Book Review: People of the Lie

[osprey_archer]

I just read M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, and you guys, this is a weird book. Peck's basic argument - he makes a whole lot of arguments, and I'm somewhat concerned I won't do them justice - but his basic argument is that evil is a mental illness: that it is, specifically, a malignant subset of narcissistic personality disorder, and that the distinguishing quality of the evil is "their absolute refusal to tolerate the sense of their own sinfulness."

The evil have egos that are simultaneously so vast that they believe they're basically perfect and so brittle that they have to destroy anyone who damages that self-image. Naturally this tends to leave a trail of destruction in their wake.

As Peck notes, this is a dynamic that describes quite a lot of evil doing: lots of people will lash out if their self-image is sufficiently threatened. The difference between the evil and the rest of us occasional evil-doers is that for the evil, this is their habitual mode of interacting with the world: you don't have to push them very far to activate their destructive response.

He goes on further to note that if we construct evil as a disease, we can at least hope to one day be able to heal it - although as Peck notes, people who fit this description generally don't think there's anything wrong with them (can you imagine Donald Trump going to a therapist? A spoonful of genuine self-insight might kill him), so this may be a chimerical hope.

It's an interesting theory; I waffle back and forth about whether I agree, or if I just agree with parts of it, and which parts those would be and how much.

I must confess that part of my reluctance to accept his thesis is a knee-jerk emotional reaction against it, although the fact that it is knee-jerk is also part of the reason I can't bring myself to dismiss the theory: "I don't like this" is not actually evidence that it's untrue. This is a good theory to explain, say, the Bronson Alcotts of the world, and goddammit, I do not want to have my pure and incandescent loathing of Bronson Alcott spoiled by the thought that the poor man must have been ill. Alcott wrote a list of Orphic Sayings, one of which was "Greater is he who is above temptation than he who being tempted overcomes," and you just know he thought that he was one of those who was above temptation. Christ could be tempted in the wilderness, but Bronson Alcott, well, he was better than that.

He edited his daughters' diaries (and not after they were dead, mind, but while they were alive and kicking and still writing them) to make himself look better. He wrote a book based on Socratic dialogues that he had with his students (and by "Socratic dialogues" I mean "he asked his students leading questions to get them to give him the answers he wanted"), and when even the most leading questions no longer elicited the right responses, he started doctoring the transcripts. He decided that most forms of labor were against his principles and then basically lived on his wife and daughters' labor for the rest of his life.

But the fact that finding compassion in my breast for Bronson Alcott goes against the grain does not necessarily mean Peck's thesis is wrong.

So anyway, Peck's been going along, exploring the ramifications of his argument, discussing some case studies - the couple who gave their younger son his older brother's suicide weapon as a Christmas present haunts me - and then.... DEMONIC POSSESSION.

Two-thirds of the way through the book, Peck has a chapter about demonic possession and exorcism as a type of psychotherapy - "psychotherapy by massive assault," he calls it. He notes that demonic possessions that can be healed by exorcisms are in fact partial possessions, that the host and the demon remain separate enough that the host can want the demon gone, and then flirts briefly with the idea that evil people are those who have been totally possessed. The demon and the host have fused into one, so the host would never seek an exorcism and it probably wouldn't work if they tried.

But then he pulls back from that and concludes that basic human sinfulness is probably enough to explain most evil without having to bring demons into it.

He doesn't reach peak crackpot levels: he argues that demonic possession is very rare and also generally afflicts the host alongside non-occult mental illnesses (so no using demonic possession as an escape hatch away from a mental illness diagnosis). But still. Dude. Demonic possession. Didn't see that coming.

(Years later, Peck wrote another book where he tells the tales of the two exorcisms that he took part in, which he only described vaguely in this book. Of course I have to read it. I already have it on interlibrary loan.)

I do think People of the Lie has the advantage over The Sociopath Next Door (another book that links evil to a specific mental disorder: sociopathy in that case) in that it's much less scapegoating. The Sociopath Next Door tends to suggest that the problem is them, those sociopaths, not you and me, dear reader; People of the Lie is aware that almost anyone can do evil under the right circumstances.

Comments

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

This book sounds right up my street. Thanks for the excellent review.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I hope you enjoy it if you read it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

There are lots of things that used to be thought of as moral failings which are now seen as medical conditions, and the benefit has been as you say: that we can try to correct the behavior without condemnation and judgment. If all evil actions are the product of some somatic mishap, then we never condemn anything at all--It's like a humanistic, science-based way of getting at forgiveness and redemption, maybe.

I don't like the language that goes along with the medicalization of human experience, but I like the implicit redemptive quality.

The demon possession business... IDK, whatever, dude.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Peck quotes a lot of Christian thinkers (C. S. Lewis is the one I really noticed, because he's the one I've read) and I think there's a sense that he's putting their arguments about redemption and "forgive them, Father, they don't know what they're doing" into a medical language that many modern people will find more compelling than a purely religious argument for loving the sinner and hating the sin.

