Most of my blog posts are about religion/theology, social ethics, and political issues, areas in which I have studied and read about extensively. But even though I haven’t studied psychology so much, this post is about a book by M. Scott Peck, a psychotherapist who died on September 25, 2005.
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M. Scott Peck was born in May 1936. He completed his
bachelor’s degree at Harvard University in 1958 and then earned a medical
degree in 1963 from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Peck was a psychiatrist in the United States Army for nearly
10 years, and then was the director of a mental health clinic and had a private
psychiatric practice in Connecticut.
He is said to have been among the founding fathers of the
self-help genre of books. His first and most widely-read book is The Road
Less Traveled: A New Psychology Of Love, Traditional Values, And Spiritual
Growth (1978; 25th anniversary
ed., 2002). It has sold over 7,000,000 copies!
Peck’s The Road Less Traveled is a self-help book,
but it is far different from the get happy quick emphasis of so many books of
that genre. The opening sentence is, “Life is difficult.” The way to overcome
life’s difficulties is also hard. Since most people prefer easy ways, it is the
road less traveled.
Section I of Peck’s book is titled "Discipline.”
He writes, “Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s
problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing” (p. 15). The necessary discipline tools are
delaying gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth,
and balancing.
The latter refers to achieving the delicate balance between
conflicting needs, goals, duties, responsibilities, and directions that gives
us the flexibility required for successful living in all spheres of activity.
The second section of Peck’s book is “Love.” His
definition of love is, “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of
nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” And he asserts, “Love is as
love does” (pp. 81, 83).
Section III is “Growth and Religion.” Peck states
that people tend to define religion too narrowly, but he believes that everyone
has a religion. Everyone has a worldview, he says, and a person’s worldview is
that person’s religion whether he/she recognizes that fact or not.
Following the road less traveled,
it is possible, Peck declares, “to mature into a belief in God” (p. 223). In
his case, his own journey of spiritual growth led him to affirm the Christian
faith. In his second book, People of the Lie (1983; 2nd ed., 1998), he wrote,
After many years of vague identification with Buddhist and Islamic mysticism, I ultimately made a firm Christian commitment—signified by my non-denominational baptism on the ninth of March 1980 (p. 11).
The fourth section of Peck’s book is “Grace.” On the
opening page of that section, he begins with four verses of “Amazing Grace,”
which he calls an “early American evangelical hymn.”**
In this section Peck asserts, “Spiritual growth is the
evolution of an individual,” and “God is the goal of evolution.” Further, God
is also “the source of the evolutionary force” (pp.
263, 270). God wants us to grow into mature, loving people—and assists us
in that process. That is God’s grace.
But sadly, humans often resist grace. Peck says that the
reason for that resistance is laziness, which, interestingly, he says is the
“original sin” of us humans.
The last subsection of the book is “The Welcoming of Grace,”
and there Peck avers that “our human growth is of the utmost importance to
something greater than ourselves. This something we call God” (p. 311).
Jesus sadly said, “the road is hard that leads to
life, and there are few who find it” (Matt. 7:14).
Yet those who walk up the road less traveled,
welcoming grace rather than resisting it, experience a joyful, meaningful life
for themselves and a life of loving service to others. How amazing is God’s
grace!
_____
** On
Sept. 12, Christianity Today posted an
informative/inspirational article titled “We’ve Sung ‘Amazing Grace’ for
250 Years. We’ve Only Just Begun.”
A fine description of "The Road less Traveled." One time when I was in Tokyo during the late 80's probably, I had an extra day that I spent in the Mission's guest apartment reading "The Road Less Traveled." After I finished it, I thought, "Wow, that says all I need to know. From now on I should just review Peck's book." Of course I went on reading other books, including Peck's "People of the Lie." It also was an eye-opener for me. I had long wondered why there were so many, many splits in religions and in churches. Peck said since Satan is devious in his work, wouldn't the least obvious and most effective place for him to work would in be the church, causing arguments and friction and dividing people? That made sense to me and largely answered the question I had wondered about for a long time.
