People of the Lie: A Revised Mini Review

Just about finished reading M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie". A few notes:

a) the word "evil" is used a lot, but apart from seeing this as having aspects of narcissism, there is very little detailed and comprehensive explanation of what how it is defined. John Maquarrie, in his "Christian Theology", for instance, looks at evil in terms of different models - existence that is disordered, imbalance, alientation, fallenness (as myth), etc, but Peck's theology is severely dualist, and his chapter on exorcism goes over the top, more like gnosticism than Christianity. His notions about the devil seem more at home in Dante! N.T. Wright's "Evil and the Justice of God" is far better on the theology.

b) it is not clear how his use of the word "evil" actually helps in the case studies he presents, it seems more like an "add on", and suffers from over use. If you start to label all kinds of behaviour as "evil", there is a flattening out process, and the different spectrum of behaviour seems to be painted just one colour, black.

c) he sails very close to the wind regarding professional ethics on occasion. I'm not too keen on his Freudian ideas, and the notion that the therapist must take the role of parent, the patient as child. I think Freud probably had control issues, and I wonder if Peck has. Has he not come across other types of therapy? His is presented as "the way".

d) his use of the word "autistic" is bizarre, as he just uses it for any lack of empathy or consideration in relationships. Wasn't he aware of the body of clinical literature on developmental disorders? Hadn't he even taken the trouble to read Kanner or Asperger?

e) His chapter on group evil is probably one of the best, but it suffers from too much generalisation from one event, which obviously made an impression on him, and has also been done better by a recent New Scientist (with only one mention of the word "evil" in the article.

It was not a book I came away with feeling I had really learned much. On the religious aspects of evil, I would recommend N,T. Wright (who also deals with cultural enlightenment issues we often take for granted), on the philosophy Mary Midgely's "Wickedness" is also very good.

The case studies are interesting, especially when he recounts the evasiveness and shiftiness of people who are coming to him (for their own or children, spouses sake) with their own agenda, but what those agendas are could I think have been explored in more depth than just bringing up the label "evil" time and again. Of course deceit, shiftiness, trampling over children's interests etc is worth pointing out as a bad thing, but more on what made those people tick would be more helpful. The fact that they were seen with a public face of good, honest, decent, hard working Americans, and were therefore "people of the lie" doesn't really surprise me; the fact that it seems to be so important to Scott Peck to hammer home suggests that his intended audience was perhaps those people who regard all human beings as innately good, and who are in denial about commonplace failings as part of the human condition.

Scott Peck, I am afraid to say, has one or two ideas which he does to death in the course of the book, as though this was the only thing, or the most important thing to say. His big theme is how people are damaged by the narcissism and egoistical flaws of themselves and others, but it is a pity he does not address the blooming flower of hippy "self-discovery" within his critique, the legacy of which is still with us today (the spiritual seekers who seek their own "enlightenment"), which is the backlash against the aridity of enlightenment atheism, yet still entrapped in that value system with its self-interest and navel gazing. Where is Wiccan Aid, for example?