An unusual book. An interesting synthesis of psychology, morality, religion and science, where the author tries (and largely fails) to understand evil. The book genuinely ropes the reader in as the author grapples with how to identify and deal with people who are, in fact, evil.
As a bonus, you'll also walk away from this book with a lot of useful context for therapy, the nature of the patient-therapist relationship, and how to make therapy work more effectively.
Author M. Scott Peck is earnest and refreshingly candid about what he does and doesn't know; it's interesting to see him openly admit to being absolutely "flummoxed" by a patient or by a specific therapeutic situation. You don't see this very often.
"The purpose of this book is to encourage us to take our human life so seriously that we also take human evil far more seriously--seriously enough to study it with all the means that our command, including the methods of science."
Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend Peck's best (and best-known) book The Road Less Traveled, which is excellent. I wrote a mini-review of it on my old food blog, feel free to take a look.
[Please don't read any further, you're wasting your time!]
1) Interesting the language he uses in the introduction: that this book is "dangerous," that it could be used for evil, that you have to be careful with it, that it may cause you pain, that this is "not a nice book." Intriguing.
2) Also interesting that Peck sites as mentors Erich Fromm and Malachi Martin.
Chapter 1: The Man Who Made a Pact with the Devil
3) A man with obsessive-compulsive neurosis, which turns out to be a smokescreen for many awful things that happened to him, both in his childhood and in his current life.
4) Really interesting example here of a therapist who is quite meta-aware of his cognition, we should all be so lucky to stumble onto people like this:
5) On your psych symptoms being your "salvation" (indirectly): they tell you that you have to face something, or that you have to do something about your life situation. On being brave enough to face them down (or being too much of a coward to face them at all).
Chapter 2: Toward a Psychology of Evil
6) On magical thinking: basically a belief that thoughts in and of themselves cause events to occur; common for people who are neurotics or people who have been traumatized in one way or another, particularly typical of obsessive-compulsive neurotics.
7) Viewing patient "George" and his situation through a medical or psychotherapeutic lens simply reveals neurotic obsessive-compulsive disorder. Case closed. But when viewed through a Christian/religious model, it reveals a battle over an individual soul, a genuine moral crisis. This leads the author to a therapeutic (and moral) heuristic: "Herein lies, I believe, a rule of thumb. If, at a particular moment, we are in a position in which we must choose a particular model, we should probably choose the most dramatic one--that is, the one that imparts to the event being studied the greatest possible significance."
8) Nihilism as a "diabolic voice."
9) "...we do not yet have a body of scientific knowledge about human evil deserving of being called a psychology. Why not? The concept of evil has been central to religious thought for millennia. It is virtually absent from our science of psychology--which one might think would be vitally concerned with the matter. The major reason for this strange state of affairs is that the scientific and the religious models have hitherto been considered totally immiscible*--like oil and water, mutually incompatible and rejecting." See also since the Galileo/Catholic Church affair: an unwritten contract of non-relationship between science and religion.
[* Solid word! immiscible: not forming a homogeneous mixture when added together. "Two immiscible liquids."]
10) The end result of science without religious values is "the Strangelovian lunacy of the arms race"; the end result of a religion without scientific self-doubt and scrutiny is "Jonestown." In other words "the separation of religion and science no longer works."
11) "Dozens of times I have been asked by patience or acquaintances: 'Dr. Peck, why is there evil in the world?' Yet no one has ever asked me in all these years: 'Why is there good in the world?' ...That children generally lie and steal and cheat is routinely observable. The fact that sometimes they grow up to become truly honest adults is what seems the more remarkable... If we seriously think about it, it probably makes more sense to assume this is a naturally evil world that has somehow been mysteriously 'contaminated' by goodness, rather than the other way around. The mystery of goodness is even greater than the mystery of evil... Indeed, as I shall make clear in the final chapter, an exclusive focus on the problem of evil is actually extremely dangerous to the soul of the investigator."
12) Evil is in opposition to life, not just killing the corporeal body but also killing the spirit, see Erich Fromm's idea of the "biophilic" person ("one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual") versus the "necrophilic" person, who wants to control others or foster the dependency of others.
13) Very evocative comment here on Jesus: "The strange man, who obviously relished weddings and wine, fine oils and good companionship, and yet allowed himself to be killed, was not so concerned with the length of life as with its vitality."
