The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

by M. Scott Peck

As a psychiatrist, I feel it is important to mention at the outset two assumptions that underlie this book. One is that I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth. They are one and the same.

So it is in good parenting as well as in good psychotherapy. The same bracketing and extension of ourselves is involved in listening to our children. To respond to their healthy needs we must change ourselves. Only when we are willing to undergo the suffering of such changing can we become the parents our children need us to be. And since children are constantly growing and their needs are changing, we are obliged to change and grow with them.

To fail to confront when confrontation is required for the nurture of spiritual growth represents a failure to love equally as does thoughtless criticism or condemnation and other forms of active deprivation of caring. If they love their children parents must, sparingly and carefully perhaps but nonetheless actively, confront and criticize them from time to time, just as they must allow their children to confront and criticize themselves in turn.

No marriage can be judged truly successful unless husband and wife are each other’s best critics.

I don’t want to give up, but I sure as hell am puzzled about you, and I wonder until I’m almost crazy as to what the hell is wrong in our work together.” A glowing smile came over Helen’s face. “You really do care for me after all,” she said. “Huh?” I asked. “If you didn’t really care for me you wouldn’t feel so frustrated,” she replied, as if it were all perfectly obvious.

Hindu gurus frequently make no bones about the fact that their love is the source of their power.22 But the closest Western literature comes to the issue are those articles that attempt to analyze differences between successful and unsuccessful psychotherapists and usually end up mentioning such characteristics of successful psychotherapists as “warmth” and “empathy.” Basically, we seem to be embarrassed by the subject of love.

a totally uncredentialed and minimally trained lay therapist who exercises a great capacity to love will achieve psychotherapeutic results that equal those of the very best psychiatrists.

How can I be a good friend, father, husband or son unless I take the opportunities that are available to attempt, with whatever artistry I can command, to teach my beloved what I know and give whatever assistance is in my power to give to his or her personal journeys of spiritual growth? Moreover, I expect the same services from my friends and family to the limits of their ability.

the most important part of our culture is our particular family. The most basic culture in which we develop is the culture of our family, and our parents are its “culture leaders.” Moreover, the most significant aspect of that culture is not what our parents tell us about God and the nature of things but rather what they do—how they behave toward each other, toward our siblings and, above all, toward us.

the discipline of scientific method begins with experience, simple experience itself is not to be trusted; to be trusted, experience must be repeatable, usually in the form of an experiment; moreover, the experience must be verifiable, in that other people must have the same experience under the same circumstances. The key words are “reality,” “examination,” “knowledge,” “distrust,” “experience,” “discipline.” These are words we have been using all along. Science is a religion of skepticism.

science itself, as I have suggested, is a religion. The neophyte scientist, recently come or converted to the world view of science, can be every bit as fanatical as a Christian crusader or a soldier of Allah.

Because of this attitude many scientists exclude from their serious consideration all matters that are—or seem to be—intangible. Including, of course, the matter of God.