In the 3rd installment of our Possession Series, we turn to one of the most controversial figures to bridge psychology and the paranormal: Dr. M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist, best-selling author of The Road Less Traveled, and—later in life—a reluctant believer in demonic possession.
This episode explores how Peck’s clinical background shaped his approach to exorcism, the patients who challenged his skepticism, and the ways he sought to reconcile science, faith, and evil. We’ll look at his case studies, his insistence that genuine possession is rare, and his cautionary stance toward both blind belief and total disbelief. Then we’ll ask what his work means for modern discussions of mental health, spirituality, and the human shadow.
📚 Recommended Resources
- Peck, M. Scott. People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (1983)
- Peck, M. Scott. Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist’s Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption (2005)
- Interviews with Dr. Peck on PBS and in Psychology Today discussing the intersection of psychiatry and spirituality.
- American Psychiatric Association position papers on religion and mental health.
- Scholarly critiques of Glimpses of the Devil in The Journal of Religion and Health.
Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/from-the-void-podcast1430/exclusive-content
00:02 --> 00:07 [SPEAKER_00]: from the darkest reaches of space, to the deepest corners of your mind.
00:07 --> 00:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Your mind.
00:09 --> 00:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to From the Void.
00:17 --> 00:20 [SPEAKER_00]: They say evil doesn't always wear horns.
00:21 --> 00:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes, it shows up wearing a lab coat, or sitting in a church pew, or smiling behind a therapist clipboard.
00:30 --> 00:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. M Scott Peck was a best-selling author, a respected psychiatrist, and the man who brought spiritual evil into the psychological mainstream.
00:41 --> 00:46 [SPEAKER_00]: But what happens when the man who tried to diagnose evil starts seeing it everywhere?
00:47 --> 00:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Tonight we descend into the shadows of the human psyche, the battle between science and spirit, and a chilling case that even Peck couldn't explain away.
00:58 --> 01:00 [SPEAKER_00]: This is From The Void.
01:06 --> 01:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. M Scott Pack was one of the most respected psychiatrists of his time.
01:12 --> 01:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Best known for the road less traveled, his work helped millions wrestle with life, love, and spiritual growth.
01:20 --> 01:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I remember reading his seminal work for a college course I took my freshman year and learned about the concept of delayed gratification for the first time.
01:28 --> 01:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Basically the idea is that you do the things you like the very least first and save the most enjoyable for last, thus making it all the more enjoyable.
01:38 --> 01:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I believe the example he gave in the book was eating your broccoli first and saving the apple sauce for the end.
01:44 --> 01:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So basically doing the opposite of what any average child would do.
01:48 --> 01:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, Pack enjoyed a very successful career, but towards the end of it, he told the story that shocked both the medical world and the faithful.
01:58 --> 02:04 [SPEAKER_00]: He admitted that in his long career that there were cases, rare cases,
02:04 --> 02:08 [SPEAKER_00]: that resisted every psychiatric explanation that he knew.
02:08 --> 02:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Cases were the symptoms didn't match depression, schizophrenia, or epilepsy.
02:15 --> 02:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Cases that medicine alone could not touch.
02:19 --> 02:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And his 2005 book, Lymphs of the Devil, packed described two of those patients.
02:26 --> 02:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And after exhausting every possible diagnosis, he came to a startling conclusion.
02:31 --> 02:33 [SPEAKER_00]: that these were not just illnesses.
02:34 --> 02:36 [SPEAKER_00]: They might be true possession.
02:39 --> 02:42 [SPEAKER_00]: MCOTPAC did not begin his career believing in the devil.
02:42 --> 02:51 [SPEAKER_00]: As a psychiatrist, he trained in a world that plays faith and medicine in Freud and the hard science of the human mind.
02:51 --> 02:57 [SPEAKER_00]: In his early years of practice, he dismissed talk of demons and possession as superstition.
02:58 --> 03:02 [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of thing that belonged to medieval churches, not medical clinics.
03:03 --> 03:13 [SPEAKER_00]: But as the years went on, Peck found himself face-to-face with patients who suffering, defied every category, and the diagnostic and statistical manual.