14) Discussion of Eric Fromm's writings on certain Nazi leaders; Peck says Fromm's study of evil made it seem like it was "over there and back then"--like it had nothing to do with us, and people in our lives and in our time today. "My own experience, however, is that evil human beings are quite common and usually appear quite ordinary to the superficial observer."
15) Meeting with the parents of a child who shot himself, the couple's surviving son was experiencing depression: "I didn't feel any empathy for them. I only knew how I felt. I felt repelled by them. And I felt very tired." Holy cow, this is exactly how I feel when I'm around people who are repellent in one way or another: tired. What a striking quote.
16) "The identified patient": a euphemism in this case for a child brought in for psychiatric treatment, but this clinical phrase invokes a measure of skepticism of the validity of the identification process, since often the problem lies not in the child but elsewhere: in the child's parents, or family, or school or society etc. Often the parents, who usually are the "identifiers" (meaning: the ones saying their child needs treatment) "are the ones who should be the patients."
17) A general law of child development: "Whenever there is a major deficit in parental love, the child will, and all likelihood, respond to that deficit by assuming itself to be the cause of the deficit, thereby developing an unrealistically negative self-image."
18) "When confronted by evil, the wisest and most secure adult will usually experience confusion." "When a child is grossly confronted by significant evil in its parents, it will most likely misinterpret the situation and believe that the evil resides in itself."
19) "...evil people, refusing to acknowledge their own failures, actually desire to project their evil onto others."
20) On how therapists will refer to a patient's psychopathology as being "overwhelming" in certain instances: "We literally feel overwhelmed by the labyrinthine mass of lies and twisted motives and distorted communication into which we will be drawn if we attempt to work with such people in the intimate relationship of psychotherapy. We feel, usually quite accurately, that not only will we fail in our attempts to pull them out of the morass of their sickness but that we may also be pulled down into it ourselves."
21) "The feeling that a healthy person often experiences in a relationship with an evil one is revulsion." This revulsion as healthy, a God-given "early-warning radar system."
22) "...while the evil people are still to be feared, they are also to be pitied. Forever fleeing the light of self-exposure and the voice of their own conscience, they are the most frightened of human beings. They live their lives in sheer terror. They need not be consigned to any hell; they are already in it."
23) "God does not punish us; we punish ourselves... The notion that people are in hell by their own choice is not widely familiar, but the fact is that it is both good psychology and good theology." [Some world-class quotes in here.]
24) "It is a thesis of this book that evil can be defined as a specific form of mental illness..."
25) Re the parents of this young boy: Peck wasn't aware that the parents were evil, he didn't have that word to name them at that time, he had no "name" for what he was seeing.
26) Note also that evil people do not respond to gentle kindness or spiritual persuasion, but they do respond and can be rapidly influenced by raw power.
27) "The theme of hiding and covertness will occur again and again throughout the rest of this book. It is the basis for the title People of the Lie."
28) Distinguishing between evil people and evil deeds; we all do evil things, we are all sinners.
29) A predominant characteristic of the behavior of evil people is scapegoating, they lash out at anyone who reproaches them because they see themselves as above reproach. "They sacrifice others to preserve their self-image of perfection." "Scapegoating works through a mechanism psychiatrists call projection."
30) Distinguishing evil people from psychopathic/sociopathic people who tend to have a reckless abandon and a careless or poorly planned method of hiding their crimes. Evil people, according to Peck, are more concerned about image and their outward appearance: "...they intensely desire to appear good. Their 'goodness' is all on a level of pretense. It is, in effect, a lie. That is why they are 'the people of the lie.' Actually, the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves. They cannot or will not tolerate the pain of self-reproach."
31) The key however is in the person's coverup, their evasion of guilt and responsibility. This is the tell, by this mechanism we can recognize the disguise! "...the evil may be recognized by its very disguise. The lie can be perceived before the misdeed it is designed to hide--the cover-up before the fact. We see the smile that hides the hatred, the smooth and oily manner that masks the fury, the velvet glove that covers the fist."
32) "Because they are such experts at disguise, it is seldom possible to pinpoint the maliciousness of the evil."
33) Note per the footnote here: "evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them. " This is why you can often find evil people within the church.
34) "They are not pain avoiders or lazy people in general. To the contrary, they are likely to exert themselves more than most in their continuing effort to obtain and maintain an image of high respectability. They may willingly, even eagerly, undergo great hardships in their search for status. It is only one particular kind of pain they cannot tolerate--the pain of their own conscience, the pain of the realization of their own sinfulness and imperfection." This is likewise why they would be the last person to come for psychotherapy. "The evil hate the light."
