Scott Peck vs. Satan
A well-known psychiatrist describes and analyzes two exorcisms.
Glimpses of the Devil, reviewed by David Neff | posted 1/24/2005 12:00AM
When psychiatrist and bestselling author Scott Peck published People of the Lie in 1983, I took special notice. His brief account of exorcisms in one chapter was consistent with my observations of two attempts to exorcise demons that plagued a woman I had been counseling. So I was also primed to read Peck's newest book, Glimpses of the Devil, in which he speaks in-depth for the first time about two cases of possession and exorcism. Indeed, he claims this is the first account of possession and exorcism written by a medical scientist.
The Serpent
Peck's book is a good read. Though he tells his tales in the measured tones appropriate to his role as a scientist, the material is replete with novelistic drama and paranormal perceptions.
"Beccah's head … started to move back and forth in a strange weaving pattern that looked remarkably like that of a cobra," Peck writes about one case. Suddenly, "Beccah's curled body sprang toward me, its mouth flared open." As the team tried to restrain Beccah from biting Peck, the "seemingly sickly" patient "had close to superhuman strength and fought against us with amazing violence." Though he knew intellectually that they were looking at a human being, he writes, "our intuitive minds were so powerfully affected that what we saw was a snake."
Nevertheless, he downplays paranormal phenomena. Peck criticizes the Roman Catholic Church's formal screening criteria for exorcisms because they focus too tightly on supernatural signs. Though strange things happened during Peck's exorcisms, what tipped him off to the patients' possession were subtle aspects of their behavior that could not be accounted for by standard psychological mechanisms.
Throughout Glimpses of the Devil, Peck treats Satan with the kind of respect a child learns to have for fire. Nevertheless, Peck doesn't inflate the importance of Satan and demons: Satan is the lesser spirit and its footprints in this world are less visible than God's. Satan is limited: It needs to work through human bodies. It is not all-wise, and can be tricked by appealing to its vanity.
Peck calls Satan "it" rather than "he," because Satan is neither male nor female. "Sexuality has to do with creation," Peck explains to the patient named Jersey. "The Devil doesn't create anything, it only destroys."
Where There's a Will
Peck's account is given added drama because of his relationship with Malachi Martin. The maverick priest, ex-Jesuit writer who died in 1999 was a colorful and controversial character. He claimed to have been a sometime Vatican insider, and he asserted that Satanists had infiltrated the highest ranks of the Catholic hierarchy. He speculated about the Vatican's geopolitical ambitions, and his aggressive campaign against the "liberalism" of Vatican II made him a favorite of some Catholic traditionalists. Martin also wrote a book on exorcism, and that volume became his point of contact with Peck. Martin manipulated Peck, he even lied to Peck, but ultimately, his insights about possession proved invaluable.
Following Martin, Peck believes the human will is key to understanding both possession and exorcism. People make choices that have consequences. One patient chose to believe her father's lies when he abused her sexually as a 12-year-old. The patient in the other case study avoided talk about her childhood, but the starting point of possession may have had to do with an evil book that fascinated her. There is always some act of the will, however small, that opens the self to possession.
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