But there's also the flip side (this isn't something Peck talks about, just something I've been thinking about) where medicalizing evil will end with some people, for instance, staying with an abusive partner because "he can't help it; he's sick." Which may be true, but at the same time, he doesn't want to help it: he's not doing whatever the evil person equivalent of going to AA is.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Exactly; in the end you're stuck with the same difficult situation, whether you label the behavior weak will, evil, blah-blah personality disorder, or demonic possession: if a person's behavior is harmful to you, what's your duty or obligation? (Or, when and where does that duty or obligation end.)

Sometimes, too, there may be some treatment or approach to dealing with a person that might hypothetically work but that may just be beyond your wherewithal to apply. When people place their very handicapped kids in homes, it's not always or even mainly because they can't be bothered to care for them or they'd prefer not to deal with them (though those cases exist), it can be because they don't have the ability to do the care at home. Same with very sick elders. (These are examples that don't have to do with bad behavior, but the same definitely goes for kids who are prone to violence, say, or whatever.)

Or you can do the societally approved thing, but do it badly, for whatever reason (exhaustion, lack of skill or instruction, resentment). That's not ideal. (I realize people can use all these things as excuses for not trying, but they can also be for real.)

Never mind the fact that the person with the problem needs to want to address it. Like you say, if they're not willing to do the equivalent of going to AA, you're kind of stuck.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think with adults whose behavior is sufficiently hurtful, eventually the question of intention becomes a moot point. Is this person terribly because he had a terrible childhood, or uncontrolled mental health problems, or was he just born with a burning desire to torment the weak? Philosophically it's an important difference, but in actual fact if someone is that bad - I don't think anyone ever has the obligation to stick around to be abused.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

My problem with the general argument that evil = mental illness is that it denies free will. Why can sane people choose to do good, but not choose to do evil? Basically, it says that if you do something bad, you by definition didn't choose it - you were crazy. So what about choosing to do good - is that also a mental illness, only a socially approved one?

It's pretty obvious that people like, say, Jeffrey Dahmer were legit mentally ill. Then you could get an argument going over whether that negates their evil or what.

But what about everyday cruelties? What about the people who lead legally blameless lives and are basically ordinary people who are just not nice? We all know them. They go out of their way to be mean to people, bully the helpless, vote to deprive people of human rights, etc. Mental illness? Really? If they didn't meaningfully choose their homophobic vote and nasty remark, then did the people who made the other choice: who voted for equality and said something kind-- also not have a choice? Are we basically automatons who can only choose in one direction, or we flip into crazy? If so, then we really have no choice at all.

(Have not read this book, but have had this argument MANY times. I should just choose to keep my mouth shut the next time someone says, "There's no such thing as evil, just mental illness." Or the variant "Nobody ever deliberately chooses to do evil, they were all just abused as children and can't help it.")

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

I've read this book, and the one on demonic possession after it, and they're actually really awkward and uncomfortable partly because they don't just blame it on mental illness.

Peck mentions (so briefly, wtf!) that he was a Colonel in the US military and part of the inquiry into the My Lai massacre, so part of his discussion is what could lead those soldiers to make the decisions they did.

IDK, I'm not sure I recommend these books exactly? They're so WTFy and all over the place and full of weird. But they're also soooo much more complicated than the easy answer.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

!!!! How can he have been involved in MY LAI and not have that be the central thing in a book on the problem of evil? That incident is like a case study in that exact issue. It's basically the Milgram experiment in real life. It had a person who was a direct force behind doing something really bad, it had people who went along with it with varying degrees of culpability/pressure/guilt/etc, AND it had people going against very strong pressure to do evil, who instead did good at a great risk to themselves (but their circumstances also had some exterior factors which probably made it easier for them to do that than the soldiers under Calley's command, specifically that they were not under Calley's command.)

Anyway, it's a perfect case study in those exact issues, so… whut. I guess it's the unspoken why behind why even think about those issues, but...

IDEK demon possession???? I know that is a religious belief but it's one that I find hard to take seriously.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

The book actually ends up offering three possible answers (at least three answer; I may have forgotten some more) to this question, because consistency isn't high on Peck's priorities.

The first is that free will is mostly an illusion: ultimately we're all serving either God or Satan. In fact a lot of people experience choosing evil as a moment of liberation: they're not doing what society or God or anybody expects of them, they're doing something just because they want to. But once they've started down that path, they get locked into it.

The second is that good people actually do have more freedom of choice than evil people, because they're not driven by the same compulsion to defend their self-image at all costs. People who aren't evil can strive to be saints, or they can devote their lives to playing Call of Duty - not helping anyone but not hurting them either.

But not a totally free range of choices because deciding to become a serial killer would turn them into an evil person.

The third is that Peck is drawing a distinction between people who sometimes do bad things (which is everyone) and people who do bad things so habitually that it's their basic mode of operation (and Peck would definitely put someone who habitually bullies the helpless in this category), and argues that the same basic mechanism is the same: our self-interest blinds us to what is actually right and just. He uses the Vietnam War as an example: the war was clearly unjust, but the anti-war movement remained pretty small until the draft gave everyone with any young male friends or relatives a direct personal interest in the war.

