another aspect of the demon’s attack. As was already mentioned, however, it is hard to formulate what raw demonhood amounts to other than yet another batch of demonic “signs,” as revealed by tests. Obviously, the Capuchins felt one slew of symptoms was critical in establishing Marthe’s possession, whereas Bishop Miron’s team was partial to another group of signs. In short, it is impossible to ascertain the significance of test failures without creating a warped circle of reasoning. Nor can we take time-honored ecclesiastical assumptions as a guide. If hosts like Marthe were truly possessed, failures on the water and linguistic tests would simply mean these were poor crucibles for detection. Demons, crafty infernals that they are, might always manufacture test reactions devised cunningly to throw exorcists off the track. As we well might sense, the inadequacy of a “classical test” can be generalized to all procedures by which exorcists rule out diabolical agency. Theologically, this renders negative tests of possession problematic. Accordingly, the Capuchin arguments undermine a favored strategy of exorcists, since they imply that test failures cannot be disambiguated. If the Capuchins were correct, there is no way to differentiate pseudo-possession from demonic simulation of same, unless the validity of classical signs was guaranteed. But we cannot grant this without conceding assumptions such tests were devised to establish in the first place.

------The failure of naturalistic explanation for a phenomenon is sufficient to prove it is in the paranormal or supernaturalistic sphere. The term “failure” here is ambiguous. It may mean a failure of naturalistic explanation relative to an understanding of physical law in a given era, or it may pertain to its failure sub specie aeternitatis. However, the latter sense of “failure” cannot be deduced from any contemporary strain on natural law to embrace a phenomenon. This means that the possibility of naturalistic explanation is not forever precluded by its current difficulty in accommodating an exceptional event. Accordingly, present failures of naturalistic explanation augur nothing about which of the two magisteria embraces a particular phenomenon.

------There is an incontrovertible connection between a paranormal phenomenon and the truth of a particular religion. Even if paranormal explanation was appropriate in a given case of possession, the truth of a particular creed like Christianity would need to be reconciled with the success of rituals practiced by alternative creeds. For example, if a hypothetical levitation of a host were documented in an African, Indonesian, or Oceanic ritual, this would not for a Christian document the truth of a non-Christian polytheism. Therefore, an analogous levitation during a Christian ritual cannot similarly document the truth of the Christian religion for a believer outside the fold. Should the Christian apologist argue that his own deity simply transmutes its form in connection with the rituals of tribal cultures, the non-Christian can fashion an analogous argument in favor of the transmuted influence of pagan deities in Christian exorcisms.

Ordinarily, investigative efforts to document psychokinesis, or the psychic ability to move objects around is a talent with a pathetic showing under controlled conditions (Girden, 1962; Gardner, 1988). Usually, the reported instances of the phenomenon are shorn of efforts to attribute this presumably paranormal ability to demonic forces. Accordingly, this and countless other explanations of certain unusual effects compete with parochial religious explanations. In the famous case of Bridey Murphy, a woman whom parapsychologists believed could not have possibly known about the events she recalled of a past life, “past memories” served to bolster a belief in reincarnation, a very un-Christian notion indeed, according to St. Augustine. In cases of unusual and seemingly paranormal events, it is always possible to generate endless possibilities of explanation that compete with particular religious belief systems.

------The success of exorcism confirms the truth of a particular religious creed. The success of an exorcism, as the theologian Tartarotti has observed, bears little logical connection to the reality of demonic possession, much less to the truth of any religious creed. Successful exorcisms may only reflect a belief on the part of a host that an entity has been expelled. However, contrary to the majority view in secular medicine, the sometime efficacy of exorcism may be a rational basis for recommending its use as a therapeutic strategy in select cases where the cultural loading is strong enough to maximize success.

