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M. Scott Peck
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People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil Paperback – January 2, 1998

by M. Scott Peck (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,216 ratings
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In this absorbing and equally inspiring companion volume to his classic trilogy—The Road Less Traveled, Further Along the Road Less Traveled, and The Road Less Traveled and Beyond—Dr. M. Scott Peck brilliantly probes into the essence of human evil.

People who are evil attack others instead of facing their own failures. Peck demonstrates the havoc these people of the lie work in the lives of those around them. He presents, from vivid incidents encountered in his psychiatric practice, examples of evil in everyday life.

This book is by turns disturbing, fascinating, and altogether impossible to put down as it offers a strikingly original approach to the age-old problem of human evil.
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  1. Print length
    272 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    January 2, 1998
  4. Dimensions
    5.31 x 0.7 x 8.25 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0684848597
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0684848594
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

M. Scott Peck, M.D. is the author of the New York Times best-seller The Road Less Traveled, with six million copies in print. His other books include Further Along the Road Less Traveled, The Road Less Traveled and Beyond, Meditations from the Road and Golf and the Spirit.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Touchstone; 2nd edition (January 2, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0684848597
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0684848594
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.7 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,216 ratings

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M. Scott Peck

M. Scott Peck

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M. Scott Peck's publishing history reflects his own evolution as a serious and widely acclaimed writer, thinker, psychiatrist, and spiritual guide. Since his groundbreaking bestseller, The Road Less Traveled, was first published in 1978, his insatiable intellectual curiosity has taken him in various new directions with virtually each new book: the subject of healing human evil in People of the Lie (1982), where he first briefly discussed exorcism and possession; the creative experience of community in The Different Drum (1987); the role of civility in personal relationships and society in A World Waiting to Be Born (1993); an examination of the complexities of life and the paradoxical nature of belief in Further Along the Road Less Traveled (1993); and an exploration of the medical, ethical, and spiritual issues of euthanasia in Denial of the Soul (1999); as well as a novel, a children's book, and other works. A graduate of both Harvard University and Case Western Reserve, Dr. Peck served in the Army Medical Corps before maintaining a private practice in psychiatry. For the last twenty years, he has devoted much of his time and financial resources to the work of the Foundation for Community Encouragement, a nonprofit organization that he helped found in 1984. Dr. Peck lives in Connecticut.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
2,216 global ratings
Toxic people and personality disorders
5 Stars
Toxic people and personality disorders
This book is how society, relationships, and family systems cover up and enable toxic and disordered people. It gives examples of how people with personality disorders can get away with what they do. It’s very philosophical in nature, some use of God, and older references due to when it was written- I can easily overlook those. The beginning is a bit heavy trying to explain what evil is apart from typical diagnosis. After the Uvalde Texas shooting, I’ve been rereading this and it’s pertinent to a lot going on in the world now.
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Top reviews from the United States

Marmaluke
5.0 out of 5 stars Much Value Here
Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2022
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What a great book that I've always loved. I had a copy of it when it came out and seem to have loaned it out. So I bought another and it's as helpful today as it was back then. Yes, we have progressed into many more diverse and effective forms of therapy. But that doesn't invalidate what's going on here.

Even if you don't agree with this treatise or it's conclusion, there is so much valuable information to ponder from real life cases. He's been criticized for being Freudian and that Freudianism has been debunked or that evil people can't be cured etc. etc. I don't think that's entirely fair. If you listen to the cases and where he lands with the patients, you'll see that he's getting to the bottom of real issues. There is hope for these people and he indicates that quite well.

I think for me, looking back at this book and then looking at today's world, it seems that Peck's idea of evil can really be seen in just about any maladaptive behavior, organic illnesses notwithstanding. Some people are just ill because they have a chemistry problem or whatever. But the people he's dealing with in this book are definitely victims of malevolence and even have their own evil at work.

So to consider this book useless and deny that he is onto something valid seems shortsighted and really missing a lot of what is being said. For anyone who didn't like it, I recommend reading it again with an open mind.
30 people found this helpful
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Carroll Busher
5.0 out of 5 stars ... so God turned them over to a depraved mind….. Romans 1:12
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2023
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If you can imagine the cross as symbolizing both the breadth and depth of the human experience and God’s full awareness and presence in each of these dimensions you can see this work as being a human effort to present a corollary explanation of a specific human tendency that has damaging effects at both the individual and societal level. That tendency is to Lie.

In this work this well-established author of the “Road Less Travelled” takes the reader both panoramically and microscopically into the regions of the human heart where we are shown the reality of self-deceit.

This deceit is exposed in the case studies of the author (A Harvard trained psychiatrist) as being a product of the psychiatrically sick individual unwilling to abide the call of conscience. To do so would demand exposing the patient’s ego to the shame of recognition and acknowledgement of their own self-deceit; At the heart of this is the sin of pride. These are the People of the Lie. And the fruit of their deceit is damage not to just themselves but as often as not to others subject to them and their sickness.

In its worst manifestation the author reveals something much, much deeper. What Dr. Peck reveals is the reality of a deep spiritual evil that lurked behind the mask of what he initially thought were strictly psychiatric disorders of two of his select patients.

Here the prescription called not for a psychiatric treatment but a spiritual one. As these individuals were no longer in control of their will. The will had been usurped by another. The other was demonic and the cure was exorcism. These exorcisms personally witnessed by the author served to convince him of the absolute validity of the presence of Satan - the Father of Lies- in this world and serves as a cautionary tale for those who spurn truth and deny both their own conscience and the reality of ultimate good (GOD) and Evil (Satan).