03:13 --> 03:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Psychiatries Bible of mental illness.
03:17 --> 03:23 [SPEAKER_00]: They weren't schizophrenic, they weren't epileptic, they weren't delusional, and any way psychiatry could explain.
03:24 --> 03:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, the symptoms persisted.
03:28 --> 03:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Voices, contortions, a strange aversion to prayer.
03:37 --> 03:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Pek was reluctant.
03:39 --> 03:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He tried everything he knew, medications, therapy, neurological testing, but nothing worked.
03:47 --> 03:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So, as a scientist, he did what he always did.
03:51 --> 03:54 [SPEAKER_00]: He ruled out every natural cause first.
03:55 --> 04:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Only when he had eliminated every other possibility, did he allow himself to consider the unthinkable?
04:01 --> 04:07 [SPEAKER_00]: that may be, and a handful of very rare cases, possession was real.
04:10 --> 04:16 [SPEAKER_00]: When Dr. M Scott Peck began to consider the possibility of possession, he didn't rush into it.
04:17 --> 04:26 [SPEAKER_00]: He consulted, widely, he spoke with priests and exorcists, looking for guidance from traditions older than psychiatry.
04:27 --> 04:31 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the voices Peck turned to was a guy named
04:32 --> 04:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Martin was a former Jesuit priest and a scholar with a background in theology, linguistics, and biblical studies.
04:40 --> 04:48 [SPEAKER_00]: For a time, he worked in Rome, close to the Vatican, even serving as a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.
04:49 --> 04:54 [SPEAKER_00]: But Martin broke with the Jesuits in the 1960s and moved to New York.
04:55 --> 05:05 [SPEAKER_00]: There he became a prolific writer, producing works on Catholic history, papal politics, and, most famously, the paranormal.
05:06 --> 05:10 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1976, he published a book called Hostage to the Devil.
05:11 --> 05:16 [SPEAKER_00]: It told the stories of five alleged possession cases in America.
05:16 --> 05:19 [SPEAKER_00]: drawn from his claimed direct access to exorcists.
05:20 --> 05:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The book presented exorcism as not just a rare ritual, but an ongoing spiritual war.
05:27 --> 05:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And it made Martin both influential and controversial.
05:32 --> 05:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Critics accused him of dramatizing even sensationalizing his cases.
05:37 --> 05:45 [SPEAKER_00]: But for believers, hostage to the devil became a kind of handbook, a modern map of how possession looked in the late 20th century.
05:46 --> 05:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And for Dr. Peck, there's one of the key texts that frame what he might be seeing in his own patience.
05:55 --> 06:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Before we step into the exorcisms themselves, it's important to remember who Dr. M Scott Peck was beyond an author.
06:03 --> 06:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Pack wasn't a priest, he wasn't a mystic, he was a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, trained at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
06:14 --> 06:23 [SPEAKER_00]: He served as a U.S. Army psychiatrist for nearly a decade, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before entering private practice.
06:23 --> 06:31 [SPEAKER_00]: He built his reputation, not on French claims, but on bestselling books like the aforementioned The Roadless Traveled, published in 1978.
06:31 --> 06:42 [SPEAKER_00]: That book spent more than 10 years on the New York Times bestseller list, becoming a cultural touchstone for psychology and spirituality.
06:43 --> 06:50 [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, Peck was no outsider, he was mainstream, respected, and trusted.
06:51 --> 07:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what makes glimpses of the devil so haunting, because peck admits with hesitation that in a handful of cases, psychiatry simply wasn't enough.
07:04 --> 07:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Before Dr. M Scott Peck ever set foot in an exorcism, he built a process, because if he was going to consider possession at all, it had to be last resort, evidence driven, and accountable.
07:21 --> 07:43 [SPEAKER_00]: neurological workups, psychiatric evaluations, medication trials, EEGs went indicated, lab screens, collateral interviews with family and clinicians, and if a diagnosis fit, depression, psychosis, disassociation, temporal lobe epilepsy, then no exorcism.
07:43 --> 07:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Second, independent eyes.
07:46 --> 07:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Peck wouldn't work alone.