------Satan’s cleverest trick is to convince us he doesn’t exist. The view is an older one, having been articulated by, among others, Baudelaire, the French poet and author of Les Fleurs du Mal (Russell, 1986, p. 206). There is something to be said for the contrary thesis. If the Devil’s actual existence is independent of framing moral judgments, then Baudelaire might have been dead wrong. We do not feel compelled to resolve the ontological issue about Satan in advance of deciding moral issues (although the metaphysical grounding of Evil might be perceived by some as dependent on such a resolution). The cleverest trick the Devil can pull off is to convince us he does exist—if he does. Belief in him cannot be a bulwark against fending off evil if such a belief sidetracks the arduous task of developing insight into actions enshrouded in moral ambiguity and lack of transparency. Belief in the Devil may be an artifice of the morally lackadasical: it short-circuits the complexity of moral argument in favor of a diversion of finding the Devil’s mark or sign. The latter trivializes the problem of evil by transforming the tragic nature of the moral challenge into a charade, a game of hide and seek by which evil is identified through manuals of signs, rather than through a complex faculty of discernment. The true moral agent cannot depend upon codicils in diagnosing evil.

Whether or not an act is evil or morally wrong—and therefore, in the mind-set of believers, the handiwork of the Devil—already presupposes a judgment encumbered by moral indeterminacy. It cannot be a determination established by extracting a signifier of the Evil One from a batch of casuistically ordained signs. If the Devil can convince us he exists, we have already capitulated to the notion of abandoning moral indeterminacy in favor of a gambol in which his mark, an entry in some time-honored codification, only has to be revealed or uncovered—like the patch of anesthesia on a witch’s body, the rejection by water, the revulsion to sacred objects, and other artifacts of morally indolent belief systems. But the moral enterprise cannot be likened to an affair of uncovering the hidden sign; is more akin to judging the nature of things from a distinctively moral perspective that repudiates facile formulae. Because of this, the moral agent is always out at sea—he cannot rely on anything as simplistic as a manual of signs assuring him of a roadmap to goodness. Lord, lord, why hast thou forsaken me? exclaimed Jesus on the Cross. In the crowning moment of moral agony, there is nothing to hold on to in defining moral choice.

To many believers, it may be evident that Satan is the author of all worldly evil. But to the truly engaged moral agent the problem is precisely the challenge of determining which of one’s acts can be rightly perceived as morally wrong, as leading to evil consequences in the world. This is not usually a matter of complete moral transparency, and the alibi “Satan made me do it” most of the time represents conjecture after the fact, retrospective wisdom. The moral enterprise is essentially bound up with deciding whether a particular decision is right or wrong, not whether an indisputably wrong act is resistible as a temptation of the Devil. To fault the Devil for one’s actions is in addition a way of passing the buck in relation to deeds that are our own responsibility, not someone else’s—least of all an infernal being we improvise in order to ensure someone else is left holding the bag for our own moral failings. 

   

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Dr. Peck’s allusions to psychiatric “science” are sprinkled liberally throughout his two books. Yet he harbors an old-fashioned, if not addled, conception of the discipline. He is particularly unsympathetic to the “prevailing secularism” of modern psychiatry, holding that its evaluations would have hastened Joan of Arc’s being burned at the stake. But St. Joan was burned as a heretic because of the theology of clerics imbued with the same metaphysics to which Peck, in a more or less modernized (some Born-Agains would say bastardized) form, subscribes.

A review of Dr. Peck’s psychiatric assumptions betokens outdated views on the discipline. In both People of the Lie and Glimpses of the Devil, his segues from clinical experiences with troubled patients to allegedly “evil” people to exorcisms of demons are gratuitous ones. By admission, he is a newcomer to the exorcist arena, having had only two ritual encounters with those dark forces he is confident are more ominous than the nastiness of patients whose distinguishing trait is their “narcissism.” Sometimes, however, he is unsure of what scenario is unfolding, as in the case of his patient “Charlene.” Her driving perversity not to be helped—not to mention her wish to bed her psychiatrist—has Peck perplexed over whether the patient was an ordinary evil doer without demonic underpinnings, or whether infernal agency was playing a key role in her pathology. He admits to being confused about the case within a month of initiating treatment with the patient, and owns up to still being befuddled after seeing her two to four times a week for three years! (The frequency of visits for a solo practitioner is a dead giveaway of the theoretical psychiatric perspective Dr. Peck finds compelling, albeit one, as we shall see, that is fast becoming a museum relic in recent years.)

