I have issues with this book even though i found it very helpful.

This is a fascinating look at two cases of Demonic Possession as witnessed by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck.

Blending science and religion, Peck emphatically states that possession is real and also rare.

In both cases where he assisted with the exorcism, there was a definite time in the life of the client when they made a choice to allow evil to overtake them and there then was a choice that had to be made to accept love and light.

While the subject matter is dramatic, Peck did not embellish or shock the reader into belief.

The book is well written and logical in presentation.

This book is haunting and very insightful. I loved it!

Years ago, I happened to discover a copy of Hostage to the Devil by Malachi Martin in the Spirituality section of my local bookstore. I've always been interested in the subject of demonic possession, and I devoured that book in a matter of weeks. While I enjoyed it enough to pick it up for my collection on Kindle when I saw it on sale a while ago, I found many parts of it incredible to the point of seeming fictional.

From Glimpses of the Devil, I was hoping for a more stable, scholarly treatment of the subject. I found myself intrigued immediately by the disclosure that Peck and Martin were acquaintances, and was initially encouraged by the fact that Peck directly acknowledges that Martin is a liar, prone to everything from exaggeration and embellishment to outright manipulation and falsehood. Imagine, then, my disappointment as I read on to discover that Peck is every bit as suspect a narrator as Martin, with a sickening dose of self-aggrandizement thrown into the mix.

Peck would like his readers to believe that, as a Christian layperson with no spiritual education and very little spiritual grounding, he led the exorcism of one of his patients to such a powerful success that Satan himself had it out for him on the next one. One of the major reasons- dare I say, perhaps Peck believes the only reason- that the second exorcism failed was because he was too distracted and busy with being a nationally-renowned lecturer and authority in the field of psychology to focus on saving his patient from Lucifer himself, who took over from Judas after Peck (and his team, but mostly Peck, we are to understand) effortlessly expelled that demon with a "deliverance", not even a full exorcism. Though Peck does acknowledge his own arrogance- apparently, it's even the weakness that Lucifer attacks in exorcism number two- the entire book, every word of Peck's narration and every line of reconstructed dialogue that paints him in a saintly, eternally patient and articulate light, drips with it. There is no more perfect example than the very close of the book, when Peck recounts how, in his hour of need, Malachi Martin (despite being impossibly hard to reach) picked up the phone on the first ring, because "he had been waiting for well over two hours on that Sunday afternoon, doing nothing except being in prayer with no other goal than to be available for me if I needed him." Peck tries to spin this as evidence of Martin's loving nature, but all it does for me is reinforce Peck's idea that the world revolves around him. Even the Devil himself knows who he is and cares enough to hold a grudge, after all.

An argument can be made for how negligent this book is in painting exorcism as something that any old Christian (and it has to be a Christian, of course) can just get a group of friends together and pull off, and how dangerous that could be to all parties whether or not demons are actually involved in the situation. In my opinion, however, the most disgusting aspect of this book is how, on multiple occasions, Peck underlines that it is in some way the possessed person's fault that they are possessed, that they have made some sort of pact with dark forces and that they continue to make that pact every day that they remain possessed. Certainly, that's one vector for possession, but when you twist the story of a woman who suffered sexual abuse as a child into "she was possessed because she accepted the lie that the abuser had done nothing wrong", you've rocketed well past the point of victim blaming and into some very sick territory. Even if the story isn't true- and I have little reason to believe that it is, particularly given that the most dramatic and supposedly inarguable signs of possession conveniently don't show up on the videotapes that Peck made of both exorcisms- how dare this self-obsessed excuse for a person, much less a doctor or a scholar, say that a child doing her best to contextualize a traumatic assault is equivalent to someone signing a contract with the Devil?

I have no idea whether or to what extent Peck may be in league with the Devil himself, but I do fully believe that this book serves the Devil's ends much more than it does those of God or education. It trivializes the very dangerous and treacherous practice of exorcism, places blame on victims (thereby silencing them and making them less likely to seek help), and sacrifices every opportunity that it might have to provide objective, fact-based information and testimony in favour of reminding us of the greatness of Scotty Peck, exorcising psychiatrist extraordinaire. Absolutely shameful.

This is as essential book for all those who want to understand the way how the demonic works, and for those who want to see how a psychiatrist would start to work with a patient who probably possessed. I still feel a lot of uncertainty about the way Mr. Peck works (he often jumps to an early conclusion when the case obviously has not been closed yet), but as a study for the rest of the World War Spiritual series was a perfect material. I also found it weak in that way that I thought I would see more individual case reports.

Not as good as Road Less Traveled or People of the Lie, but still very, very interesting. What we have here is the transcript of two (or three, I forget) exorcisms. Demons show up. I remember that one of the demons expressed awe or wonderment at the fact that we're able to live in such vulnerable circumstances. (The earth is a tear drop circling a furnace, when you think about it.) Also, the demon's were under very strict regimentation. For any you Screwtape readers out there, this all will ring quite familiar.

Not as riveting as I'd hoped it would be. A little too much soul searching on Peck's part.
I already knew Evil exists along with the Evil One, so I wasn't stuck on that. I just didn't like the way the book was laid out, organized, and the way the premise was developed. I was tired of Jersey and Becca long before the exorcisms as well as throughout the exorcisms themselves.

Interesting. And not something I would normally read, which probably made it all the more interesting. (BTW, I would give it 3.5 stars, but that is not an option. So I employed scientific notation and rounded up).

For me, it offers a different, more scientific, if you will, point of view. Can be somewhat entertaining for the more imaginative ones.

Review to come.

Outstanding book - from a psychiatrists perspective. Entertaining and informational. Not made purely for consumption but in pursuit of greater understanding.

Much better than i expected. I'm not really big of nonfiction but a friend of mine recommended this one. It's told like a story and not preachy or text booky. It's a pretty interesting one for anyone who is in to demonic things