Psychiatrists From The United States

"If we attempt te deal with (human) evil by destroying it, we will also end up destroying ourselves, spiritually if not physcially. And we are likely to take some innocent people with us as well."

"Evil can be thought of as the exercise of political power — that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion in order to avoid extending oneself for the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth."

"My favorite definition of evil is that it is militant ignorance."

"Evil is that force ... residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness."

"Lying is both a cause and a manifestation of evil."

"Compartmentalization is not the root of all evil; it is, however, the principal psychological mechanism of evil. Deprive an evil man of his capacity to compartmentalize, and he will be like a general without an army. Or better yet, he will undergo a conversion to goodness — a conversion to integrity."

"Satan has no power except in a human body."

"The only power that Satan has is through human belief in its lies."

"... As (Malachi) Martin points out, it is terribly important to understand that Satan is a spirit. I have said I have met Satan, and this is true. But it is not tangible in the way that matter is tangible. It no more has horns, hooves, and a forked tail than God has a long white beard. Even the name, Satan, is just a name we have given to something bascially nameless... It is spirit."

"The only real route to peace is through self-purification. We must purge ourselves of our own pride, our need to control, and our unwillingness to suffer for the sake of others. Peacemaking begins inside each of us."

"In any case, in Vietnam it was the extraordinary power of nationalism, not communism, that brought the United States to its knees. To oppose legitimate nationalism is to do so at our peril."

"At one point I allowed myself to become involved in a project called the Peace Train. It started as a fine idea but soon began to acquire all the trappings of a cult. People were surrendering their critical judgment to the leaders and suppressing their differences for the sake of an emotional high. When I recognized what was happening, I pulled out. I had no desire to become a guru, nor to see community used as a means of control. The Peace Train itself turned out to be terribly boring. What passed for excitement was mostly posturing. I found myself dreading the meetings and relieved when it finally came to an end."

"Paraphrase: Evil is the complete absence of self-development. It is the refusal to undergo the suffering required for growth. Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love. Evil, however, is an active failure to love. It is not merely a sin of omission but of commission. The evil are people who refuse to acknowledge their own failures, who instead place the burden of their sins upon others and thereby destroy others in order to preserve their own self-image of perfection. Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in the effort to escape it."

"Paraphrase: Evil originates in failure to acknowledge one’s own pain and sin."

"Paraphrase: Since the primary characteristic of evil is laziness, and since laziness is so common, it is obvious that evil is commonplace."

"Paraphrase: I actually think that most people are consciously evil and unconsciously good. I can kind of explain why people are consciously evil, but find it much harder to explain why they are unconsciously good."

"Paraphrase: Evil has no depth. It is not creative. It is not even in the least bit interesting. It is boring. It is banal."

"Yet despite all the hype with which the candidates and the press and the networks attempt to create an entertaining spectacle out of politics, we must try to remember that politics is real. It should not be the drama of images. It is the drama of reality. Millions, billions of real lives are at stake."

"The individual with a secular consciousness essentially thinks that he is the center of the universe. Such people tend to be quite intelligent. They know full well that they are but one of six billion human beings scratching out an existence on the surface of a medium-sized planet that is a small fragment of a tiny solar system within a galaxy among countless galaxies, and that each of those other human beings also thinks that he is the center of the universe. Consequently, intelligent though they may be, people with a secular consciousness are prone to feel a bit lost within this hugeness and, despite their "centrality," to often experience a sense of meaninglessness and insignificance. The person with a sacred consciousness, on the other hand, does not think of himself as the center of the universe. For him the center resides elsewhere, specifically in God — in the Sacred. Yet despite this lack of centrality, he is actually less likely to feel himself insignificant or meaningless than the secularist is, because he sees himself existing in relationship with that Sacred Other, and it is from this relationship that he derives his meaning and significance. Sometimes people fall in between, with one foot planted in sacred consciousness and the other in secular consciousness..."