35) "The essential psychological problem of human evil, I believe, is a particular variety of narcissism." What Eric Fromm called malignant narcissism, "characterized by an unsubmitted will." "All adults who are mentally healthy submit themselves one way or another to something higher than themselves, be it God or truth or love or some other ideal."
36) Basically the evil person's needs come first; see for example Kane could not handle God's acceptance of Abel's sacrifice, it implied a criticism of Cain, and he would not admit or acknowledge his imperfection, in fact he would commit murder in retaliation for it; in this way a modern evil person will do what's necessary "to destroy life or liveliness in defense of their narcissistic self-image."
37) Martin Buber said that the malignantly narcissistic insist upon "affirmation independent of all findings."
38) Evil is a type of psychological "gargoyleism" (as in a self-protection device like the gargoyles that warded off evil spirits from buildings): children may become evil to defend themselves against the onslaughts of parents who are evil.
39) On thinking of good and evil as a continuum: people are on all sorts of places on this continuum and can also move themselves one way or another along that continuum. See also Eric Fromm's comment about how we're on a path, or we face repeated forks in the road, and have to decide while "with each step along the wrong road it becomes increasingly difficult for them to admit that they are on the wrong road." Thus we become evil slowly through a long series of choices.
40) On how the problem of human evil has many causes and we should not choose just one and discard all the others; see the rule in psychiatry that "all significant psychological problems are over determined--that is, that they have more than one and usually many different causes."
Chapter 3: The Encounter With Evil in Everyday Life
41) Roger and his parents: an urbane couple with absolutely no empathy and significant animosity toward their son. Peck describes it as evil with "subtlety"
42) Peck questions himself and his view that these parents are evil: Is it misuse of the concept of evil, or is it even evil itself "labelling clients who disagree with my opinions and failed to take my advice?" [I really like this author's epistemic humility and frequent cross-checking of his thoughts, opinions, and assumptions.]
43) The most obvious forms of evil are much less common, this type of example, more ordinary and even superficially normal is far more common. "...the serpent is renowned for his subtlety."
44) On Roger's parents wanting to appear as if they were trying to help their son, a genre of lying. Also twisting the psychiatrist's words, using what he said in such a way is to sound like they followed his advice when they actually didn't, a type of lie that they probably even believe themselves and such a well-sculpted lie that it was, to Peck, "a form of genius that one can almost admire for its perversity."
45) On parental unity and collusion against the child: You even see this in cases of incest for example, there is usually some form of (tacit or otherwise) collusion between both parents.
46) Hartley and Sarah, a childless couple where the wife infantalizes and disempowers the husband; "Involutional depressive reaction"; On "thralldom" to a partner, like being captive to the power of a demon or witch.
47) "As adults we are not forced by fate to become trapped by an evil power; we set the trap ourselves."
48) Another definition of evil: "the use of power to destroy the spiritual growth of others for the purpose of defending and preserving the integrity of our own sick selves. In short, it is scapegoating. We scapegoat not the strong but the weak." Dominion of the strong over the weak, also a parent and child, a master with a slave in thrall, etc.
49) Evil "should be regarded as a mental illness." (Followed by a long discussion of what is the definition of illness, does it depend on suffering or awareness of the problem, etc., settling on a definition of "a defect in our bodies or personalities that prevents us from fulfilling our potential as human beings.")
50) On the amount of psychic energy required for the continued maintenance of "pretense".. the fear, the apprehension of being found out, exposed as imperfect, etc.
51) Classifying evil as a psychiatric disorder, a subcategory/variant of narcissistic personality disorder. Also the author asserts that many evil people are diagnosed as having "ambulatory schizophrenia" while many ambulatory schizophrenics are evil, thus there's a significant overlap at this "primitive" stage of naming evil.
52) [Good working therapeutic definition of evil here] Distinguished by:
a) consistent destructive, scapegoating behavior, which may often be quite subtle.
b) excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury.
c) pronounced concern with a public image and self-image of respectability, contributing to a stability of lifestyle but also to pretentiousness and denial of hateful feelings or vengeful motives.
d) intellectual deviousness, with an increased likelihood of a mild schizophrenic-like disturbance of thinking at times of stress.
53) On the concept of naming which gives you power over something, and an ability to identify recognize and manage it, and to help the healing of its victims with the power of this naming; naming literally means "to come to terms" with something.