Peck felt that Charlene defied ordinary psychodynamic understanding, prompting one to question whether his grasp of the compass of “ordinary psychodynamic understanding” is as keen as he intimates. With the possible exception of psychoanalysts and other like-minded clinicians who feel that the explanatory capabilities of a purely motivational psychology are inconceivably wide, and who ply their trade irrespective of the current state of psychological knowledge, there is no “ordinary psychodynamic understanding” of many of the diagnostic entities listed in the DSM-V, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, Fifth Revision. Rather, practitioners like Peck are addicted to freewheeling speculation about “psychodynamics” without a jot of experimental evidence for their flights of fancy. As in Charlene’s case, failing such understanding is hardly surprising when it is the lot of many other textbook patterns. Just short of the four hundred and twenty first session with the patient, Peck is left still pondering what she is all about. His hunch is “autistic,” a diagnostic stretch for a patient with an advanced verbal repertoire, a genius for head-games, a relatively independent life-style, and “a capacity for humor and obvious high intelligence,” according to her bemused psychiatrist.

Peck also has a faulty grasp of the compass of DSM-V, a manual not only designed to include all diagnostic categories of psychiatric disability, but to cover, as it were, all possible bets. Those familiar with its diagnostic categories appreciate how difficult it is to imagine a pattern of deviant behavior that is not encompassed by them. Even when a pattern seems to evade classification, or appears to defy inclusion by sharing characteristics of distinguishable diagnoses, the designation “NOS” (i.e., “Not Otherwise Specified”) can be assigned to bring it within a DSM-V framework. The inclusiveness is as much a characteristic of Axis II personality disorder diagnoses as it is of Axis I clinical diagnoses. The former cover personality styles or trends, like the borderline, narcissistic, or antisocial patterns, whereas the latter cover symptom pictures like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or substance abuse patterns.

In Glimpses of the Devil, Peck diagnosed “possession” in one case because he felt a schizophrenic episode was too brief for meeting criteria for this diagnosis. The patient’s “instantaneous entrance into and departure from a state of classical schizophrenia” could only mean that “…faking a somewhat unusual, even esoteric, form of behavior by a person who had no history of ever being previously exposed to such behavior is as paranormal as fluently speaking a foreign language one has never learned” (2005, p. 105). On the contrary, the brevity of a psychotic phase in a woman whose first break is somewhat later in her chronology than would be expected for an onset of schizophrenia is a good reason for suspecting it was not schizophrenia that Peck observed, but some other psychiatric condition. The DSM-IV provides for such episodes under the heading “298.8 Brief Psychotic Disorder,” whether or not an etiology is known. Moreover, forms of depression, bipolar disorder, or toxic conditions can give rise to temporary psychotic phases often confused with schizophrenia. Peck concludes that the patient’s episode defies psychiatric classification when this is hardly the case: “I have never heard of such a schizophrenic episode that was anywhere near as brief as Jersey’s” (2005, p. 105). If paranormality is one’s bias, then Peck should not suspect possession on the basis of a badly simulated schizophrenia, but on the basis of an aptly emulated brief psychotic disorder. However, if the latter condition is already included in standard diagnostic nomenclature, why suspect paranormality in the first place? A hypothetical case of a pattern that evades all extant psychiatric classification—and what kind of pattern could that conceivably be?—only calls for a new psychiatric classification, not a cue for switching metaphysical gears.

Furthermore, if the demon shows his hand by a botched up simulation of schizophrenia, perhaps he is as “stupid” as Peck conjectures. On the other hand, if he is capable of a flawless emulation of schizophrenia, why not turn in such a performance—if only to escape detection that would result in expulsion during exorcism? That would show, contrary to Peck’s intuitions, that he is really smart. However, what is the difference between a smart Devil who is so clever he can ape a perfect schizophrenia, and a textbook case of schizophrenia without telltale paranormal stigmata? In a sense, Peck is driven to a theory of the Devil’s stupidity, since to grant him high intelligence would be to concede the possibility of paranormal manifestations that are materially no different from phenomena comfortably classified by secular medicine. While we are at it, why not classify any human trait or idiosyncrasy as the work of a smart Devil, as opposed to a happenstance denuded of paranormality? (The logic demands a natural segue on yet another controversial front: why restrict Creation Science or Intelligent Design to biology classes solely? Why not teach it in physics and chemistry classes also? Is there not an “irreducible complexity” to atomic structures and their multifarious combinatory forms, if such complexity is held to characterize their resultant macrostructures, like the eye? The suggestion means either expanding the conceptual playing field of religious imperialism or else a reductio ad absurdum of vainglorious efforts to do so.)

