This is a must read book if you have suffered through narcissistic abuse. This is one of the few sources that I have found that connects evil with narcissism. It is too bad that research into the topics has gone nowhere since the book was written, as the author hoped.

A great book on the concept of evil. Human evil is laziness. Describes how to diagnose evil in people & communities.

Mon opinion varie largement selon les sections de ce livre. Je dois dire qu'en étant moi-même agnostique, les parties parlant beaucoup de la bible et du Christ m'ont moins rejoint. Ceci étant dit, la section sur les cas rencontrés par M. Peck est très intéressante et de grande valeur, de même que celle sur le massacre de Mỹ Lai. L'ouvrage me semble toutefois un peu décousu.

M.Peck fait aussi un parallèle entre un rituel d'exorcisme chrétien et de la psychothérapie. Bien que j'ai pu comprendre certains de ses points, j'avoue ne pas être convaincue autant que lui de l'existence réelle du diable et du besoin d'exorciser Satan de certaines personnes. Cette partie m'engagea moins.

Bref, je ne crois pas qu'il faut se fermer automatiquement à un ouvrage étant très empreint du point de vue religieux de l'auteur, mais c'est à prendre et à laisser. Il faut aussi garder l'esprit ouvert.

Ah, et petite note sur la traduction: elle contient plusieurs erreurs grammaticales flagrantes comme le maléfique "si j'aurais" et certaines des références bibliographies ne sont pas bien étiquetées.

Malgré tout c'est une lecture très intéressante pour quiconque s'intéressant à la psychologie et au Mal avec un m majuscule.

Keista knyga ir šiai dienai nežinau, kaip ją reiktų vertint. Ar blogis yra psichinė liga? Tai ir yra pagrindinis klausimas, į kurį autorius bando atsakyti. Jo apibrėžiamas blogis primena neurozių kamuojamo žmogaus apibūdinimą. Bet viskas pasikeičia, jei mes imame į tai žiūrėti iš krikščioniškosios pozicijos (reiktų paminėt, kad autorius yra uolus katalikas). Blogio apibūdinimas pasidaro kaip ir labai tinkamas. Tuomet man kyla klausimas - prie ko čia mokslas, psichinės ligos, religija ir moralinės vertybes? Akivaizdu, kad jis savo evil pacientus renkasi vertinti moraliniu aspektu.
Šiaip knyga skaitosi lengvai ir greitai. Ir su autorium galima sutikt arba nesutikt, priklausomai nuo to, kokį požiūrį įjungi - mokslinį ar tą bendražmogiškąjį. Savo aplinkoj pažįstu vieną žmogų, kuris būtų puikus evil egzempliorius, bet giliau paanalizavus po tuo evil slepiasi neurozė.
O vat skyrius apie egzorcizmą nu tikrai buvo WTF.

This is an interesting book that seems very much a product of its time: the 1980s. Turbulent, analog, and with a burgeoning world of psychological study in full swing with the realization of the effects of war on those men and women who fought in Vietnam and were trying to return to life as a civilian during that time.

There are some interesting points, and this book is written with the author peering through the lens of his own faith at the science of psychology, faith, evil and how they relate. I'm not a trained psychologist, so I can't effectively comment on those aspects of his book, but I can relate that there were times that I really resonated with what the author expressed while, at other times, I was unsure how his ideas could reconcile with my view of who God is and how he relates to humanity. I did appreciate the case studies he shared... I always find those particularly interesting.

Near the end of the book, I was surprised to encounter some ideas that seemed to have made their way to the surface during our time dealing with Covid-19. I'm certain that he had critical thinking in mind when he shared these ideas (without making them philosopher kings and prophets), but I was immediately brought to the pandemic where the pendulum on this seemed to swing quickly to the opposite extreme where scientists lost all their credibility in the eyes of some people.

Worth a read, and you may find some things of interest; however, I continue to believe that our focus as people of God should be on how to love well those who cross our paths instead of looking for reasons that people are evil. On this, the author and agree: A strong foundation that includes doing our own work with God, Jesus and Holy Spirit to know who we truly are so that our actions and thoughts may be filled with grace and kindness is and will be essential.

Quote from a 2012 article by M. Scott Peck:

"There can be a state of soul against which Love itself is powerless because it has hardened itself against Love.... There are analogies in human experience: the hate which is so blind, so dark, that Love only makes it the more violent; the pride which is so stony that humility only makes it more scornful; the inertia – last but not least the inertia – which has taken possession of the personality that no crisis, no appeal, no inducement whatsoever, can stir it into activity, but on the contrary makes it bury itself the more deeply in its immobility."

If you have believed the widely-held view that "everyone is basically good," and have been harmed by people who spend their entire lives responding to kindness with cruelty, reading this book may answer some central questions for you. If religious references bother you, I don't know what to suggest. I myself am not a great admirer of the world's religions, yet, with so much unexplained phenomena in the world, I feel I can't realistically dismiss spirituality. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that there is psychosis, and then there is psychopathy, and then there is evil, and that they are distinct from each other. If something exists that can hurt you, better to understand it well.