In the end the author expands the aperture of his lens when he moves from the individual engaged in the lie to the lie of the collective (ie the institution and the state). Here he deconstructs the milieu and marching orders that were in play leading up to the My Lai massacre and the attempted coverup by the military establishment.

He hauls into the light as well the institutional lie underwriting the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that lead to the expansion of US involvement in the Viet Nam, expanding the operation into a full scale US invasion of South Viet Nam. An invasion that killed untold lives on both sides and leaving a country in shambles. An engagement that was never even given the dignity of being declared an actual war but more dishonestly characterized as a type Police Action- again another lie.

In the end the reader is exposed to a Tour De Force in the People of the Lie and is reminded of the risk & ramifications of the failure of conscience both in oneself and in the corporate bodies we are often apart of and depend on.
50 people found this helpful
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GB
5.0 out of 5 stars Exactly as described, like new when they said very good
Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2024
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This book is topical for today's politics.
One person found this helpful
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MARVIN J PAIGE
4.0 out of 5 stars Very Captivating
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2024
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I struggled with some of his words as I am not in the medical field. But he continually said evil could only be met with love.
Good book.
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Trudy Rothman
5.0 out of 5 stars as always very insightful
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2023
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I read this book 15 years ago and again now. My understanding has changed so much , so reading it for the 2nd time felt like it was the first . Such a good book . Written with such wisdom , love and understanding.
12 people found this helpful
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Modern Solutionary
5.0 out of 5 stars Not my normal read
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2024
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I was pleasantly surprised; I was moved with disbelief at times and affirmative resolve at other times. I am glad I read this book and will re-read parts I highlighted.
4 people found this helpful
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PRNLM
5.0 out of 5 stars The best rational discussion of evil in human life that I've yet read.
Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2017
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At some point in life, some percentage of the population will have a confrontation with evil. They may, as was the case with me, previously have thought they understood the concept or even dismissed the idea entirely.

Then, suddenly, when the confrontation occurs, one is left trying to understand what one has experienced, and looking for answers high and low—perhaps in books, perhaps in religion, perhaps in talk with friends and mentors.

This is probably the most satisfying resource I've come across on the question of evil in human psychology. Peck doesn't avoid the question or the word; instead, he tackles them head on, proposing that if you've seen it, you understand that evil is real. He seeks to understand what the experience and the quality amount to when articulated through reason, rather than purely through theology.

His definition of evil ends up being quite concise, rather than wandering and metaphysical and listless as is so often the case, and more than that, it's a satisfying definition; it rings true to to me, at the very least, as someone that was confronted with the question. The case studies that he provides are fascinating and run the gamut from the individual scale to the nuclear family scale to the social scale.

While there isn't much in the way of actionable information presented, I suspect that most people reading on the topic of evil aren't looking for tips and tricks so much as they are trying to come to grips with their own thinking about the topic—to clarify their own experience and make sense of what they've learned and how it's changed the way that they look at the world.

If this sounds like you, get this book and read it. I suspect it will take what is already a dim light somewhere in your consciousness and bring it to full brightness and understanding—in a way that is somehow a relief and a balm.
287 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Colleen McIntosh
5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking and informative
Reviewed in Canada on July 4, 2023
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Really enjoyed reading this book and it’s subject matter. Well written, thought provoking and I enjoyed reading it very much. If you are interested in the subject matter, you’ll enjoy this book! Definitely, recommend it!
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verena
5.0 out of 5 stars Must have
Reviewed in Germany on December 1, 2023
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A classic book, written way before the current narcissists epidemic
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Rodney Henchliffe
5.0 out of 5 stars I know that peck knew about human evil
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 24, 2023
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I've actually heard people say that The People of The Lie is an "enjoyable read," or, an "interesting" book. What the dang? No!!!! They are wrong. If you have actually encountered human evil then this book is both traumatising and remarkable, as well as enlightening. Hence it has remained an international best seller any writer would only dream of aspiring to. It is not a book you read; it is a book you personally relate your experience to in order to understand the gravity of what Peck is talking about. Having known human evil I have encountered in Africa and Great Britain, I criticize sections of the book for being too fleeting or less in depth at times. That said, it enlightens us also. This is a book that pushes our understanding of human evil which, personally, we can never truly account for in terms of actual origin. What Peck knows is that human evil exists, I know this having known and worked with human evil myself (I know that Peck had actual knowledge of evil attended to in this remarkable book). This is a great achievement indeed. It forms part of my own research into human evil, at the heart of this book, and I've only read half so far, is the concept of evil linked with narcissism. I also relate to the idea that people are guilty of participating in evil; we must learn to attend to 'Love' and Respond to human evil in the most appropriate way. That said, I ultimately disagree with Peck's conclusion. But hey, what a ride this book is - the truth it contains has been life changing for me. I am still battling against human evil and now know what needs to be done. "Enjoy."
7 people found this helpful
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siddhant
5.0 out of 5 stars Good read
Reviewed in India on December 4, 2022
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Its a good book . Enjoyed reading it .
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MR D P PERCY
5.0 out of 5 stars Profound and thoughtful
Reviewed in France on May 29, 2021
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I have often encountered people who project their faults onto others, causing much chaos and pain. This book helps greatly in putting this scapegoating behaviour into a deeper spiritual context, supported by Peck’s professional experience as a psychologist.
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