Book Review: The Road Less Travelled by M Scott Peck
A deeper journey into the understanding and practice of love
“Life is difficult.”
Our problems arise from the fact that we do not expect life to be difficult and we feel it should not be so. By avoiding our problems, we create more stress and pain for ourselves and others. In The Road Less Travelled, Peck makes an enlightened case for why we ought to go through the pain of facing and solving our problems. It is through this process that we grow mentally and spiritually, and develop deeper relationships with our loved ones. The book is intended for partners working through emotional challenges and also serves as a resource for parents to gain psychological insight into raising stable and emotionally secure children.
M Scott Peck was an American practicing psychiatrist. The Road Less Travelled is his first book, which draws on case studies from his private practice in Connecticut. The book had a slow reception upon its initial publication in 1978 but has since developed a devoted following. Peck went on to write over ten books along the lines of psychiatry, spirituality, Christian teachings and even some fiction. His Guardian obituary in 2005 notes that while Peck “advocat[es] self-discipline, restraint, and responsibility… qualities he openly acknowledged were notably lacking in himself,” he himself lived a vivid life coloured by adultery, divorce, and estrangement from his children.
Situated upon the tenets of spiritual and Christian traditional values, this book’s heteronormative focus and emphasis on legally bound marriage feels limiting, especially when Peck posits an open marriage as the healthiest form of marriage without any elaboration. The secular reader must therefore separate the underlying values and ethics espoused by the author from the undeniable merits of the book’s message. Peck also reframes mental illness as a wake-up call from the unconscious mind signalling the conscious mind, which holds some sway but must also be addressed as a risky viewpoint that oversimplifies complex psychological issues. Despite these limitations, Peck blends his personal insight and clinical experience into an erudite and compassionate guide for individuals seeking to deepen their understanding and practice of love.
How we are loved shapes how we love. Therefore, Peck offers a two-pronged analysis of the action of loving. The first examines the influences in our upbringing that shape how we seek to be loved. The second focuses on the importance of parenting, as Peck writes, “the child who is not loved by his parents will always assume himself or herself to be unlovable rather than see the parents as deficient in their capacity to love.”
Peck frames love as a conscious decision and an act of will, which makes it empowering. He states, “real love often occurs in a context in which the feeling of love is lacking, when we act lovingly despite the fact that we don’t feel loving.” By this logic, falling in love is not an act of will and therefore, is not real love. Peck notes that while we can’t choose to fall in love, we can choose how to respond, and this is where discipline begins. Real love, he writes, is a “permanent self-enlarging experience. Falling in love is not.”
In order to develop our ability to love, Peck offers four tools or techniques for addressing life’s problems, which are simple, direct and powerful: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing. He then examines the nature of the motivation to use these tools, which, he states, is love.
Delaying gratification entails confronting a problem by putting aside something pleasurable or less painful in favour of working through something painful. He writes, “it is choosing to suffer now in the hope of future gratification rather than choosing to continue present gratification in the hope that future suffering will not be necessary.” This includes taking responsibility for oneself and committing to truth.
In his explanation on why truth matters, Peck writes, “truth is reality.” Stating the obvious, he notes that those who live in truth “do not have to slink around in the shadows. They do not have to construct new lies to hide old ones.” He offers a revealing psychological analysis of those who lean on lies to make their way through the world, noting that passive-dependent individuals who feel starved of love are constantly ‘scrounging’ for it and struggle to feel whole. In drawing a connection between an adult’s upbringing and their ability to love, he contends that children raised in environments where love is absent or inconsistently given often grow up struggling to develop a sense of inner completeness. It is these individuals that can lack self-discipline. Unable or unwilling to delay gratification in their craving for attention, he writes that “in their desperation to form and preserve attachments,” they abandon honesty altogether.
He also challenges misconceptions of love by addressing what love is not — this is particularly useful. Overprotecting or denying someone the freedom to exercise their own judgment and abilities hinders rather than supports their growth. Peck contends that to withhold any part of the truth is a moral decision that must take into account the well-being of our interlocutor, rather than adopting a perspective that only benefits the speaker of the lie. Even white lies which are considered socially acceptable can, in fact, create superficial relationships and do more damage by denying the other party the chance to grow. We tend to underestimate rather than overestimate someone else’s potential for growth. Therefore, we must ask: can our interlocutor use the truth for his or her own spiritual growth?
Another common misconception lies in equating dependency with love. Peck defines dependency as “the inability to experience wholeness or to function adequately without the certainty that one is being actively cared for by another,” He labels this a form of parasitism and reminds us that true love is “an extension of the self rather than a sacrifice of the self.”
Peck does not address the idea of mutuality or reciprocity in relationships. I find this an egregious oversight. A partnership can only be healthy if both individuals are equally engaged in putting in the work of maintaining the relationship. While he states that love is not about self-sacrifice, he does not discuss how only one individual’s practice of the healthy tenets of love becomes grounds for a one-sided dynamic. There’s a fine line between being a loving partner and losing one’s boundaries by accepting less than one deserves while continuing to give love unconditionally.
On the other hand, genuine love contains commitment and an exercise of wisdom. Peck likens it to the relationship between a therapist and patient. A commitment is required for safety, regularity and to demonstrate over a period of time that there is steadfast caring on the part of the therapist. Peck feels this is no different from a marriage. Yet, there are concerning passages where he considers the idea of a sexual relationship between the therapist and patient and argues that, theoretically, even this would be acceptable if it served the patient’s growth. He then goes on to say that he cannot imagine such a situation arising. It is odd that he posits a scenario which he himself refutes.
While there is much to learn from this book, it is ultimately the study of marriage and does not adapt itself to other forms of relationships. Peck is egalitarian in his views, but his descriptions of the division of responsibilities and roles in the home and family sometimes lean on stereotypical gender roles. For example, he describes the women’s role as being the homemaker while the man goes out to earn a living. Yet, in one excellent suggestion to avoid dependency in couple-hood, he advises couples to swap responsibilities from time to time. If one partner takes care of the finances and bills while the other cares for the home, let the other take on the task of handling finances so that, when the time comes for one to live without the other, a method of self-sufficiency has been established.
Peck’s view on marriage contains one final, huge gap that he fails to address. He states that through his study and practice, he arrives at the conclusion that the healthiest form of marriage is an open marriage, but he doesn’t offer any further explanation. One could draw the conclusion that he arrived at this viewpoint from the context of his own life and fallible actions but it is hard to situate this in his overall analysis without any insight into his thinking.
Apart from such oversights in his study, Peck offers a clear roadmap to a deeper understanding of love. By removing our internal barriers to being loving, we create the space to receive it in abundance. The Road Less Travelled offers a framework for commitment and an ongoing practice of love that has the potential to open our hearts and tap into depths we didn’t know existed.
The Road Less Travelled: The New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
by M Scott Peck
320 pages, Simon & Schuster, 1978
Rs 250/ USD 22
Excellent review! The lack of adaption to different forms of relationships but concluding the healthiest to be an open marriage is a huge gap. One that would benefit greatly from further exploration.