ReplyDeleteI recall the popular sensation Peck’s book created. I associated it tangentially with the late Jesus Movement and the emergence of pop Christian music—‘‘twas the times! TRLT was one of the life—redirecting books for me, along with the CS Lewis and Tolkien works! Peck did touch the nerve of need.
ReplyDeleteThanks, "Anonymous" (and I wish I knew who you are). I had never thought of Peck being connected with the Jesus Movement or Christian pop music. After all, Peck was 42 years old when "The Road Less Traveled" was published--and as I remember the 1970s, that's when many people in their late teens or early 20s said never trust people over 30. But Peck's book did not become a best seller until six years after it was published--and then according to the Guiness Book of World records, "The longest duration on the New York Times best-seller list is that for 'The Road Less Traveled' by M. Scott Peck, which on 14 Apr 1995 had its 598th week on the lists." My guess is that many of the Jesus Movement people and those who listened to Christian pop music in the 1970s read Peck's book in the 1980s and 1990s.
DeleteThank you for capturing so well key points of Scott Peck's work, which for me also was a formative read. His chapter on love ought to be read by every modern person. We know that Hollywood notions of love are vacuous, but how to define a more mature understanding? Peck's definition of love as "the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth" is startlingly simple, with many implications.
ReplyDeleteI was working in a number of church fights over the time his book "People of the Lie" came out. I was taken aback by the experience that several times within a year, people sidled up to me in the course of my facilitation work, saying, essentially, "You know Scott Peck's book on People of the Lie? Our problem here is that we have some of those truly evil people in our church." Of course, the evil was always on the other side of the issue, not their own.
I came to the conclusion that the world would have been better served by that book not being published. Conceptually, it's conjectural to give as much ontological weight and reality to willful forces of evil, as Peck does. And even if we accept his conceptual proposals, I think it's pretty hard for human beings in our current spiritual state to constructively handle the notion that there are evil humans afoot around us. We are too quick to take the handle and deploy it superficially as a tool for battle against those we disagree with. We need to be quite far along in the disciplines and practices of examining ways in which we ourselves get caught up and participate in evil dynamics before we start sharpening conceptual tools for naming evil in others. I think this book encourages a sort of spiritual shortcutting that ultimately is more damaging than helpful.
Thanks, Ron, for your thought-provoking comments. I certainly agree that "Love," the second section of his book, should be read by "every modern person." (Of course, I think the same about sections one, three, and four.)
DeleteWhile I re-read some of the first three sections of "The Road Less Traveled" in preparation for writing this blog post, I read all of "Grace," the fourth and last section of the book. But I have not read "People of the Lie" since the 1980s. I can certainly imagine people saying what they did about "People of the Lie," as you reported. But perhaps the words of the "overview" of the book (on Barnes & Noble's website) are also applicable to them: "People who are evil attack others instead of facing their own failures. Peck demonstrates the havoc these people of the lie work in the lives of those around them."
With regard to your last paragraph, it seems to me we humans, even today, need to be fully aware of the reality of evil in our world and even in ourselves. In "God of Grace and God of Glory, Harry Emerson's outstanding hymn written in 1930, are the words, "Lo, the hosts of evil ‘round us / Scorn Thy Christ, assail His ways." It seems to me that in many ways the "hosts of evil" are as prevalent today as they were then. Certainly, we shouldn't see evil as only being present in those we don't like or disagree with; rather, we should be like the Twelve when Jesus told them that one of them would betray him. According to Matt. 26:22,
"each of them began to say to Him, 'Lord, is it I?'"
I fully agree with Ron regarding the second book on people of the lie. I found Peck's "The Road Less Traveled" marvelous and insightful. However, I saw a red flag when somewhere in there where he intimidated that it might have helped a client had he had sex with one. Then later in his lucrative life he turned to evangelical Christianity, and, of course, it came out ultimately that his own life had veered off the road apparently on more than one occasion. Wikipedia indicates this with this sentence: "While Peck's writings emphasized the virtues of a disciplined life and delayed gratification, his personal life was far more turbulent. For example, in his book In Search of Stones, Peck acknowledged having extramarital affairs and being estranged from two of his children." Two works are cited for that claim, neither of which I've read.
