Psychiatrist recounts performing exorcisms
BY ROBIN GALIANO RUSSELL
The Dallas Morning News
(KRT) - Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck has had a distinguished career as a best-selling author and lecturer. His first book, "The Road Less Traveled," sold more than 7 million copies. In his second book, "People of the Lie," he explored the pathology of evil.
Dr. Peck now says that he performed exorcisms in two of his psychiatry cases a quarter of a century ago. His latest book, "Glimpses of the Devil: A True Story of Evil, Possession, Exorcism and Redemption" (Free Press, $26), describes his journey from his doubt to his reckoning with what he encountered.
Now suffering from Parkinson's disease, Dr. Peck, 68, says he may have written his last book. He retired from psychiatry in 1984 and from the lecture circuit in 1995.
We recently talked by phone with Dr. Peck, who was at his home in Connecticut. Here are excerpts:
Q: What prompted you to write about exorcisms at this point in your life?
A: It may be part of old age and tying up loose ends. I had these experiences 25 years ago, and they were both astonishing and meaningful. I felt they were too important to take to the grave with me.
I didn't write about them before because I regarded them as private cases, and I didn't have the right to be blabbing about them, even if I disguised the clients.
Q: Why do you believe these were cases of demonic possession and not mental illness?
A: Possession is a mental illness, with a demonic involvement. In the first case, I was trying to prove that the devil doesn't exist, that it was an ordinary psychopathology. I had already mentally packed my bags to go home, when my client said, "I feel sorry for them. They are really very weak, pathetic creatures."
Now, if it were purely imaginative, you'd come up with some big, strong, hairy demons. It didn't fit with ordinary psychodynamics. It occurred to me that maybe there was something going on here.
Also, a young priest had seen her and couldn't remember anything about his visit.
She slipped into a nasty kind of persona. She'd get angry and be smiling. She was clearly toying with me, yet my guts were being twisted around inside me. I could hardly make it out to the nurses' station.
During the exorcism, the demonic clearly becomes revealed. She had a subhuman or satanic face. It was not frightening as much as amazing.
Seeing is believing. I can't expect people who haven't seen it to be converted.
Q: Some psychiatrists might write this off as a case of multiple personality disorder.
A: Not only did my cases differ with multiple personality disorders, but that diagnosis has become highly questionable lately.
I had an old classmate of mine tell me that one of his psychiatric patients had 49 personalities. I don't know about you, but I'd get bored after 26. So I asked him, "Do you ever feel as if you're being toyed with?" He said he had. I felt bad for both of them. They were mistreating one another.
I would just ask that fellow psychiatrists just be open.
Q: Why is it that most psychiatrists - you say 99.9 percent - don't believe in the devil?
A: They don't tend to believe in God, either, although some are church-going. Most are secular-minded.
In the mid-1600s, society evolved into an unwritten social contract. Knowledge was divided into two parts: natural and supernatural. And never the twain shall meet.
Everyone was getting beheaded for being either too Catholic or too Anglican or whatever. It was a political move to keep church and state separate. And so they kept science and religion separate from one another.
It was a well-functioning political maneuver, but it made science and religion enemies. They couldn't talk to one another.
But you can't go much further until you study exorcism scientifically. It would be a tremendous kind of shift.
Psychiatric illnesses with a demonic involvement was previously considered the supernatural world. My hope is that it becomes recognized and acknowledged that the phenomenon occurs, that such a thing as the devil exists. You might get it pinned down and learn how it exists. It would be extraordinarily significant for the human race.
Q: You refer to the devil as "it." Do you believe in a personal demonic entity?
A: "He" and "she" connote sexuality. Believe it or not, we live at the mercy of a very sexy God.
C.S. Lewis said that in relation to God, we are all feminine. God is creative and life-giving. Satan is not the least bit creative, only destructive. There is no sexuality in it. And it's an ugly it.
Q: You suggest in your book that people who become possessed may have an inherent character flaw, that they are perhaps believing the lie.
A: Some would say I'm neurotically innocent. The most important thing for me is the truth. If we can stay completely rooted in honesty as far as possible, I think we're safe.
Q: You believe that possessions, though rare, may actually be on the increase. Why?
A: The way possessions look depend on the times. A medieval possession wouldn't look familiar to us. But if you were to ask scholars what is the leading philosophy of our time, it's postmodernism, which is so horrible. It's the total loss of any kind of faith.
Premodernism was the age of faith. Modernism was the age of reason. Now people are disillusioned with both. They're into deconstructing, which means destroying every kind of belief. It leads to nihilism, which is not a good thing.
If you read the accounts of exorcisms through the ages, there's always some element of nihilism. In one of my cases, the demon said that all the negative and positive energy in the universe canceled each other out. It all comes to nothing.
Q: What's been the response in the scientific community to your exorcism work?
A: I have tried several times to promote an Institute for Scientific Study of Deliverance, basically any form of healing in which deities are invoked. It would have ranged from prayer and healing to full-scale exorcism.
Scientists said it was inherently unresearchable, and the religious said, "Everyone knows prayer works," and "You shouldn't mess with faith."
Genuine possession cases are quite rare, but there are a number of diseases - such as hemophilia - that are also rare, yet we study them to know why the blood clots. You answer a question in science and immediately you get 100 new questions. I have more questions about demons now.
What we need to do is integrate science and religion, instead of throwing one or the other out.
Q: When you wrote "The Road Less Traveled," you had not yet embraced Christianity. Where are you now in your own spiritual journey?
A: I'm at a place now that's mostly very, very peaceful. It's a rather nice place to be.
I don't mean this to sound boastful at all, but prayer has become part of my ordinary thinking now. God is so important to me that he colors all. He's not absent from my thoughts at any time. It's a very nice place to be.
I still keep my nondenominational status, but less vigorously than I used to. If you put a gun to my back, I'd say all right, I'll become a Catholic.
I'm definitely Eucharistic, but I have a love/hate affair with the Roman Catholic Church. Some of its policies are utterly absurd, like people in Africa shouldn't use condoms. And it's ruling on abortion lacks sophistication and integrity. I agonize over abortion, but we need to test the integrity [of the church's position] and ask, "What's missing?" So I have a quarrel with its authority, and yet I'm attracted to it.
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