07:48 --> 08:00 [SPEAKER_00]: He favored entered disciplinary teams, a treating psychiatrist or psychologist, medical support often a physician or psych nurse, and clergy with ordinary ecclesial authority.
08:01 --> 08:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone documented independently.
08:04 --> 08:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Third, clear consent and documentation.
08:08 --> 08:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Patience or Guardians were informed that this was a religious ritual, not medical treatment.
08:14 --> 08:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Participation was voluntary.
08:16 --> 08:19 [SPEAKER_00]: No restraints unless there was an immediate safety risk.
08:20 --> 08:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Fourth, Recording and Documentation When feasible, audio, and sometimes video captured sessions, observers kept timestamp notes.
08:32 --> 08:32 [SPEAKER_00]: What was said?
08:32 --> 08:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Who said it?
08:34 --> 08:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Physiological changes, responses to prayers versus neutral conversation.
08:39 --> 08:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Fifth, environmental controls.
08:42 --> 08:44 [SPEAKER_00]: No props that invite suggestion.
08:45 --> 08:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Baseline behavior recorded before prayer begins, introduce sacred objects blind when possible, hidden versus visible.
08:54 --> 09:00 [SPEAKER_00]: To see if reactions are specific or general arousal, this is really important.
09:01 --> 09:07 [SPEAKER_00]: They would try to keep the religious objects hidden from the patient's view to see if they still had an adverse reaction.
09:08 --> 09:09 [SPEAKER_00]: If they got no reaction,
09:09 --> 09:12 [SPEAKER_00]: That would lead you to believe that they were faking it.
09:12 --> 09:13 [SPEAKER_00]: But are they still reacted?
09:14 --> 09:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Then that's a lot harder to explain away.
09:17 --> 09:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Sixth, Behavior Criteria.
09:20 --> 09:31 [SPEAKER_00]: He looked for consistency across observers, responses that were specific to sacred stimuli, and phenomena that persisted despite medication and psychotherapy.
09:31 --> 09:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The bar was high.
09:34 --> 09:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Seven, stop rules.
09:39 --> 09:46 [SPEAKER_00]: or if behavior clearly mapped to a treatable diagnosis, the ritual stopped, in the case revered it to standard care.
09:47 --> 09:55 [SPEAKER_00]: It was only when all natural explanations failed, that pack reluctantly allowed himself to join the priests.
10:01 --> 10:06 [SPEAKER_00]: The first patient's Dr. Peck wrote about under the pseudonym Jersey was a woman in her 30s.
10:07 --> 10:10 [SPEAKER_00]: She came to him with a history of depression and destructive behavior.
10:11 --> 10:16 [SPEAKER_00]: But what disturbed Peck most was how her symptoms resisted every treatment he tried.
10:17 --> 10:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Medication had no effect.
10:19 --> 10:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Therapy only seemed to scratch the surface.
10:22 --> 10:25 [SPEAKER_00]: He writes that Jersey's personality would suddenly shift.
10:26 --> 10:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Her voice would drop into something harsh, contemptuous, a sound that mocked and sneered.
10:32 --> 10:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Her face, at times, seemed to twist into what he described as mask-like expressions of hatred.
10:41 --> 10:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Packed ran every test he knew, EEGs, neurological screenings, psychiatric evaluations, no diagnosis fit.
10:50 --> 10:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So, he brought her case to the church.
10:55 --> 10:58 [SPEAKER_00]: During the exorcism, the change came fast.
10:59 --> 11:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Peck reports that when priests began their prayers, jerseys body tense violently, and then, the voice.
11:07 --> 11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: verbatim, Peck reports are saying, I've been possessed for 15 years now.
11:12 --> 11:16 [SPEAKER_00]: As if I hadn't even lived, I am still 12 years old.
11:17 --> 11:21 [SPEAKER_00]: When Peck pressed further, he asked the Presence to identify itself.
11:21 --> 11:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The response?
11:23 --> 11:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Damien.
11:26 --> 11:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The dialogue grew strange.
11:28 --> 11:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Peck recalls how the voice mocked him when he suggested Jersey join a Christian support group.
