I haven’t read that far into his book yet and I’m not super familiar with him, so my opinion is likely to change. From what I know so far he seems ok, but he has some pretty glaring flaws that anyone interested in his ideas should really take seriously before they go down his rabbit hole. He has discussed a lot of ideas about psychology that I find interesting. Some of them are probably true, but they’re very theoretical and not very scientific. It’s part of an approach that I think has value but we should be very careful in how much trust we put in it. Freud and Jung had the same approach to psychology back in their time and they were doing what they could using the methods of their time. They’ve largely been debunked and I think of them sort of like the Christianity of psychology. People had a lot of faith in them at one time, but people have learned and matured so they don’t rely on them as much. Christianity is probably correct about many things especially in a metaphorical way, but relying on it too much is the intellectual equivalent of living with your parents.
Peterson’s interaction with Christianity is where I have problems. From what I’ve seen he is not “promoting a Christian agenda” as regressives love to lie about. They’ve lied about him so much they’ve lost all credibility and even as someone who frequently agrees with them, I can’t trust them. Regressives view Peterson the way conservatives view Stalin. JP’s problem with Christianity is he’s an atheist who seems to be hamfisting Christian values (sans anti LGBT hatred) into atheism as a shitty way of avoiding nihilism. If that’s the case he really has failed at his own world view. His association with Jung prevents him from promoting Christianity because Jung believed in all kinds of weird new age ideas. Some of his ideas about psychology are deeply flawed, similar to how Freud over analyzed the mind and believed everyone is bisexual.
Being Polish, one of the biggest problems I have with Jordan Peterson is his repressed slavabooism and unintentional racism. Everything I have seen from him so far has shown that he is very opposed to racism and I don’t believe any of the regressive lies that he secretly supports the alt-right. However he has a very weird projection issue with the former USSR. The things he says about the USSR are wildly incorrect and nothing short of useful idiocy for the far right. The level of obsession that he has with the Soviets while believing so many far right anti Soviet lies shows a very concerning lack of self awareness. It suggests that he really hasn’t gotten a good handle on the things he lectures other people about. It reminds me of one of my friend from college who only ever had sex with his high school girlfriend and was constantly trying to be a pickup artist for inexperienced guys. Such people might not be completely useless and it might be worth listening if you can sort out the things they say -and that’s a very big if- but they’re just as likely to fill your head with bad advice because they don’t have their own house in order. One of his messages is you should put your house in order first before trying to do the same with the world, and it seems like he hasn’t done that. It’s a process that is probably never completed anyway.
It seems that he would be much better if he hadn’t gotten involved with politics and he was just a psychologist and we could just judge and discuss the ideas he proposes. Some of the things he has said make a lot of sense. Some of them get into Freudian over analysis.