People of the Lie

Rating:
Summary: thought provoking
Review: Excellent read. Incredibly thought provoking. You will want to read more from this author after reading this one!

Rating:
Summary: A couple of important points made, not elaborated on enough
Review: He made the important point of self-image and protecting self-image and the lengths people will go to do this, hurting themselves and others. It also pointed out we all do this to some level, but for others it is a seriously harmful problem. He is willing to address "bad behavior" in a time when only the positive is acceptable.

Rating:
Summary: Important Book
Review: As the 91 prior reviews here point out, this is a somewhat flawed book which is not written as elegantly as most of Dr. Peck's other works. My favorite is "A Bed by the Window." It's certainly less popular than "The Road Less Traveled." However, it may just be his most important work. He courageously invades "forbidden territory" by assaying into the realm of evil. Despite what some of the prior reviewers have asserted, Dr. Victor White upheld (what he indicated was the official Catholic position of the "provatio boni" that evil is merely the absence of good. C. G. Jung took issue with that, indicating that there was real evil in the world, not just the absence of good. Their long-term warm friendship ended over this issue (see C. G. Jung's Letters (ed. Gerhard Adler in 2 volumes). Peck argues this perspective. I didn't get the "Christian" bias that some reviewers complained about. But then, people write (and speak) from their own value systems, views, etc.--which frequently are more the message than the message itself. I saw herein the message itself. On an absolute level of abstraction, one could argue that all comes from the same source (all the Western and many of the Eastern religions would actually agree on this if it were described correctly to them). At a relative level, however, IMHO evil is what happens that you just hate--and don't feel responsible for. I think Dr. Peck has done us a great service though it could be argued that he's opened Pandora's Box. It's kind of like eating the apple: you get kicked out of Paradise, but you actually get a life. Seems worth it to me.

Rating:
Summary: I have a few complaints about this book . . .
Review: I have to be honest with you: I have a degree in psychology, and have read a lot of books relating to psychology; at the same time, I'm also sort of a mystical person, so I veer more towards the Jungian side of things. In sum, I'm both logical and yet mystical, in a sense.

With that said, I have to say that despite the fact that Mr. Peck seems to have keen observations and good intentions, I am not sure what to think about his own "logical" conclusions, since I am well-acquainted with what it's like to create one's own conclusions drawn from one's personal "belief" systems. The truth is, Peck believes what he writes is the "truth," even though his ideas may only be nothing but theories written on the wind.

I also felt a little sorry for the way he treated some of the subjects of his book, especially the girl he considered "autistic" at the end of the book. While I too have encountered difficult people (I work in the mental health field), at the same time, I don't think it's appropriate to write a book based on one's experiences with a possibly "lovelorn" patient. Just because she fell in love with him and couldn't fall out of love he considers her autistic? Perhaps she was just immature or naive? Many young people go through similar experiences.

Anyhow, I was also not sure what to think about his ideas regarding spirituality. As someone who has broken ties with the religion(s) I was brought up with (fundamentalist/Catholic), I really don't know if I can accept his ideas about God and The Devil, not that I don't believe there is a God, but I'm not sure about all of this "demonic" bunk he writes about; in fact, I'm convinced that some people can become so obsessed with demons and such, that they will see "evil" in the most innocuous of things!

Jung said it best when he said that life is a struggle, and always will be, otherwise, life would come to an end. Life consists of darkness and light. This doesn't mean that I condone Evil, per se, but I do think that Peck might be going a little overboard in some ways, or at least he puts far too much blame on the mostly harmless people he describes in his book (like the "autistic" girl). There are much more dangerous and bad people in our jail cells to be sure. This doesn't mean there aren't bad people in the real world, like abusive parents, for example, but Peck shouldn't ascribe "demonic" influences to their behaviours, especially since not everyone believes in demons (unless you are referring to them in a symbolic sense).

(Addendum: I also wanted to add that I disagree with the author when he states that people who don't want children generally tend to be of an evil nature. This is utterly ridiculuous. Some of us are not able to financially support children, so does that make us evil? Some of us may not want children either. I can't believe Mr. Peck would make such an outrageous, outlandish claim like this in his book.)


Rating:
Summary: Excellent look at case studies of evil.
Review: Dr. Peck focuses on those cases where he thought his patients were not just having psychological problems, but were downright evil. I read it after September 11. Sadly, may of the people of the lie will remind you of people that you know. For a further understanding of evil, I would recommend attending a performance of Shakespeare's Othello.

Rating:
Summary: The whole truth the whole truth way
Review: I read this book without having read 'The Road Less Travelled', having been researching exorcism my own way for some time. The difficulty with humans attempting to seek solutions to the problem of what causes human suffering, is that we overlook the fact that we are a very primitive life-form - and in keeping with such, we assume ourselves to be very intelligent and far-advanced, even though, when compared to other life forms in this dimension, since this planet cooled and life began here, condensing all forms of existence into one year, humanity has been here for under one hour of it.