11:33 --> 11:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want her children to go to church.
11:35 --> 11:38 [SPEAKER_00]: What they need to learn is karate and self-defense.
11:39 --> 11:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Peck pushed back, telling her she had to choose truth over lies.
11:43 --> 11:47 [SPEAKER_00]: He recorded himself saying, you chose the truth over lies.
11:48 --> 11:50 [SPEAKER_00]: God is truth and truth is what is real.
11:51 --> 11:59 [SPEAKER_00]: The exorcism dragged on for hours, convulsions, guttural taunts, and sudden collapses of exhaustion.
12:00 --> 12:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, something shifted.
12:03 --> 12:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Jersey began to weep.
12:05 --> 12:08 [SPEAKER_00]: She said she felt lighter
12:09 --> 12:12 [SPEAKER_00]: In the weeks that followed, her symptoms faded.
12:12 --> 12:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Jersey herself reported feeling free.
12:16 --> 12:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Pack called this one of the only times he had witnessed what he believed was a true liberation.
12:24 --> 12:25 [SPEAKER_00]: The second patient Dr.
12:25 --> 12:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Pack wrote about, under the pseudonym Becca, was very different from Jersey.
12:31 --> 12:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Becca was in her late 40s.
12:33 --> 12:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Her history was darker.
12:35 --> 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: marked by childhood trauma, abusive relationships, and decades of depression.
12:41 --> 12:46 [SPEAKER_00]: She spoke of feeling enslaved, as though something had been with her since childhood.
12:47 --> 12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Packed, ever cautious ruled out schizophrenia, disassociation, and epilepsy.
12:53 --> 12:57 [SPEAKER_00]: He adjusted her medications, brought in independent psychiatrists.
12:57 --> 13:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing explained the persistence of her torment.
13:01 --> 13:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And so,
13:02 --> 13:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Reluctantly, he agreed to stand beside clergy as they attempted an exorcism.
13:08 --> 13:10 [SPEAKER_00]: What unfolded was grueling.
13:11 --> 13:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Pack describes Becca's sessions as chaotic, draining, and terrifying.
13:17 --> 13:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Her voice would snarl, spitting out vulgarities and blasphemies that left even pack shaken.
13:23 --> 13:29 [SPEAKER_00]: At one point, she screamed that she was beyond saving, that she belonged to the devil outright.
13:30 --> 13:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I am owned.
13:31 --> 13:34 [SPEAKER_00]: I've been owned for 40 years, and you cannot touch me."
13:35 --> 13:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Unlike Jersey, Becca did not collapse into relief.
13:39 --> 13:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, her symptoms deepened.
13:43 --> 13:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Pack noted bizarre behaviors, contorted postures, sudden violence toward herself, a refusal to pray.
13:51 --> 13:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And what disturbed him most was what he called her repossession.
13:56 --> 14:02 [SPEAKER_00]: After brief moments of calm, the voice would return, darker, more mocking.
14:04 --> 14:12 [SPEAKER_00]: In one session, Peck records the demon claiming, she is mine, she was promised, you cannot undo what has been bound.
14:13 --> 14:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Despite weeks of effort, Becca's case ended in failure.
14:18 --> 14:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Peck admitted in the book that she never found liberation.
14:30 --> 14:33 [SPEAKER_00]: To make sense of what he was seeing, Dr.
14:33 --> 14:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Pack leaned on a model of possession he adapted partly from Catholic exorcists, including Malachi Martin.
14:40 --> 14:43 [SPEAKER_00]: He described it as unfolding in six stages.
14:44 --> 14:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Stage 1 was called Presence.
14:47 --> 14:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The moment when something alien seems to reveal itself.
14:51 --> 14:55 [SPEAKER_00]: The patient may hint at a presence or an outside voice appears.
14:56 --> 14:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Stage 2, Pretense.
14:58 --> 15:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The demon hides, fakes or imitates.
15:02 --> 15:07 [SPEAKER_00]: It may pretend to be a normal psychiatric symptom, or even impersonate another voice.
15:08 --> 15:09 [SPEAKER_00]: The goal is to mislead.
15:10 --> 15:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Stage three, break point.
