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Nowadays persons who still take the ancient institution of Satan seriously tend to set little store by the rather less weathered structure of psychology. And those who pursue the science of man's behavior generally cannot quite stomach the classic struggle between the forces of Good and Evil. This mutual indigestion so often caused by the typically fragmented thought of our time is perhaps only a transient victory for our present subject, whose “cleverest wile” according to Baudelaire, “is to convince us that he does not exist.”
It is worth noting that psychology and Satanic lore are no less than cousins, with a common ancestor in the religio-philosophy of early western culture. This kinship cannot be furtively dismissed as simply a rather dubious and embarrassing historical accident. The relationship is, on the contrary, wholly natural and legitimate. Both are products of man's struggle to understand himself. Both have been primarily influenced by Greek, Hebraic, and Christian ethics and tradition. The branching apart of the family tree began with the separation of philosophy and religion, the result of man's increased intellectualization of the problems he sought to solve. Psychology is usually recognized as a direct descendant of philosophy, vitalized by the development of scientific method to build bigger and better, though amoral, microscopes under which to examine the nature of man. The ideas of Satan, on the other hand, grew through the mythology and sacred writings of the non-scientific world and were always closely related to the emotional life of the people, to their ideas of right and wrong.
Satan and psychology have perhaps one more characteristic in common, that of understanding more about the weaknesses than the strengths of man. Satan has the advantage here, for he thinks and acts as if he knows the difference between good and evil and thus utilizes the multiple force of integrated effort and goal-directedness. Psychology, on the