ReplyDeleteI'd be the first to say that most of us preachers, when we preach, are preaching to ourselves, and I suspect that The Road Less Traveled" was one long sermon to Peck himself. And an excellent one at that. It would be a logical fallacy to dismiss truth because the source is fundamentally flawed. Whatever he had to say of insight and wisdom are to be appreciated and valued.
In the end, though, when it comes to talking about grace, I find Anne Lamott's ruggedly honest and less evangelically ontological memoirs far more comforting and inspiring.
Thanks for your comments, Anton. I knew from the Wikipedia article that he had
Delete"veered off the road" he wrote about, but I missed seeing the reference in "The Road Less Traveled" that caused you to see a "red flag." (Could you indicate a page number, of the subsection that statement is in?)
But according to what Peck wrote in the beginning of "People of the Lie." He was baptized in 1980, which was before he began to live a "lucrative life" any (or much) more than he would have had as a practicing psychiatrist up until then. His book did not make the bestseller list until 1984, six years after it was published--which makes it all the more remarkable that it remained on that list for 598 weeks, as mentioned above. I assume that most of the 7,000,000 copies sold were sold by 1995, so he was doubtlessly quite wealthy by then--but that was 15 years after his baptism.
And I don't know that it is a fact that he "turned to evangelical Christianity." In a length article, Encyclopedia.com states that Peck "was baptized by a Methodist minister in an Episcopalian convent, a place he had frequently used as a retreat." (That article also says that by 1983, "the book finally entered the all-important New York Times best-seller list, where it remained for 694 weeks, or more than 13 years," and eventually the book sold more than ten million copies.) And in an article titled "M. Scott Peck: Traveling Down the Wrong Road," posted on the conservative evangelical website of Christian Research Institute, says that Peck "was discipled by a Roman Catholic nun." (I would like to know more about his church affiliation/attendance after his baptism.)
Allow me to add an anecdote: For six years I pastored a small church in a small town (pop. c. 1500) in northern Indiana. It had seven churches, and mine was the only one not fundamentalist-evangelical. Every year we held a joint interdenominational service (maybe for Thanksgiving, but I'm not sure of my memory about this). One year it was at the United Pentecostal church, and that pastor indicated at the very beginning of the sermon or in the title that he was preaching about the devil's work in the world. It gave me the opportunity to do a little mental experiment. With each mention of the devil or satan, I mentally plugged in "social forces." It turned out fully workable in every instance.
ReplyDeleteAs he often does, Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago shares thoughtful comments:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for your brief summary of Peck's book, a book I have not read, although I have heard of it.
"Discipline is certainly a critical part of spiritual growth, specifically self-discipline, which is much more effective than externally imposed discipline. One needs to internalize his or her moral principles.
"Love and compassion are also necessary, and they can be both the prerequisites and the products of spiritual growth. I did not see the term 'humility,' although I suspect Peck discusses it in his book. There is a close connection of humility with compassion and self-discipline.
"Everyone has a worldview, although I would define religion more narrowly than just having a worldview. Not everyone is religious and some non-religious people have attained a great sense of compassion and humility, although most people need the structure provided by religion for this. Unfortunately, there are some toxic religious beliefs (e.g., Christian nationalism) which can lead people astray.
"Victor Frankl, in his book 'Man's Search for Meaning,' as you are aware, said that we need to live for something beyond ourselves. Peck would agree, as would I, and say that something is God. Frankl might include other possibilities, although how one understands God may include some of those possibilities.
"That the road is hard, and that there are few who find it, is true enough. To a considerable extent, our personalities are determined by genetics and external environmental factors, and these may simply prevent many people from being disposed to pursue a path of spiritual growth. They must be treated with compassion as well."
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Eric. Let me respond briefly to just your fourth paragraph. He does not cite Paul Tillich regarding this point, although he does refer to Tillich a bit later. However, his idea is similar to Tillich's contention that faith is a person's "ultimate concern." It seemed to me when I re-read that section of Peck's book recently, that he was using "worldview" as being whatever a person considers most important, thus their ultimate concern; consequently, it is their religion. So, yes, this is a broader view of religion than is generally accepted, but I think there is validity in what Peck writes about this.
DeleteIf our reading is limited to only books written by authors who lived impeccably moral lives, there wouldn't be very many books left to read.