The human animal is quite complex, capable of acts of heroism and cowardliness, compassion and selfishness, honesty and deceit. I respect Peck and find his work fascinating because he embraces both a high and low view of humanity. In The People of the Lie, Peck unveils his dissatisfaction with psychology’s attempt, or lack there of, at naming evil. This, in fact, is the stated purpose of the book. Peck believes that to name something correctly creates a sense of predictability and control, thus ensuring a greater sense of agency. This work is intended to be the starting point in the discussion of the legitimacy and necessity of a psychology of evil.

Peck “names” evil by sharing a cornucopia of case vignettes. The characters in his vignettes all share a common bond- they are lazy and self-absorbed. What makes them evil? According to Peck, evil, at its core, is consistent deceit and narcissism. More specifically, “evil” people display a) consistent destructive scapegoating behavior, b) excessive, but subtle, intolerance of criticism, c) prominent concern with public image and d) intellectual deviousness. Sounds strikingly similar to the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. So, the thing that remains unclear to me is Peck’s intended purpose for carving out a psychology of evil, as opposed to placing it under the umbrella of narcissism. The answer might reside in his desire to distinguish “sin” from psychopathology. A distinction that is difficult to make when dealing with various perspectives that contain illusive definitions. Although I appreciate his attempt, his distinction, in my opinion, fell short.

Besides “naming” evil, Peck offers little in the way of curative treatments. Towards the end of the book, in the chapter titled The Danger and The Hope, Peck did allude to the fact that love and acceptance can absorb evil, but it must be done carefully and intentionally. The lack of “answers” didn’t detract from the substance of this read. In fact, it enhanced it. Peck’s understanding of the human psyche is intriguing. He opens up new doors of exploration that many in our field won’t touch with a 10-foot pole. I give this read 9 out of 10 Freud stickers.

MY musings:"evil" and "sin" and "resurrection" ...and many other expressions …. are expressions of the religious domain; just like “gene” and “mitochondria” and “psychosis” …are of the science domain….Science separated from Religion."

n  n

One who had read, or known about, “The road less traveled” would argue with Peck: so, discipline is not enough to solve all problems.

Evil itself is a human problem, according to Peck. [And that’s a bit new] Science should address this problem; the evil problem.


“Evil, the ultimate disease”.

In an interview I watched, Peck was confronted with these questions: isn’t “evil” a moral issue? Why taking “evil” as a diagnostic category just like the other medical aberrations/diseases? Why is evil a specific disease?


Peck replied with the distinction made by Jew theologian Martín Buber: there are those “sliding” (into evil) and those who “have slid”. The latter ones “no longer come back”.

He gave the example of a case he had: the man who had made a pact with the devil.

There are evil people.

More interestingly, Peck at a certain point of his life was investigating about this “evil” definition. He asked several members of his family and the definition provided by his (then) 8 year old son Chris, sort of pleased him the most. Chris told father that evil is “live” spelt backwards. Which made father think: [son was right and] “Evil is a force against life”; but he thought also: if we kill it, “we become contaminated”, we become “killers”.

He recalled the words of Jesus on Satan: you’re a killer, a murderer; while Jesus said of himself: I came that they have life and that more abundantly.

In that interview Peck gave numbers: only 2 to 3 % of population would fall on that category: the insane that “no longer come back”.

“Evil interferes with growth …we got to know what our enemy is”; the danger within us.

Peck has, nonetheless, hope in healing human evil. He’s optimistic because the human race has been “improving”.

Peck has written another deeply thought-out study of evil in the human race. Blending psychiatry and religion, Peck cites several case studies to show how evil in a family can destroy children, how group evil can lead to inhuman actions. Serious, frightening, and at times depressing, it's a book for any serious student of the human condition, any writer looking to get deeper into the differences of good and evil. I couldn't put it down. In fact, a writer friends loaned it to me. In twenty pages, I had ordered my own copy. It's solidly in my reference library.

This book was given to me by a friend, many years ago. I couldn't read it, as I refused to believe in the concept of "human evil." Many years later, I found it again at a very different time in my life. Suffice it to say, I read the book, recognized so much, and will never forget how much I learned. It's a hard book to read, or it was for me, but it brought something to the fore that many wish to deny: human evil does exist, in various forms, and to recognize it is to begin one's own healing.

I remember I really liked this book in the early 1980's. Now I want to read it again in 2024 to see if I can learn some answers about the human evils that seem more abundant with more shameless perpetrators than I remember forty years ago.

Most people don't want to see lying as evil - what if it is the heart of evil! What if it is those people "who seem innocent but when you get down to it are subtly manipulating everyone around them" that are truly the most destructive in society? This book examines that idea!