54) "Wherever there is evil, there's a lie around."
55) On narcissism: evil people lack the capacity for empathy, perceiving the thoughts, wishes and perspectives of others. Thus they are not governed by the restraint that results from this empathy. Further they "need victims to sacrifice to their narcissism." [Perhaps you could say in Martin Buber's language or in the language of Zen, they treat other people as "equipment"]
56) Billie and her "intrusive" mother: she displaced her (quite justified) hatred of her mother onto a phobia about spiders, but then it turned out that she was like a spider too, clutching and grasping at relationships as well, devouring people, etc.
Chapter 4: Charlene: A Teaching Case
57) "Denying their imperfection, the evil flee both self-examination and any situation in which they might be closely examined by others."
58) On rare instances of evil patients that Dr. Peck treated for extensive periods but in every instance the treatment was a failure. "Certainly no patient ever taught me more than the one to be described."
59) Charlene totally flummoxed Peck, he's dumbfounded by things she says, he has no idea how to help her. She lies to him, makes up stuff, etc., "to keep control of the show." "And while my understanding of her was to deepen, so was my awe of her basic incomprehensibility."
60) He has to deal with her sexual advances, he's grossed out by her. She in a power struggle with him.
61) On the need to "regress" as part of therapy, it makes the patient more trusting, more innocent, "even playful and joyful" and like the ideal relationship between a loving mother and child.
62) On what the author learned through treating this patient [again with his characteristic openness and sincerity]: "I know now that one of the characteristics of evil is its desire to confuse. I had been aware of my confusion within a month beginning work with Charlene but assumed it to be my stupidity. I never entertained the notion in the first year that possibly I was confused because she wanted to confuse me."
63) "I have learned these past years that evil--whether it be demonic or human--is surprisingly obedient to authority. Why this is so I do not know. But I know that it is so."
Chapter 5: Of Possession and Exorcism
64) The author goes through a journey of not believing in the devil and not believing in (demonic) possession, then changing his mind, and then actually seeing and studying cases, even being "privileged to be present at their successful exorcisms."
65) "I now know Satan is real. I have met it." Instead of describing his cases he refers the reader to Malachi Martin's book Hostage to the Devil.
66) On the different dynamics of psychotherapy and exorcism: in psychotherapy there's an atmosphere of total freedom and the patient is free to quit therapy at any time. Exorcism typically has a team of at least three or more that "gangs up" on the patient, who is outnumbered; the time period has no set duration (it could be for hours), also the patient may be forcibly restrained. Finally there's a presence of God in the room during the exorcisms that the author has witnessed, to him it was a source of tremendous power.
67) Possession as a gradual process, in the case of Peck's two patients both were terribly lonely as well.
68) Typically one would ask if the patient possessed or mentally ill, but this is not a valid question per Peck: the proper question is "Is the patient just mentally ill or is he or she mentally ill and possessed?"
69) A discussion of free will: because God gave us free will he also thus gave up the use of force against us (because that would preclude free will), thus he has to let us commit evil or do things that he doesn't want us to do.
70) "The only power that Satan has is through human belief in its lies."
71) On Satan being stupid in some way because it's trying to win an engagement over the possession of someone, but it could have easily left long before the exorcism actually happened, but because it just wanted to win any and all engagements, it resembles a type of narcissistic foolishness.
72) Science also as an anti-narcissistic phenomenon which assumes that humans have a tendency to self-deceive, thus we use the scientific method to counteract it and hold truth higher than any personal desire. [Obviously Peck is referring to idealized science, not today's post-modern form of SCIENCE!!1! which enforces narratives without regard to truth at all.]
73) [This chapter ultimately feels like it's far afield from the author's topic, and it also feels far afield from my personal interests, but then again maybe I need to submit to the author (or suspend my distrust) and just follow where the author takes me. Note that with this kind of mindset the chapter becomes more interesting.]
Chapter 6: My Lai: An Examination of Group Evil
74) Considering both the evil of the action itself but also the evil of the cover-up of My Lai. Note also that Peck was chosen by the Army Surgeon General to be on a committee of three psychiatrists to make recommendations for follow up on My Lai, their recommendations were rejected by the Army general staff because of the potential embarrassment. "...any research into the nature of evil is likely to prove embarrassing, not only to those who are the designated subjects of the research but also to the researchers themselves."
