Exorcism?

[The Grand Nudger]

   I totally agree that there are so many other subjects in this life to be interested in. But if you will just look at the number of Hollywood movies on the subject you can see that the majority of people seem to be interested in these subjects rather than not.

You may be mistaken.  Devils and possession present themselves as gimmicks or props in those movies and in our folk tales about them.  We're interested in the human drama of the movie, in the conclusion of the fable in our lived experience.  Cultures that don't believe in demons or your devil sub in other creatures and entities and nonentities too to the same end, though the idea of how a possessed person would behave changes too..as do ideas about what taboo and virtue means in the context of the tale... and we love those stories as well.  It's not the specific cast of characters that keeps drawing us back - those change from culture to culture, across time within cultures..and ofc from movie to movie or story to story.  

   Personally, I choose to leave the subject aside because it’s negative, scary and misleading. In organized religions this theme is used to scare and terrorize people so that out of the fear of these supernatural creatures they will be willing to keep practicing outdated religious rituals and keep believing whatever stuff their Rabi / Priest or Imam is feeding them.

Sure, operant conditioning and cautionary tales.  

   But this guy is different (I mean Scott Peck). When I find people who have intelligent theories on a phenomenon that we all know exists in this world even if there has been no verifiable observation just yet, I tend to read these works.

The phenomena of moral evil or moral failure.  The phenomena of things that go bump in the night?  The phenomena of people blaming their moral evil and failures for things that go bump in the night?

Or do you mean demons and gods and supernatural possessions?
 

  Another important point is that there are all sort of misleading works on the subject. In “People of the Lie – The Hope for Healing Human Evil” Scott peck is event pointing out to the fact that “possessed” people are usually people who messed with some occult practices at some point in their lives. He also states that true possession is a rather rare phenomenon.  So this reminds me of some Laveyan writings I had come upon many years ago. These occult approaches are romanticizing the “rebel” nature of Satan and are using to create another distorted picture of the phenomenon of Evil and or “Father of the Lie” as Scott Peck defines it.

First of all, I doubt this claim that such people are usually people who've messed with occult practices, the author's "usually" is unlikely to hold up to rigorous scrutiny - but on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised at all that people who report being possessed by some evil are already conditioned to believe as much or expressing themselves that way.  In this "occult practices".... a weasel term if ever there were one... are not causal but contemporaneous.   People who think demons are real and possess people are also more likely believe occult practices are real and effective.  Part and parcel.

   And the guy he is referring to for deeper study is Malachi Martin and the book is called “Hostage to the Devil”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachi_Martin

   So if we are to refuse an idea, isn’t it better to first try to understand it correctly?

   Again: I don’t believe that typical religious belief and/or popular culture understands this issue in the right manner. Which is why I will recommend this book to anyone who might be interested in the subject. 

Do you mean understand exorcism as primitive psychotherapy or understanding ghosts and goblins walking around in edgar suits?