To keep a long story short as best I can, humans have evolved into knowing how to use only 8% of our brain - the other 92% being dormant. We are not too dissimilar to a 6 month old child in its playpen with toys and food that it knows something about and enjoys. Try conversing with that child about nuclear physics and the red shift of the galaxies and they will just smile and play with wooden blocks and say 'num-num'.

Humans have built up an experience-based set of intercommunicative and interpretative tools via taking the more expedient routes through evolutionary existence for the sake of survival, avoiding the far less rewarding unknown routes to satisfy curiosity - and have come to lots of logical, scientific conclusions as a result. We assume, via this set of intercommunicative and interpretative tools, that there are many things on the paths we have taken that you will never find on the untrodden paths. True. But vice-versa, there are just as many if not more things on the untrodden paths that you will never find on the taken paths. Having by-passed the illogical paths 90% of the time, humanity has quite logically sacrificed reality.

(I'm getting to the point) - We assume to understand virtually everything - but with only 8% of the brain awake - we tend to avoid anything that is outside our logical play-pen. We can ponder different dimensions - some mystics have worked out to the ninth dimension aspects of existence that are outside our playpen - not too far away, but not as apparently comfortable and tasty as our toys and num-num, so they are not too often looked curiously at.

Allow for the fact - even logically - that the mind has no limits - and there is no limit to dimensions. There is an awfully strong probability that there are dimensions far older than humanity and far more intelligent - but being beyond our play-pen level experiences - they're treated with some indifference and not a little ridicule, similar to 6 month old children not watching the news on tv if it doesn't have kids tv characters.

Allow that there are dimensions that are older, more intelligent than humanity and far more negative than we can imagine being. There is a difference between intelligence and cleverness. There are many primitive humans who have obtained educational degrees and doctorates and professorships who are in highly respected positions of authority in our 'modern day' society - but - unless they use what they have learned the right way - aspiring to all the whole truth that can be found the whole truth way - it's like giving running shoes to a man with no legs. This leaves the six-month old human child in its 'knowledgable play-pen' wide-open to being subconsciously shaped by an intelligent negative dimension, into circling around like sheep in a pen, as a fuel-supply for that negativity.

Hard to dwell on the possibility of that - it isn't really a toy or some nice num-num - so it's ignored. Sheep in a pen running to the shepherd bringing food in the winter, don't realise that the shepherd is fattening them up to kill them and eat them. This is easily dismissed as paranoia, isn't it? Not easily to contemplate comfortably.

This is what Peck is trying to put across. That thin dividing line between a controlled paranoia and actual fact. If one persists in aspiring to the whole truth THE WHOLE TRUTH WAY, one will find ridicule and psychological attack for being a black sheep - and it can be even harder. If a sheep in the flock has found a low point in the fence that keeps the rest of the flock in - and tries to jump over it and out into freedom - if the shepherd sees it, it will kill it to prevent the rest of the sheep following and losing its fuel supply. Why can humanity not be parasited by an older, invisible, silent and far more intelligent negative dimension, that sees humanity as a wasted-energy fuel supply source?

To allow for aspects of this via that dimension's subconscious injecting of more psychologically vulnerable-to-suggestion humans with already parasited human energy - counterfeiting their egos, to make them use humans the way it uses them as worker bees? This is my own attempt to describe Peck's enlightening of society by his educated definition of what he has curiously questioned and started to find out about.

Peck is a christian - but an unpretentious one. He was brought up christian the same way trusting young children are brought up Jewish or Muslim or Catholic - it is the truth of religions that stays with a young human minds and Peck is enamoured of that more than anything, but trying to pass one's individual uniqueness of understanding of aspects of truth over to another human with their own individual mind, when the general human attitude to the whole truth the whole truth way is a deadening compromise, keeping little secrets to oneself and white-lying in a socially acceptable way - leaves one wide-open - not only to being not fully appreciated by folk - but to being made easy invisible and subconscious use of by something very dark and unnerving, that Buddah and Christ and Mohammad have all seemed to try and awake the 6 month old human children to the real danger of, by putting the need to turn in the right direction and deal with what is behind human suffering by aspiring to the whole truth completely open-mindedly, using simple six-month old human minds language that they might - hopefully understand.

To my open mind (as open as I can make it) Peck is doing this. He loves the truth - and having listened to a talk he gave a few years ago - the chattering anticipating audience were silenced when he told them that if they had come to be cheered up by answers to human suffering, he was sorry that solving the problems that society cannot escape would mean facing and dealing with pain and danger and suffering that we haven't imagined yet - but that there doesn't exist a problem that cannot be solved - but it won't come via the comfortable sensory indulgent 6 month old child's play pen toys and num-num.

I smiled quietly at the little whispers and questioning facial expressions about something they hadn't really anticipated from him - but he was open and honest and truthful. The book is a rare exposing of ways that many 'respectable' humans have of parasiting other humans' attention and presence energy through a devious, often intelligent avoidance of the whole truth the whole truth way.

He recommended Malachi Martin's 'Hostage to the Devil' - read that and then come back with ridiculing criticism.

If you ever believe you are bored with life, try kicking the devil's butt - you won't be bored again......... truth prevails.........