75) On groups and their tendency to regress; on specialization of members of a group which results in members outsourcing their conscience and their morality to the group itself; the author also speculates that many members of the crime do not consider what they had done to be a crime; they didn't realize there was anything to confess; and here he discusses the selection mechanism for a military especially a non-volunteer military (this was still the case in 1968 when My Lai happened, the soldiers had all volunteered to go to Vietnam).
76) Other characteristics of group cohesiveness involve out-grouping of "the others" or shared hatred of an external enemy; also on various controls put in place that stops members of a group from acting as a moral conscience or stopping evil activity--it's seen as a betrayal of the group which has primacy.
77) The author goes through a long discussion of a hypothetical soldier from Midwest, this is sort of an act of psychological or psychiatric profiling; ultimately, the author's point here (I think) is that on some level we scapegoat the people we actually sent over to Vietnam, because they're misbegotten numbers of society who were dumped on the military in the first place, also the ones who volunteered to go to Vietnam would have been the most gung-ho.
78) The author arrives at the conclusion that we should resume a military draft and that this is "the only thing that can keep our military sane" and give it "fresh air" or prevent it for being inbred and reinforce its own values. This is a heck of a stretch...?
79) Interesting footnote here where the author talks about being in military housing on Okinawa and caroling with a group of friends at Christmastime in 1968 to a wonderful reception, but then repeating the caroling the following year in 1969, and there was no reception at all: it was as if the entire housing area was depressed; at the time Peck didn't understand, only later did he see it as the depression of the military being acted out here given the failures in Vietnam: it had gone beyond those troops who were directly experiencing the defeat, and had finally become a genuine insult to the entire military.
80) "Just as the highly narcissistic (evil) individual will strike out to destroy whoever challenges his or her self-image of perfection, so by late 1967 the American military organization--highly narcissistic, as all groups tend to be--began to strike out with uncharacteristic viciousness and deceit against the Vietnamese people, who were wreaking such havoc on its self-esteem... The era of the body count had begun. The lying and falsification, characteristic of our involvement in the Vietnam War from the beginning, escalated."
81) Now the author suggests a combination of universal service and a national service corps to handle all kinds of societal things: "peaceful functions" like slum clearance, environmental protection, job training and vital civilian needs, with a requirement for all youth to serve.
82) Considering American society in 1968 and why we actually waged the war in Vietnam in the first place; Peck goes through a whole discussion of Communism, an enemy hostile to American freedom, [I think Peck also failed to realize that the CIA use the word "communist" to lable particular foreign leaders that it wanted to remove, see Ho Chi Minh or Guatemala's Jacobo Árbenz... Note that the lies always run deeper than we ever, ever expect.]
83) Civilizationally speaking America's behavior in Vietnam became "increasingly unrealistic and inappropriate" by the mid-60s the author considers the two primary reasons to be laziness and narcissism. Laziness because we let inertia dictate our policy, clinging to old maps, and then ignorance of the evidence of it being a mistake, but we as a society were unable to handle the narcissistic injury involved in facing that mistake.
84) [It's quite interesting to hear a psychiatrist's perspective on the psychology of a nation locked in a struggle with an opposing ideology. Peck doesn't get everything right but he does give you some interesting prisms through which to look at the 60s and 70s, the Vietnam era, etc.]
85) A common response to a narcissistic injury is to destroy the evidence, we pretty much did this with Vietnam. Recall that evil "has already been defined most simply as the use of political power to destroy others for the purpose of defending or preserving the integrity of one's sick self."
86) Note also the Johnson Administration was responsible for the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a fraudulent event that gave him the authority to wage war on a much more escalated level; these are all lies used to indicate that even Johnson knew what he was doing was wrong, but couldn't or didn't want to face it. [Looking at all this stuff from the modern era of all the endless wars we've had over the past 20 years, you can't help but think that we've become a much more malevolent, lying, evil civilization than we were in the 60s.]
87) Also, we can take it up one more level: why were we so easily defrauded and lied to by our government? Why did we permit it or enable it to happen? [And we can absolutely ask this question of ourselves today too, in the postmodern/post-truth era.]
88) On the subject of killing in general and the subject of human killing specifically; on the study of group killing in the form of war; suggesting perhaps that humans have an instinct for war or that war behavior is a fact of human nature.
