M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled

M. Scott Peck, M.D. wrote The Road Less Traveled base on his life experience and as a psychiatrist that he learned from helping his patients. The book he inscribed contains a well written and insightful thoughts that any individual can use to advance in self-improvement in oneself. The book is broken up in four sections. The four sections are call Discipline, Love, Growth and Religion, and Grace. The author use these four sections to help the readers guide in one’s critical examination of oneself. The first section is call Discipline. M. Scott Peck (2002) defines discipline as “…the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing” (p.15). This idea is a good tool to solve problems in everyday

This decision is chain reaction of starting a mental illness. Dr. Scott Peck (2002) says that “This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness” (p. 16-17). Once one have the mental illness, then a person is capable of damaging oneself in this state of mind. This doctor gives the readers solutions. One solution is to delay gratification. “Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with” (Peck ,2002, p. 19). The doctor’s solution is to handle the pain first. One must never try to avoid pain, but one must find a way to handle the pain in tolerable ways. The rest of the section is how this doctor discuss ways to how to handle the pain in different ways, so the blockage of mental health can be unblock, and then life can continue on as healthy as

M. Scott Peck reveals his idea about grace. “…a powerful force originating outside of human consciousness which nurtures the spiritual growth of human beings” (Peck, 2002, p. 260). This section is more focus on the author’s personal belief in his spiritual beliefs and ideas. This section is focus on the big questions, such as “Why does God want us to grow?” (Scott, 2002, p. 269). People do not want to work hard to find these answers. These are personal answers, so these questions can only be answer individually. The theme continues to be work hard to find these answers. The author offers this idea, “…For no matter how much we may like to pussyfoot around it, all of us who postulate a loving God and really think about it eventually come to a single terrifying idea: God wants us to become Himself” (Scott, 2002, p. 269-270). These thoughts are grand, but this is the weakest of the sections due to the fact that this section contains more about the author’s ideas then to patience he work with