"... It is common for consciousness to be treated almost as it were a common cold, contagious or potentially deadly if one spreads deep thinking too much to those in one's environment.... Being aware is often greeted with suspicion and trepidation..."

"I see no value whatsover in unconstructive suffering."

"Paraphrase: We live in a profoundly mysterious universe, and it is a universe in which we are constantly being called to grow."

"... For the most part, we tend to label for the wrong reasons. When we use labelling to make assumptions and unjustly discriminate against others - or to make excuses for ourselves - we infer broader qualities about a person or a situation without the information necessary to support our conclusions. Sometimes, the consequences can be destructive not only to others but to ourselves."

"Paraphrase: Evil is actively opposed to love. It is not laziness but militant refusal. It is anti-love."

"There are also, I believe, good addictions of a sort, and I have been blessed (or cursed) by one of them: an addiction to consciousness."

"From my practice as a psychiatrist and my experience and observations in general, I have become familiar with the common errors related to the failure to think well. One, of course, is simply not thinking. Another is making assumptions in thinking, through the use of one-dimensional logic, stereotypes, and labelling. Another problem is the belief that thinking and communication don’t require much effort. Another is assuming that thinking is a waste of time, which is a particular factor in the quiet rage we experience around the failure to solve many social problems."

"Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?"

"If all the energy required to think seems troublesome, the lack of thinking causes far more trouble and conflict for ourselves as individuals and for the society in which we live."

"Whenever someone is bold enough to ask me, ‘Dr. Peck, what is human nature?’ my first answer is likely to be ‘Human nature is to go to the bathroom in your pants.’ ... If there is a good relationship between the child and the parent, and if the parent is not too impatient or overcontrolling (and unfortunately, these favorable conditions are often not met, which is the major reason that we psychiatrists are so interested in toilet training), then something quite wonderful happens."

"The mystery of goodness is greater than that of evil."

"Paraphrase: There is no virtue inherent in unconstructive suffering. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. If we can be open to learning from our pain, then we are truly growing; if we merely wallow in it, we are not."

"Paraphrase: Hannah Arendt has written of the ‘banality of evil.’ She was speaking of the Nazi bureaucrats who performed their monstrous duties with the same bland efficiency as they would any other job. It is a fitting phrase. Evil is banal. It is utterly unoriginal. It is simply the absence of love."

"In my practice as a psychotherapist, I would routinely tell my patients, "Psychotherapy is not about happiness; it is about power. If you go the whole route here, I cannot guarantee that you will leave one jot happier. What I can guarantee you is that you will leave more competent"."

"When I wrote The Road Less Travelled, I never gave a definition of maturity, but I did describe in the book a number of immature people. It seems to me that what most characterizes immature people is that they sit around complaining that life does not meet their demands. On the other hand, what characterizes those relative few who are fully mature is that they see life as their responsibility — even as an opportunity to meet its demands. Indeed, when we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us what we need to know on our journey of life, we begin to see life from a totally different perspective."

"I believe that the differences between those who are actively religious or spiritual and those who are not are generally not so much random as developmental."

"Again and again all of the great religions tell us that the path away from narcissism is the path toward meaning in life."

"I want to scream this from the rooftops: ‘All symptoms are overdetermined.’ Except that I want to expand it way beyond psychiatry. I want to expand it to almost everything. I want to translate it, ‘Anything of any significance is overdetermined. Everything worth thinking about has more than one cause.’ Repeat after me: ‘For any single thing of importance, there are multiple reasons.’ … Because we assume there is a reason for everything, we go looking for it when we should be looking for them."

"One of the major dilemmas we face both as individuals and as a society is simplistic thinking — or the failure to think at all. It is not just a problem, it is the problem."

"I believe that all psychological disorders are bascially disorders of consciousness. They are not rooted in the unconscious but in a conscious mind that refuses to think and is unwilling to deal with certain issues, bear certain feelings, or tolerate pain. These issues, feelings , or desires are in the unconscious only because a pain-avoiding conscious mind has thrust them there."