Time and again in People of the Lie and Glimpses of the Devil, Peck maintains he must go otherworldly because of a patient’s unique pattern. For example, in the case of his patient “Jersey,” Peck avers that it is clear he would be able to exclude the possibility she was demonically possessed if she “was suffering from a standard, well-recognized psychiatric illness” (2005, p. 100). Of course, Peck here stacks the deck in favor of demonic influence since there are patterns embraced by the DSM-IV that are neither “standard” nor “well-recognized.” This is because they are rare, disputed, or may straddle separate diagnostic categories. Despite this, Jersey’s pattern is quite standard, psychiatrically classified, although disputed by some as a true condition. Peck’s clinical unfamiliarity with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Dissociative Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DID NOS) has him convinced that Jersey is demonically possessed because her behavior defies any psychiatric classification when the opposite is the case.

While DID (a.k.a. Multiple Personality Disorder) has been the subject of some controversy in recent years, the dispute revolves around whether the condition is an epiphenomenon of the treatment process or suggestibility, not over whether the patterns it purports to cover have ever been observed. “Jersey” has all the earmarks of a DID case, whether or not one of her alters is “Satan.” Clinicians who treat these patients are familiar with the unusual cast of characters alters can embody, iatrogenically created (i.e., by the treatment process itself) or otherwise. One red flag among several others is that Jersey remembers being incested by her father, a marker for patients with DID, irrespective of the truth of the allegation. Peck also perceives Jersey as highly “suggestible,” his access to the demonic presence facilitated through hypnosis, another marker. Finally, he remarks that the patient is still bothered by “voices” six years after her exorcism, a finding Peck refused to regard as an indication he had been barking up the wrong tree from the outset.

On another note, Peck was certain that Jersey’s feeling of sympathy for her demons was an initial sign her pattern did not square with standard psychopathology. Untrue. It did not, perhaps, fit most cases of schizophrenia, in which an acute symptom is “voices,” usually one in number, persecutory in nature, and condemning the patient or commanding her to do violence to herself or, more rarely (as in the case of the Virginia Tech tragedy of 2007 or the Sandy Hook tragedy of 2012), others. In DID, on the other hand, “voices,” often more than one in number, and frequently differentiated as to age or sex, can have a consoling, admonishing, or protective aspect, as well as a conflicting, or self-condemnatory one. The alter who emerges as the ISH or “inner self-helper,” as this alter is on occasion identified, is routinely a moderate, rational, or nurturing personality in relation to the host. In DID, the more the number of alters, the more the likelihood of their representing different ages or sexes, according to reports from the field. A routine cast would be a depressed host and/or alter, a seductive alter, a vulnerable child alter, and an aggressive alter which may double as a child protector. Again, the existence of such role enactments are independent of issues revolving around the problem of iatrogenesis (Fine, 1989; Kluft, 1989; Torem, 1989; Ross, Norton & Fraser, 1989).

Peck also errs in characterizing DID. He has defined it as a condition in which the host personality is not aware of the existence of its “alters,” a generalization that is often mistaken. The attribute of “co-consciousness” is a shifting affair among patients diagnosed with DID, and one diagnostic sign of the disorder is auditory hallucinations, or the awareness of “voices” within the head that represent alters who issue instructions to the host, each other, or are otherwise in various stages of conflict with each other. It is hard to see how a host can experience such voices yet be “unaware” of the existence of alters. More often than not, there is awareness of some alters, but not others who emerge—iatrogenically or otherwise—later in the treatment process.

