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M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist and author of the best-selling book The Road Less Traveled died of cancer Sunday at age 69 in his home in Warren, Conn. Peck explored spiritual influences such as evil and demon possession on psychology. This article was first published March 1, 1985

If it is true, as Baudelaire suggests, that "the Devil's cleverest wile is to convince us that he does not exist," then psychiatrist M. Scott Peck has dealt the Devil a serious blow in his best-selling book, People of the Lie. The Devil is not all Peck talks about in this unlikely book. He originally set out to write a work dealing with human evil, and that is what he has done. When he began he believed, along with 99 percent of his psychiatric colleagues, that there was no such thing as the Devil. But as he contemplated writing such a book, it seemed to him that, in the interests of scientific objectivity, he ought at least to examine the evidence for the existence of the Devil. His conclusion? "I now know that Satan is real. I have met it."

That makes for interesting reading—so interesting, in fact, that People was in its fifth printing as of November of 1984, had sold more than 150,000 copies at the rate of 1,000 per week, and its publishers were showing no signs of issuing it in paperback. No small portion of its readership is among evangelicals. Both People of the Lie and another book by Peck, The Road Less Traveled, appeared on Eternity magazine's Book of the Year list, finishing seventh and sixth, respectively. (Eternity's list is determined by the votes of a group of evangelical writers, leaders, and theologians who have been associated with the magazine.) The success of these two books has kept Peck so busy speaking and writing that he has had to stop practicing psychiatry, at least for the time being.

What makes People of the Lie so unlikely is that it comes from a man thoroughly trained in the canons of a secularist psychological discipline. His education was at Harvard and Case Western Reserve universities, he did not read the Gospels until he was 39, and was not baptized until March of 1980, sometime after he wrote The Road Less Traveled. That last item causes astonishment for the many who read the book and were sure that the author must have been a Christian. But he was not. His path to Christianity came by way of Zen Buddhism in his youth and mysticism as an adult. The Road Less Traveled was, by his own assessment, part of a pilgrimage toward Christianity, not the end of the road.

Peck has a gift for writing the captivating opening line. The first sentence in The Road Less Traveled is, "Life is difficult." For People of the Lie it is, "This is a dangerous book." He is also a fine storyteller. People of the Lie is loaded with the fascinating and chilling stories of patients he has treated who have struggled with evil people or who were themselves evil. Unforgettable is the story of Bobby, whose parents made him a gift of the rifle with which his brother had committed suicide; or of the mutually parasitic marriage of Hartley to Sarah, an "evil couple"; or of Billie and her spider phobia; or of Angela's dream of a voodoo ritual.

Peck's thesis is simple: There really is such a thing as human evil, and it has certain definable characteristics. What is evil? He once asked that question of his eight-year-old son, who answered, "That's easy, Daddy, evil is live spelled backwards." That definition is good enough for Peck. Human evil is that which destroys human life. More telling, however, is what characterizes evil. According to Peck, it is the persistent and accumulative refusal of the evil person to face the truth about himself. He may admit publicly that, of course, he is a sinner just like everyone else. But deep down inside he does not believe it. So rather than face up to his own sin he is constantly scapegoating: laying it on other people, making his faults theirs. Evil people are masters of disguise, morally. They are constantly dodging their conscience. In other words, evil people are liars. Hence the title of the book.

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September (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49