So most people do have a choice between good and evil, but the more often we choose to follow our evil impulses, the stronger they become and the harder to resist.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

In my own experience of myself and others, people fall down more often on sins of omission than sins of commission. That is, most of us can avoid kicking a puppy (sins of commission), but not as many of us are willing to, say, offer a hand to someone having trouble getting off the bus (sin of omission).

... I think sins of omission are a kind of trap, though, because there is an ocean of bad stuff out there, and we can't apply ourselves to all of it.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The third one makes a lot of sense to me. Though I think that the same forces operate with good: the more you choose to do good, the harder it becomes to do evil.

I think the majority of people go with the flow. So you can set up things to make it easy and rewarding and convenient to behave well, and most people will behave well. Set up things to make it easy to be a dick, and most people will be dicks. It's the outliers who have very strong convictions and will go against the social flow - in either direction. Everyone's an asshole sometimes and some people are assholes most of the time but serial killers are rare. Similarly, most people are reasonably decent unless there's strong social pressure to not be decent, but if you happen to be in Nazi Germany, most people are not going to be Sophie Scholl. But some will be.

In terms of actual human interactions, I think it's pretty useless to conceptualize "good people" and "evil people" as opposed to "good actions" and "evil actions" because most people aren't just one thing. That being said, I have met some sociopaths and my policy is to stay the fuck out of their way, because it's a bit irrelevant whether they are evil or jus doing evil, because they will harm you either way.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Following on the "if you happen to be in Nazi Germany" thing, there's also the fine-grainedness of your goodness/badness to think of. Never mind Nazi Germany, think of the segregated South (or Boston during the period of enforced busing in the 1970s): people can be very kind, sweet, loving in one aspect of their life, or many, or most, and simply terrible in another. Your going-with-the-flow thing still applies; I guess what I'm thinking of is how many levels and areas of being good or bad there are. Hell, Sophie Scholl could have been routinely rude to shopkeepers (but probably wasn't).

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

G.K. Chesterton has an argument like this talking in the purely moral/ethical field. He says that if we excuse all bad actions with remarks like, "Oh, but they came from a broken home," we're ignoring all the people from the exact same situation who didn't do the bad action.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I have obvious reasons for taking the "No one is evil, rapists/Nazis/serial killers were all just abused as children" arguments very personally. (Also, it is objectively not true. Though you can't prove a negative, so maybe all Nazis were abused and no one knew. Statistically, however, it is unlikely.)

Certain types of criminals, yeah, they pretty much all were abused. But what about mean girls? What about us, when we did something wrong? I have; you have. Was my wrong action because I was abused, while you made a free choice? What about the good that we did; is mine more praiseworthy, because I was abused? Or does only one of us have any free will, and the other is an automaton?

(Obviously, I am a very strong believer in free will. There are obviously many times when it's constrained. But even within constraints, people make choices and those choices are still meaningful. So maybe you really don't have life choices that make "don't commit crimes" an option. But take two drug dealers, and one might be going out of his way to wreak havoc and be cruel to everyone he meets, while the other might be violent to protect his interests but isn't crossing the street to kick puppies. That there is a meaningful choice. All else aside, it matters to the puppy.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And even given that certain types of criminals were abused, it still doesn't follow that everyone who's abused will become that sort of criminal. And what you say about the drug dealer--life gives you some level of choice all the way down. Yeah, I agree with you entirely about free will.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

BRONSON ALCOTT OMG

M. Scott Peck is one of those authors I periodically make an attempt to read and consistently fail to make it past a page of. "my eyes just slide right off you, bro" is not an argument either, but here we are anyway.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

BRONSON ALCOTT: THE ACTUAL WORST. It's amazing that Louisa May turned out so well-adjusted.

I have authors like that. I'm trying to read a book by Erich Fromm right now and periodically I realize that I have been reading without actually absorbing any of it: my eyes have been taking in the words and my mind has been floating away.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Oh my god this book! What a weird and fascinating book! I read it, and the demonic possession book, a few years back when I had nothing better to do than sit in an office all day that had it on its bookshelf. So I read it, and like you OF COURSE had to read the demonic possession one.

It is so awkward and uncomfortable and even though I think it's so flawed and weird and crackpotty (and I even BELIEVE in demonic possession) it's also majorly influenced my thinking in a way very few books have. It's like it cracked open my view of the world until I could see the evil in everything, and the humanity in the evil.

Just aaaagh. I wish I could talk coherently about this book.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Right? This book! So weird! Sooooo weird! But weird in a way that stretches your brain rather than weird in a way where you're just like "Whatever, dude."

I sometimes complain that certain nonfiction books feel like articles stretched out to book length, but this book has the opposite problem: it's like he compressed a whole shelf of books into one book. I finish a chapter and there are little explosions going off in my brain, but then the new chapter starts and he's talking about something completely different (or at best vaguely related) and setting off more little explosions.