Glimpses of the Devil

Scary. The doctor of the road less traveled takes a road far less traveled still. Not long after being baptized as a Christian, Dr. M. Scott Peck decided to undertake the exorcism of a young mother after reaching the conclusion that her condition was beyond the treatment of standard psychotherapy. This decision was made partly because of the machinations and intrigues of Malachi Martin, and partly (as he himself admits) because of his own arrogance. My difficulty with the book has less to do with the question of whether demons exists or whether they can inhabit human souls and more to do with what seemed to me the upside down nature of his search. Evil just isn't that hard to find. I'm not convinced there's necessarily a difference between a woman who practices self-mutilation because she is a borderline personality and a woman who practices self-mutilation because she is a borderline personality and is also possessed.

Whether we speak of 'demons' in a purely psychological sense of the word or whether we think in terms of the demonic, there is nothing so inherently faithless about modern medicine that it can't be applied towards suffering wherever it is encountered. Nor is there anything so inherently unscientific about belief that it can't be practiced with good faith and patience in established methods of treatment. Which perhaps includes exorcisms. What bothered me was a mixture of traditions that sometimes bordered on puerile. To his credit, Peck is forthcoming about his own failings in the two exorcisms he performed. He can't see all of them: at one point he relies on his patient to supply her own diagnosis, but only after he has prompted her with the leading question, "have you ever thought you were possessed?" So much of the proceedings seemed to depend on the feelings of either the exorcist or the exorcisee that it is difficult to determine what was actually accomplished and what might have been shunted aside because of time constraints, personal power dynamics, or some other factor that had nothing to do with the problem at hand. At times the proceedings seemed to become an excercise in badly organized group psychology. The second exorcism, especially, degenerated into a bit of a circus in which all sense of authority was lost. Peck claims this was a good thing and underscores the importance of a well assembled team. Just how well the entire project was thought through is open to debate, but then that's why he published the book.