ReplyDeleteFacebook friend Ed Costin, from my home county in northwest Missouri, posted the following comments on Facebook after I linked to this blog article there:
ReplyDeleteThe thing that jumped out to me in the discussion on your blog page was the subject of a “world view.” I’ve often bristled at this term, as I don’t think it applies to everyone. Those that proffer the notion of a “world view” like to make the assertion that everyone has one, and that if you say you don’t, THAT’S your “world view” (which is a cop out, and an argument I refute on its face), and that it is entirely independent of the concept of “figure and ground,” or basically, “context.”
Figure and ground are concepts essential to Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase, “The Medium is the Message.” Basically, it posits that any “figure” (i.e. “message”) must be viewed in the context of its “ground” (i.e. “medium”) in order to gather information, or “meaning.” And of course, I believe everything must be examined through the lens of its medium.
I don’t really have any strong opinions on the work itself (I have NOT read it, other than from a college advisor, who handed out copies of the first chapter to all his advisees!) other than the implied notion that human happiness is dependent upon “spirituality.”
Without getting into what “spirituality” is or means, let’s just say I don’t think we should invest everything we believe in ANYTHING that is presented to us in a certain way, under the assumption it MUST be interpreted that way, and that no other way of interpreting it is correct in general. Not to suggest that as a “trait” across the board to ANYONE, but most religions seem to kind of offer up pretty much a singular message, in essence.
And of COURSE religious faith is based on interpretation through a medium. Where in the world would Christianity be, for instance, without the Bible? The Christian faith CERTAINLY wouldn’t have the widespread popularity it has today, especially if compared to other religions that DID have mediums other than the “Oral Tradition,” such as Islam and the Koran.
And in reality, EVERYTHING we interpret as “reality” today comes to us through a message, with the mediums of social media and the Internet compounding the problem exponentially on a daily basis. The relentless pursuit of Internet fame by our youth has become the newest “deadly sin!”
To drive the point home without rambling on too much, I present a classic example of “figure” and “ground” through the lens of McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” theme. It is a picture of two paintings, presented side-by-side, each with two small triangles on a field of grey. (Al Held, “The Big N,” https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78795)
The painting on the left is presented without a frame, it’s simply two small triangles on a vast field of grey. In other words, it is a “message,” void of a “medium.” You might think of this as the pure and untouched “Word of God” before man solidifies it in writing.
The painting on the right is surrounded by a wide, white border, which frames the two triangles at the upper- and lower-most boundaries. When viewed through the “medium” of the framed picture, the two triangles and field of grey create a juxtaposition of focus in the eye, and create the very subtle, yet quite noticeable “message” of a capital “N.” Think of this as the “Word of God” after it has been captured by man in the “medium” of the Bible.
[to be continued]
[continued from above]
ReplyDeleteI guess what I’m saying is, I simply don’t think happiness in life is dependent upon interpreting the messages of the world around us through a prescribed “world view” as defined by others. In a sense, I guess you could liken me to Luther’s chastisement of the Church for the promotion of “indulgences” to buy your way into heaven. My happiness doesn’t require my adherence to someone else’s idea of what happiness is!
If one INSISTS I have a “world view,” I would emphasize that the label created for me cannot be defined, because it is constantly changing as I gather new information over time and assimilate it into what I already know about the world.
I will say I agree wholeheartedly that “life is difficult,” but I do NOT accept the idea that simply acknowledging this suddenly makes life any less difficult!
Ed, in your fourth paragraph, you write, “I don’t think we should invest everything we believe in ANYTHING that is presented to us in a certain way.” Let me suggest that that statement is, surely, a part of your worldview, to use that term you do not like. As I understand it, and I think Peck’s understanding is quite similar, one’s worldview is simply the basic way a person sees and understands the world that he/she is in. A worldview is the “lens” (or lenses) through which we make sense of that which is (=reality). I have often referred to those lenses as our basic presuppositions. While there is great variety in the content of such presuppositions, it is universally true that everyone has some basic presuppositions. (At least, that is one of my basic presuppositions!)