In general, Peck’s approach was to suspect possession when a pattern of behavior defies DSM-IV categorization, a somewhat disingenuous standard, since in a footnote in Glimpses of the Devil he avers, “while some clinicians deeply suspect my cases of purported possession are actually cases of MPD, I have come to suspect the possibility that their purported cases of MPD might actually be cases of possession” (Peck, 2005, p. 102). So patterns of behavior Peck designates as “possession” because they defy psychiatric classification can be covered by DSM-V criteria for certain conditions after all!

Some authors partial to supernaturalistic explanations of clinical phenomena (Friesen, 1991) have maintained that they are able to discriminate DID-type alters from true demonic presences, thus challenging the assumption that all such phenomena can be subsumed under psychiatric categories purely. Their arguments hinge on the observation that putative demonic presences share different characteristics from psychiatric alters. The argument begs the question, since it depends upon the questionable assumption that there cannot be essential or qualitative differences among alters that are nonetheless psychiatric in nature.

In People of the Lie, authored as late as 1983, the author asserted “Many (but certainly not all) of the parents of schizophrenic children seem to be ambulatory schizophrenics or evil or both. Much has been written about the ‘schizophrenogenic ‘ parent, and usually an ambulatory schizophrenic or evil person is what is described” (pp. 128-129). Much of what has been written about the “schizophrenogenic parent” is wrongheaded (Sperling, 1954; Hill, 1955), and represents the backwash of older psychoanalytic theorizing predicated on blaming family dynamics for everything. Its propagandists failed to consider the possibility that parental pathology might often be the effect, not the cause, of having a schizophrenic child, and that there is no evidence whatsoever that parental attitudes play a causal role in the genesis of the disorder.

On an additional note, Peck is guilty of a lapsus linguae. It is not the schizophrenic parent, but the schizophrenogenic mother who has been viewed as the pathogenic agent, a theory that would be consigned unremarkably to the annals of science fiction were it not for the fact that faulting the woman for worldly evil is a theme as ancient as the Book of Genesis. Even at that, Peck mischaracterizes the etiological picture, which is not that schizophrenia is usually mirrored in parents, but only that a higher incidence of the pathology occurs in extended family histories. A genetic transmission is also suggested (McGue, et. al., 1981; 1984)—albeit inconsistently—by higher concordance rates in identical twins in comparison to fraternal twins and control groups of unrelated siblings.

Peck’s outdated psychiatry is sprinkled not too sparingly throughout both his books. His theories about obsessive-compulsive disorder are a case in point. In relation to his patient “George” in People of the Lie, Peck states that OCD is “…a curable neurosis, but the cure—psychoanalytic psychotherapy—is going to be quite difficult and will take a long time” (1983, p. 20). Actually, psychoanalytic therapy, long term or otherwise, is an ineffectual nostrum, whereas research has indicated the disorder is alleviated by a combination of antidepressant medication—Luvox (generically, Fluoxamine Maleate) is the FDA-approved agent in its treatment (Goodman, et. al., 1989)—together with a cognitive-behavioral therapeutic approach (CBT) incorporating exposure, response-prevention, or flooding strategies (March & Mulle, 1998).

When it comes to the etiology of OCD, Peck is likewise in the antediluvian mode. In People of the Lie he states:

“…obsessive compulsive neuroses have their origins in early childhood, beginning almost always in a less than ideal toilet-training situation. George was not able to remember how he had been toilet trained. But from the fact that his father beat a kitten to death for making a mess one can guess it was made clear to George that he had better learn to control his bowels or else. It is no accident that George grew up to become a particularly neat and methodical adult, as obsessive-compulsives so often are” (1983, p. 36). 

There is no research evidence indicating that OCD has anything to do with early bowel training. Even most psychoanalysts nowadays have repudiated this mythology about the delayed effects of early psychosexual stages of fixation, as propounded in the orthodox Freudian canon. Of course, the etiology of OCD in the canon meandered across the theoretical landscape, as if were angling to find a comfortable niche within the depredations of sexuality. Around 1896 it was recruited as a companion piece to hysteria during Freud’s “Seduction Theory” phase. At that time, it figured as the alleged aftermath of sexually abusing pre-adolescent girls, transforming them later into “hysterics.” The theory is falsified by the fact that OCD has an equal distribution among males and females, although there are probably more male than female molesters (Rasmusssen & Eisen, 1990; 1992).