15:13 --> 15:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The mask cracks.
15:15 --> 15:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The hostile voice or behavior emerges more openly.
15:19 --> 15:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Often mocking or taunting the exercises.
15:22 --> 15:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Stage 4.
15:24 --> 15:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Voice.
15:25 --> 15:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The presence identifies itself.
15:28 --> 15:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes with a name, sometimes with threats or claims of ownership.
15:32 --> 15:38 [SPEAKER_00]: The speech is often profane, contemptuous, and unsettlingly coherent.
15:39 --> 15:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Stage 5.
15:40 --> 15:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Clash.
15:42 --> 15:43 [SPEAKER_00]: A direct confrontation.
15:44 --> 15:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The prayers of the
15:50 --> 15:56 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the most violent, exhausting phase, and stage six, expulsion.
15:58 --> 16:05 [SPEAKER_00]: In a successful exorcism, the presence breaks, retreats, and the patient collapses into exhaustion.
16:05 --> 16:09 [SPEAKER_00]: In rare cases, the relief is immediate and lasting.
16:11 --> 16:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Packed believe Jersey's case had reached that six stage.
16:15 --> 16:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Expulsion, liberation.
16:17 --> 16:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Rebecca's would stall out somewhere between the clash and expulsion, a battle with no victory, a war that left her broken.
16:29 --> 16:33 [SPEAKER_00]: After Jersey and Becca, Dr. M Scott Peck was changed.
16:34 --> 16:35 [SPEAKER_00]: He never claimed to be an exorcist.
16:36 --> 16:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He never said possession was common.
16:39 --> 16:43 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he wrote that in a career spanning thousands of patients.
16:43 --> 16:49 [SPEAKER_00]: He had seen only a handful of cases where psychiatric explanations simply didn't fit.
16:50 --> 16:56 [SPEAKER_00]: To pack, true possession was exceptionally rare, but he believed that it was real.
16:57 --> 17:04 [SPEAKER_00]: He warned against hysteria, against jumping to the demonic, when depression, or schizophrenia could explain the symptoms.
17:05 --> 17:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, he admitted that in those rare instances, nothing else accounted for what he had witnessed.
17:13 --> 17:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Peck's scientific mind framed possession, not a superstition, but as a frontier of psychiatry, a shadowy edge, where medicine breaks down, and mystery begins.
17:25 --> 17:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He even proposed that someday, demonology could become a formal field of study within the sciences.
17:35 --> 17:37 [SPEAKER_00]: But Peck's tone was always cautious.
17:38 --> 17:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He said his work was not proof.
17:41 --> 17:42 [SPEAKER_00]: It was testimony.
17:42 --> 17:46 [SPEAKER_00]: His clinical witness to things he couldn't otherwise explain.
17:47 --> 17:50 [SPEAKER_00]: This put him in contrast with Malachi Martin.
17:50 --> 18:17 [SPEAKER_00]: where Martin's hostage to the devil painted possession as a cosmic war with vivid theatrical detail, pecks glimpses of the devil reads like a clinical file, understated, precise, restrained, and maybe that's what makes history so haunting, because if even the most rational psychiatrist admits that sometimes medicine is not enough, then what are we left with?
18:18 --> 18:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So we can't wrap this episode without adding a little spice to the chili.
18:22 --> 18:31 [SPEAKER_00]: As I mentioned earlier in the episode, one of the largest influences on Dr. Pax exploration into exorcisms was the work of Father Malachi Martin.
18:32 --> 18:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Martin's 1976 book, Hostage to the Devil, offered five sprawling accounts of possession and modern America.
18:40 --> 18:43 [SPEAKER_00]: His tone was very different from Pax.
18:43 --> 18:46 [SPEAKER_00]: less clinical, more theatrical.
18:46 --> 18:48 [SPEAKER_00]: For some, too sensational.
18:49 --> 18:51 [SPEAKER_00]: For others, terrifyingly real.
18:52 --> 18:54 [SPEAKER_00]: For me, total nightmare fuel.
18:55 --> 18:59 [SPEAKER_00]: One of Martin's most unsettling stories was known as The Smiler.