DeleteI am not well-versed in McLuhan’s assertion that “the medium is the message,” but I was in graduate school when his book Understanding Media was published in 1964, and most likely I heard of it at least by the following year. I think his assertion is an important one that must be taken seriously, but, to be honest, I don’t see it being highly applicable to Peck’s central point(s).
You wrote, “And of COURSE religious faith is based on interpretation through a medium. Where in the world would Christianity be, for instance, without the Bible?” That certainly is true. But “religion” (or “worldview”) as depicted by Peck is acquired more by direct mental activity that often is not dependent on any media. For example, Peck makes little reference to the Bible, and many “Bible-believing” conservative Christians have been critical of him for his ideas that seem to them to be contradictory to the Bible.
I had ever heard of Al Held and “The Big N,” and as I am running out of time, I will not make any comment about his intriguing paintings.
Two brief comments about your last two paragraphs: worldviews are never static. They change as a person’s experiences change or as they grow to embrace new understandings of reality.
Then regarding “life is difficult,” the first sentence in Peck’s book: You wrote, “I do NOT accept the idea that simply acknowledging this suddenly makes life any less difficult.” I think that is certainly true. But Peck’s point, with which I agree, is that full realization that life is difficult can and should lead us humans to embark on the road toward growth that increasingly makes life less difficult. (And since so many fail to exert the discipline necessary to embark on that road, it is “the road less traveled.”) It’s all right if you don’t want to call that “spiritual growth,” but in my view (which I think is also Peck’s) any growth that helps us become better human beings is “spiritual” growth.
Ed responded to my reply with the following comments:
DeleteYour response is enlightening, as much of my hardened and rigid views are the direct (and unchangable) result of my ASD-1 (Asperger's syndrome), so often I have to just have things laid out for me in order to fully understand and process them.
I want to respond with more detail later, but for now, what jumped out to me was the search for spirituality, so to speak. Sometimes I think I come across as vehemently "Anti-God," which is NOT the case, I'm just mostly "Anti-RELIGION," subtle but important distinction.
And you're right, I DO and AM continuously seeking spiritual growth, when you break it down to what that actually means. To me, it means always seeking to learn and understand more about the world in which we exist. This includes, to no small extent, the exploration and assimilation of new information, knowledge, and ideas into our existing realm of reality.
This is going to sound like a non sequitur, which is why I need to respond more meaningfully later, but the first thing that pops into my head on the subject of seeking spirituality is this obscure subject I first read about in high school, when I thought I wanted to be a nuclear engineer (boy, was THAT a bad call, heh-heh! 😉): "The Elusive Neutrino"
The neutrino is a quantum physics term describing one of a small number of "elementary particles" that comprise the sub-atomic world. Others include electrons, quarks, and photons, and the notorious bosons and higgs particles, which comprise the so-called "God particle." That name alone indicates the significance of these largely misunderstood particles as unknowable in the affect and control they have over our observance of the world.
But singling out the neutrino, let's just consider what this tiny little thing really is. It's a subatomic particle that has existed and been essential to the expansion and growth of the universe (and subsequent life on Earth) from the beginning. And yet we just began to learn of its significance and how it affects everyday life in the 1980s.
For BILLIONS of years, this unknown force in the universe (call it a "god" if you like) has dictated the very nature by which ALL elements interact, thus affecting not only life, but every interaction of every element in the universe, everywhere, all the time, forever!! And guess what ELSE it can do? It can violate Newton's laws of physics as we understand them on Earth, and literally REMOVE energy from a closed system, completely undetected.
To be more specific, we've learned that a nuclear power plant that generates electricity can lose up to 10-15% of it's total energy, which are absorbed by neutrinos, and carried out of the closed system without ever representing any measurable mass or energy level as it happens. In other words, about 12% of energy -- which Newtonian physics states can NEVER be lost -- IS lost to these unknown, invisible elementary particles that we are most certainly DECADES away from understanding.
My point is, is THAT "God?" Because I really do think THAT is the realm in which it (god) exists. I do believe "it" is out there, I just think it resides somewhere in these elementary particles, of which we have only the most elementary understanding, even after a few hundred years of the learned knowledge and information we've gleaned thus far in our 100s of 1000s of years of existence on this little rock we call home.