89) Another interesting footnote on the British responsibility for Vietnam dating back to 1945, where they reestablished the French colonial regime (which had collaborated with Japanese occupation by the way); England then rearmed the Japanese and used them to reinforce their own troops in wresting Saigon from Ho Chi Minh, maintaining occupation of Saigon until France began sending troops, upon which the UK withdrew and the French Indochina War began. [Wow, I didn't know this part of the Vietnam story at all.]
90) It's also very interesting here to watch Peck draw the same conclusions that Dr. Robert Malone did in his book, basically, we are not the good guys, we are the villains. At the least we are an unwitting villain, which brings us back to the issues of narcissism and laziness.
91) Note that 95% of the men going off to Vietnam had no idea what the war was about, but even more sadly even the DOD civilians directing the war itself had a "similar atrocious ignorance of Vietnamese history."
92) "How could a whole people have gone to war not knowing why? The answer is simple. As a people we were too lazy to learn and to arrogant to think we needed to learn." [Note: if you watch Ken Burns's documentary of Vietnam, you see similar ignorance of history as Boomer-era vets from that conflict made striking claims like "This is the first time that we couldn't trust our media" or "This is the worst thing that ever happened to our country" etc., statements that could only be made from a position of tremendous intellectual laziness and ignorance.]
92) On group evil in the age of the institution: [This is another fascinating topic that, today, applies directly to gigantic administrative state bureaucracies like the FDA. Note that responsibility--particularly ethical responsibility--becomes diffused or outsourced in groups (see note #75 above), thus the FDA has no more morality than a group of soldiers at My Lai; these institutions, growing larger every budget cycle, become faceless, soulless, etc. See also the military-industrial complex which was an observable problem as early as the 1950s: this is now replicated across many bureaucracies/industries, with the pharma-industrial complex as a textbook example in today's era.]
Chapter 7: The Danger and the Hope
93) On how the very endeavor of developing a psychology of evil in itself has the potential for causing evil.
94) "As has been noted, it is characteristic of those who are evil to judge others as evil." Evil will destroy others in the name of righteousness.
95) On the dangers of moral judgment: it should be to heal or to help, not to enhance our own self-esteem or pride. [I guess note also that it's important to sincerely probe our own motives when we seek to judge--this is a clue to where we are on the good/evil continuum.]
96) The dangers of cloaking moral judgment in scientific authority: we're too dependent on authority in the first place, secondly authorities are often wrong, Peck gives an example of his pediatrician changing recommendations for when to start solid foods between his first and second child (which were only one year apart!); The 'science' had changed! "...what is paraded as scientific fact is simply the current belief of some scientists."
97) Misusing science: imagine the dangers of having a psychological test that could identify someone who's evil...
98) On the risks to therapists who may develop psychiatric interest in treating patients who are evil, they might be placing themselves in great jeopardy. " I do not think such experiments should be attempted by a young therapist, who has enough to do learning how to battle with the more ordinary resistance and countertransference." Also, "a weak-souled therapist will be the most vulnerable."
99) Note also the quote from Aldous Huxley in his book The Devils of Loudon: "Every crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness which he attributes to his enemies; it becomes in some sort a part of him."
100) On how once you've seen one evil person you've seen them all. "Even psychotics, whom we are accustomed to thinking of as the most seriously deranged, are more interesting."
101) On "the banality of evil" from Hannah Arendt; as well as Thomas Merton saying "it is precisely the sane [evil] ones who are the most dangerous."
102) The first step is to stop being fooled by the masquerade or the pretense of evil, "Know your enemy. We must not only recognize but study these poor, dull, terrified people. And attempt to do what we can to either heal or contain them."
103) "I know that good people can deliberately allow themselves to be pierced by the evil of others--to be broken thereby yet somehow not broken--to even be killed in some sense and yet still survive and not succumb. Whenever this happens there is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world."
To Read:
M. Scott Peck: "The Use of Religious Concepts in Psychotherapy" (speech)
Erich Fromm: The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil
Erich Fromm: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
***Malachi Martin: Hostage to the Devil
Harold S. Kushner: When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Martin Buber: Good and Evil
C.S. Lewis: The Great Divorce
Ursula Le Guin: A Wizard of Earthsea
Gerald Vann: The Pain of Christ and the Sorrow of God
Ernst Becker: Escape From Evil
Flora Schreiber: Sybil
Abraham Maslow: Motivation and Personality
Leon Wolff: Little Brown Brother
Aldous Huxley: The Devils of Loudon
Thomas Merton: Raids on the Unspeakable