After Freud repudiated the seduction hypothesis, based as it was on the reality of external trauma, he beat a retreat back into the head to emphasize purely intrapsychic mechanisms. As a result, OCD was construed as the effect of anal fixation. Since memory is usually lacking for the first three years of life during which most toilet training is accomplished, Freud could not have established a connection between the training and later character traits on the basis of reliable patient information. And it is questionable how much of his practice included collecting patient information from parents and other family members. The conclusion is that Freud had a bad case of serving up “data” that were theory-driven, and seldom based upon a sound methodology in establishing clinical knowledge. Nowadays, investigators are pursuing promising, albeit speculative leads about the physiological basis for OCD, including the possibility of an autoimmune deficiency or damage to the basal ganglia of brain centers (Belkin, 2005).

In People of the Lie, Peck promotes unsubstantiated notions about the origins of specific fears, or phobias:

"Phobias are the result of displacement…They occur when a normal fear or revulsion toward something is displaced onto something else. People employ this defensive displacement because they do not want to acknowledge the original fear or revulsion…[Billie] did this by directing the fear and revulsion toward spiders. Spiders were the evil ones—not her mother" (1983, p. 146)

Once again, the analysis is borrowed from the anachronistic Freudian template, specifically the “Little Hans” case. The theory is largely rejected nowadays both by theorists and clinical practitioners. It was critiqued effectively by Wolpe and Rachman (1960) over a half century ago, while working clinicians have long known that they were—to use an apt metaphor—beating a dead horse in fashioning effective treatment regimens based upon a suppositious process of “displacement.” Considering the fact that snakes and spiders are universally high on the list of feared creatures, it seems odd that “displacement” as formulated in the canon takes on such a stereotyped form in phobic patterns. What Freud once insisted were the unconscious underpinnings of phobias has a surprisingly narrow band of displacement. Neonate monkeys, hardly a species prone to unconscious displacement—or, as McGinn (1999) has indicated, unconscious anything—have an innate fear of snakes, whereas snakes and spiders top the list of animal phobias in the human species. Peck’s patient “Billie” was probably less prone to displacement than she was to a mammalian evolutionary heritage.

Peck’s genuflections at the Freudian shrine are seldom nuanced. In People of the Lie he declares that his patient Charlene’s amorous designs on him could be traced to her failing to overcome the “Oedipal dilemma,” since “All healthy children experience sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex,” a Victorian tall-tale instilled in an ever diminishing number of students in psychoanalytic training programs, not to mention receiving little serious regard in the austere corridors of experimental psychology or within the ranks of humanities scholars who have awakened from their dogmatic slumbers (Cioffi, 1974; Wallace, 1983; Daly and Wilson, 1990; Degler, 1991; Erickson, 1993; Crews 1995; 1998; McGinn, 1999). The holdovers are the select few who cannot bring themselves to admit that the snows of yesteryear have long since melted away.

Peck’s preference for the routine administrative procedures of psychiatric practice seem oddly out of place when it comes to the “possessed:

"And perhaps one thing we practitioners of traditional medicine and surgery can contribute to exorcism is an insistence on “informed consent.” So it is that before surgery we will formally and legally read patients their rights—or rather a list of rights they are consenting to forfeit. During the procedure of exorcism patients forfeit a great deal of their freedom. I firmly believe this forfeiture should be under legal conditions and conducted in a legal manner. Before the procedure patients should sign not simple but elaborate authorization forms. They should know exactly what they are letting themselves in for" (1983, p. 187).

Evidently, Peck believes demonic influence over the possessed evaporates while signing consent forms, since his assumption is that it is the patient who signs the form, not the entity whose reputation for assuming executive control is advertised widely throughout Peck’s two books. True, a demon that usurps executive control when consent forms are signed may be perversely sealing its own fate should the exorcism be successful. But the ploy still negates the possibility of the patient being the true signatory, thereby undermining any legal/administrative rationale for adopting the procedure.