"Almost as horrific as evil itself is the denial of it, as in the case of those who go through life wearing rose-coloured glasses."

"I wrote of this in People of the Lie. Using My Lai as a case study, I demonstrated how evil at an institutional and group level occurs when there is a fragmentation of consciousness – and conscience."

"... We also need to become increasingly conscious to identify and relish what is good and beautiful in this life."

"Paraphrase: In theological language evil is not just a defect but a real spirit of unreality. It is that which refuses to acknowledge reality, to acknowledge truth; it is, therefore, a form of unconsciousness."

"Most people who seek psychotherapy are suffering from a sense of personal inadequacy. Yet there are always a few whose problem is just the opposite: they suffer because they cannot accept their greatness. Perhaps ten percent of my patients have had to come to terms not with their inferiority but with their superiority. To accept one's legitimate talents without guilt or fear is as much a responsibility as to accept one's faults."

"By masochism I do not mean that they (masochists) get their sexual jollies out of physical pain, but simply that in some strange way they are chronically self-destructive. Masochists are people who perpetually attempt to destroy themselves. They are always, in one way or another, trying to kill themselves. In the long run they almost always succeed. Our task in therapy is to help them empty themselves of their masochism so that life may fill them instead. The problem of masochism is intimately tied up with the problem of responsibility. Masochists are people who, because they hate themselves, believe that they are worthless and deserve only punishment. They are self-destructive because they lack the capacity to assume responsibility for their own lives. Instead of taking care of themselves, they neglect themselves, abuse themselves, and in the end destroy themselves. The genuinely disciplined person, on the other hand, is one who takes responsibility for his or her own life and well-being. Discipline is self-caring. Masochism is not. Discipline is love translated into action; masochism is love turned against the self."

"Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved."

"Laymen tend to associate sadism and masochism with purely sexual activity, thinking of them as the sexual enjoyment derived from inflicting or receiving physical pain. Actually, true sexual sadomasochism is a relatively uncommon form of psychopathology. Much, much more common, and ultimately more serious, is the phenomenon of social sadomasochism, in which people unconsciously desire to hurt and be hurt by each other through their nonsexual interpersonal relations."

"We decided to start out with questions pertaining to the origin of the cosmos, Deity, creation, and such other subjects as were far beyond the present-day knowledge of all humankind. The following Sunday several hundred questions were brought in. We sorted out these questions, discarding duplicates, and in a general way, classifying them. Shortly thereafter, the first Urantia Paper appeared in answer to these questions. From first to last, when the Papers appeared, the questions disappeared. This was the procedure followed throughout the many years of the reception of the Urantia Papers. No questions—no Papers."

"The other exception has to do with a rather peculiar case of psychic phenomena, one which I find myself unable to classify, and which I would like very much to narrate more fully …. I was brought in contact with it, in the summer of 1911, and I have had it under my observation more or less ever since, having been present at probably 250 of the night sessions, many of which have been attended by a stenographer who made voluminous notes. … This man is utterly unconscious, wholly oblivious to what takes place, and, unless told about it subsequently, never knows that he has been used as a sort of clearing house for the coming and going of alleged extra-planetary personalities. … The communications which have been written, or which we have had the opportunity to hear spoken, are made by a vast order of alleged beings who claim to come from other planets to visit this world, to stop here as student visitors for study and observation when they are en route from one universe to another or from one planet to another. … Its philosophy is consistent. It is essentially Christian and is, on the whole, entirely harmonious with the known scientific facts and truths of this age."

"Among elderly Urantians who knew Sadler, several legends have taken shape about miraculous ways in which some UB documents came into Sadler's possession. Instead of being written or spoken by Wilfred, then typed by a secretary, it is claimed that Sadler once wrote down some questions and put them in his desk drawer. The next day, to his astonishment, the questions had been mysteriously replaced by answers. … It is said that Sadler checked the handwriting against the scripts of those in the Contact Commission and the Forum. There were no matches."