The Road Less Traveled Book Summary

"The road less traveled"

Reviewed by Arlinda Cera Epoka University

Professor Timothy Hagen

BINF 1, BUS 108

M. Scott Peck (Simon & Schuster Publisher, US, 1988) pp 316, ISBN : 978-9928-02-624-8

In his book, Scott Peck brings into attention the Spiritual Growth, focusing mostly on ideas about love and relationships. The title of the book itself is as suggestive as glamorous at the same time, inviting you to a road that you can rarely go through. The reader suddenly finds himself as a participant in the road of self-raising. Since the aim of the author is to provide you help by understanding the meaning of things, this is considered a self- help book. The author gives suggestions about how to face our difficulties and that suffering

Peck say "Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems." So, as we can see, the author gives the discipline a key role in dealing with difficulties. It is up to us what amount of discipline we decide to use. This is related with our willingness to solve the problems. In this part, Peck emphasizes the role of parents as decisive in the formation of their children's personality. Discipline is related with the acceptance of responsibility. There are two opposite disorders of responsibility: neurosis and character disorder. The first one has to deal with people who take more responsibility then they actually should. These kind of people are most likely to blame their self if something goes wrong and they are quite unhappy as they aim always the best. Character disorder is the other side of the coin. Denying responsibility and always pointing the finger to others lead to character disorder. Peck believes that the only way to solve the problems we may face is through suffering using the four aspects of discipline (delaying gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and

According to the author the definition of love is "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." We often generalize the meaning of love, seeing it only from the romantic perspective. There also exist a gap between instinct and love. Peck denies the possibility to fall in love. He shares this opinion because he thinks that people fall in love only when they are in an unconscious way sexually motivated. Instinct is the sexual attraction which is explained by Cathexis. We can definitely say that cathexis is not love. As Peck mentions "Love is as love does". Love is about giving not only receiving. It is about knowing and understanding other's emotions. Peck says that love is a decision, " Anyone can fall in love, but not everyone can decide to love. We may never control love's onset, but we may - with discipline - remain in charge of our response. And once these 'muscles' of love have been used, they tend to stay, increasing our power to channel love in the most life-giving and appropriate way." However, he faces another problem. The other problem is that falling in love is not permanent. It is something temporary that might fade away. According to Peck love is not a dependency, in love, when one says that he or she cannot live without another, then it is not love, this is a parasitic relationship. In love, two people can live without each other but