19:00 --> 19:02 [SPEAKER_00]: It told the story of a priest.
19:02 --> 19:04 [SPEAKER_00]: intelligent, devout, respected.
19:05 --> 19:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Who Martin claimed had fallen into possession himself.
19:09 --> 19:14 [SPEAKER_00]: During the exorcism, Martin records the voice speaking through the priest with venom.
19:15 --> 19:19 [SPEAKER_00]: At one point it's neared, hear the same as me, David, father, David.
19:19 --> 19:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It mock the exorcist directly, as if to blur the line between victim and priest.
19:26 --> 19:29 [SPEAKER_00]: later the voice twisted between despair and bargaining.
19:30 --> 19:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Father David helped me not now, impossible now, too far.
19:36 --> 19:41 [SPEAKER_00]: But at the moment, it's a deal if, and then a moment of eerie nihilism.
19:42 --> 19:45 [SPEAKER_00]: After all, if I had to be exercised, you also need it.
19:46 --> 19:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps it is both of us who needed it.
19:48 --> 19:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Or perhaps, and this is a better idea, we are both beyond exorcism.
19:54 --> 20:01 [SPEAKER_00]: In Martin's telling, the demon hurled vulgarities at the clergy, taunting them with grotesque blasphemies.
20:01 --> 20:07 [SPEAKER_00]: One line reads, you'll be a hornmaster on the altar you'll lily wipe her, and you'll be afraid to confess it.
20:09 --> 20:14 [SPEAKER_00]: For Martin, this was spiritual warfare, a battle for the soul of a priest.
20:14 --> 20:22 [SPEAKER_00]: For pack, these same words might have pointed to trauma, psychosis, or disintegration of identity.
20:23 --> 20:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the critical difference, where Martin dramatized possession as a cosmic struggle, Pac-Rameen cautious, a psychiatrist who allowed for only the rarest exceptions.
20:37 --> 20:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Malachi Martin told possession stories like a battlefield, a clash of heaven and hell, painted in fire and shadow.
20:46 --> 20:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. M Scott Peck told them like a psychiatrist.
20:49 --> 20:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Careful, hesitant, anchored in the language of diagnosis.
20:55 --> 20:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But together, their voices leave us with something unsettling.
21:00 --> 21:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Martin made possession sound like a war.
21:02 --> 21:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Peck made it sound real.
21:05 --> 21:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Because here was a Harvard-Train psychiatrist, a man of science, saying that in a handful of cases,
21:15 --> 21:21 [SPEAKER_00]: That what he witnessed could not be explained by depression, schizophrenia, or epilepsy.
21:23 --> 21:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He called it possession.
21:25 --> 21:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And whether you believe that means the demonic, or simply something medicine does not yet understand, peck lent that possibility, a kind of credibility that's hard to ignore.
21:38 --> 21:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe that's what makes these stories so haunting.
21:44 --> 21:49 [SPEAKER_00]: but that they remind us how little we still know about the darkness inside the human mind.
21:50 --> 21:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Malachi Martin, painted possession as war, em Scott Peck admitted, sometimes psychiatry wasn't enough.
21:59 --> 22:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And between them were left in that uneasy space, where faith and science blur and the line between mental illness and true evil grows thin.
22:10 --> 22:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But our journey through possession stories doesn't end here.
22:14 --> 22:22 [SPEAKER_00]: There is one final case to tell, the most famous, the one that inspired the exorcist.
22:23 --> 22:29 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1949, in the quiet suburbs of St. Louis, a boy known only by a pseudonym.
22:30 --> 22:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Roland Doe became the center of a series of exorcisms that shocked priests, doctors, and journalists alike.
22:39 --> 22:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Furniture moved on its own.
22:41 --> 22:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Objects flew across rooms.
22:43 --> 22:50 [SPEAKER_00]: and in the darkness of his hospital room, witnesses wore, they saw something no science could explain.
22:52 --> 22:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Next time, the true story of Roland Doe.
22:56 --> 23:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The case that gave birth to the legend of the exorcist, in the final chapter in our possession series.
23:04 --> 23:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.