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There is something in Peck’s religious stance that smacks of a certain one-sidedness verging on arrogance. His commentary on the unsuccessful exorcism of his patient Beccah Armitage is noteworthy for its failure to discuss the significance of an essential feature of her case: her Jewish heritage. This fact appears to be less significant to Dr. Peck than his musings on her depression, the “evilness” of her mother and husband, her family enmities, features of her “shadowy childhood” (2005, p. 134), and of course, her “possession.” But it is also possible that he has overlooked an auspicious strand in his approach to the patient, whatever her true diagnosis. At one point, Peck admits there was much he never learned about Beccah, neé Rebecca Weintraub.

Peck’s virtual recruitment of Beccah for Christianity is a not so invisible undercurrent in light of the Christian “deliverance” he administered to rescue her endangered soul. The effort is reminiscent of older scandalous scenarios, like the kidnapping of a six-year old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, by Pope Pius IX, on the pretext that Edgardo became the spiritual property of the true faith because he was secretly baptized by a Catholic servant in his parents’ household. This pontiff attributed the international furor drummed up by the case to troublemaking “freethinkers” in the thrall of Rousseau and Malthus. The latter secular pundit, in the opinion of Pius, was an agent of dark forces, having foisted birth control on an innocent laity (Will, 2000).

Peck lays the foundation for his not so subtle attempt at conversion by disclosing Beccah’s former flirtation with the Episcopal faith, an interest fomented by her husband, and only temporarily thwarted by the turmoil generated over the proposed revision of its Book of Common Prayer. Later demands by the husband to convert to the Greek Orthodox faith resulted in the patient’s capitulation to the denominational arm-twisting, although Beccah found the second retread “bizarre” (2005, p. 142). Despite what the reader may sense as Peck’s undercover hard sell for Christianity, other indications of the patient’s true identification as Jewish are unmistakable:

"Beccah had only one pleasant memory of her childhood. It was of her father on the Sabbath, the only day he was home. The family did not go to temple, but Aaron [her father] prayed and studied the Talmud the entire day in his bedroom. In addition to his yarmulke, he wore a prayer shawl, or tallis. White with blue stripes, it was made of the softest silk. He allowed Beccah (not Rachel or his wife) into the bedroom when he prayed, and she remembered the prayer shawl with unending delight. Her father did not talk to her during his prayer or the almost unceasing rocking back and forth while studying, but with what seemed like infinite fondness, he permitted Beccah to finger the fringes of his shawl all day long. Each Sabbath he also rested once from study for ten minutes, and during that time he always taught Beccah one new word of Hebrew" (2005, p. 136).

In what can only be described as trivial in the light of her husband’s manipulation of the patient’s faith, Peck announces, “I took Beccah’s side against her husband in the matter of her clothing, and with me as her therapeutic ally she started fighting back” (2005, p. 142). Not even an aside from Peck about the possibility of the patient’s tacit identification as a Jew as a component in her spiritual crisis.

Other blind spots over the problem of religious identification cry out for commentary. For example, Peck registers surprise that “Beccah referred to [Satan] as Lucifer. ‘Lucifer’ is the term for the devil in the Old Testament, but ‘Satan’ is the term in the New Testament” (2005, p. 162). The substitution is hardly surprising at all if, unlike Peck, a psychiatrist were sensitive to signs of confusion or conflict over religious identification, like the patient’s rejection of Christian symbology with verbal obscenities perhaps misattributed to Satanic malevolence. In line with this, Peck reports that Beccah had a “…violent response to being afflicted by Christian symbols” (2005, p. 174). In all of this, Peck’s slant is that there is something in Beccah that is not really her and which repudiates Christianity, when it is more likely that there is a natural part of her that rejects Christianity. A divided self need not embody two beings, but one in conflict over warring inclinations.

On a final note, Peck avers in Glimpses of the Devil that “Psychiatrists are rigorously trained to doubt themselves” (2005, p.152). The virtue is seldom in sight in M. Scott Peck’s writings. Its neglect may be the real demon he should have exorcised before he passed from us.